Nimble Foot by Robert Drewe is a rollicking tale inspired by the true story of an Australian boy called Johnny Day. In the latter half of the 1800s, Day became the world champion of the then popular sport of pedestrianism when he was ten. At the age of fourteen, he rode a horse called Nimble […]
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Just to let you all know that the latest edition of Children, Families and Communities was published on 7 October by Oxford University Press. Along with Rebekah Grace and Christine Woodrow, I am an editor on the 6th edition using my professional name, Jennifer Bowes. The book is a collection of up-to-date research-based chapters about
They say that every book an author writes explores the same themes. Reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro got me thinking about how this very different novel raises similar issues to the other two Ishiguro books I have read, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. In my view, Ishiguro
The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan begins with a series of emails in which Hannah Rokeby secures herself a place in the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia Law School. From the tone of the emails, it is clear she will use whatever means she has available to obtain entry. The Innocence Project is a
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Elizabeth Strout’s latest book, Oh William! is a slim one, more a novella than a novel. It extends the story of characters we have met before in Strout’s fiction, Lucy Barton the writer and William Gerhardt, her first husband, although Oh William! can be read as a stand-alone story. While I was eager to read
In An Officer and a Spy, bestselling author Richard Harris recreates the Dreyfus affair that fascinated Europe in the last years of the 19th century. The story is told from the viewpoint of Georges Picquart, an officer of the French army sent to observe the public humiliation of Alfred Dreyfus in 1895 following his trial
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Sarah Winman’s Still Life and Jan Wallace Dickenson’s The Sweet Hills of Florence both feature the city of Florence. The city itself is more than a backdrop in both novels. It acts almost as a character in the stories. Still Life begins at the end of the second world war and spans four decades. The
At the heart of The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is the effect on two children of their mother’s disappearance when they were young. In the story, Danny and his older sister Maeve grow up in a house previously owned by a Dutch family in the state of Pennsylvania in the USA. The furniture and
If, like me, you enjoy crime fiction, you will love Chris Hammer’s fourth novel, Treasure & Dirt. The story begins with the discovery of the crucified body of a miner at the base of his mine in the fictional opal town of Finnigans Gap located in western New South Wales. Lauded Sydney detective Ivan Lucic
Loop Tracks by New Zealand writer Sue Orr has just been released by Upswell Publishing. Previously published by Victoria University of Wellington, this captivating novel is now more widely available, as it deserves to be. Loop tracks refer to the way our lives spiral forwards and backwards in time over our lifespan, intersecting at different
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