RODNEY HALL Vortex. Reviewed by Paul Anderson

RODNEY HALL Vortex. Reviewed by Paul Anderson

Rodney Hall has won the Miles Franklin Award twice (Just Relations, The Grisly Wife); his new novel is a panoramic alternative history of the twentieth century. Queen Elizabeth II visited Brisbane on 9 March 1954 as part of her longest-ever Commonwealth tour. A...
SUSAN JOHNSON The Landing. Reviewed by Robyne Young

SUSAN JOHNSON The Landing. Reviewed by Robyne Young

This novel artfully articulates the search for the perfect self, the perfect emotional and sexual mate, and the perfect life. In the opening sentence of her new novel, The Landing, Susan Johnson pays homage to one of the greatest writers on love and matrimony, Jane...
ANITA HEISS Tiddas. Reviewed by Michael Jongen

ANITA HEISS Tiddas. Reviewed by Michael Jongen

The personal is political in this joyful, and poignant, novel of five women friends on the cusp of turning 40. Tiddas is a delightful novel that covers 12 months in the lives of five friends as they struggle with life, love and lust and the consequences thereof. The...

JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL Forecast: Turbulence

These stories of family trauma find their echoes in the elements. In ‘Moon River’, the chapter of memoir that comes at the end of this collection of short stories, there is an image of the Brisbane River swollen and raucous in flood.  It occurs six months after the...

NICOLE WATSON The Boundary

Murder, dispossession and revenge fuel this passionate debut. It may have a body on the first page, but The Boundary is no ordinary crime novel. Yes, there is a lawyer-hero (the troubled Miranda Eversley), there is a good cop and a bad cop, bad lawyers, a weak...