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 Classic story-telling   John Boyne’s latest novel, A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom, is story-telling at its best with classic characters and story lines, dramatic action and cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter.    How can you not read on with a first line like this: ‘On the night that I was born, […]

The Survivors by Jane Harper is the pick of the novels I’ve read this summer. It’s a perfect holiday book – entertaining, gripping and easy to read. The story takes place in a small Tasmanian seaside town. The rocks off Evelyn Bay have caused many a shipwreck in the past, and the title of the

Before I read American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, I was aware of the controversy surrounding the novel. Indeed, this was what made me keen to read it for myself.  American Dirt tells a gripping story from page one. It is written in a cinematic style and its pace is that of a thriller. Oprah Winfrey

In The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante takes her devoted readers back to the streets of Naples with a new protagonist, Giovanna, an adolescent who is starting to question herself and her family after a privileged childhood.  The story follows Giovanna from age twelve to sixteen, as she finds an outcast aunt and a whole cast

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld contains three interleaved stories. The novel begins with Viv as a child discovering a suitcase on a beach. The suitcase has a body inside. Viv’s story continues when she returns to the house where her mother lived before she married. A later chapter tells the story of a young man fleeing his

Jung Chang’s latest non-fiction book, Big Sister Little Sister Red Sister provides a fascinating insight into the history of China in the first half of the 20th century. Jung Chang, an author of Chinese origin now living in London, has written four books about Chinese history.  The first, Wild Swans, published in 1991, tells the story of her own

In the novel which won the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Tara Jane Winch immerses her readers in layers of time. The Yield is a contemporary story wrapped in thousands of years of history. It centres on August Goondiwindi, a troubled young Indigenous woman who returns to Australia from England to attend her grandfather’s funeral. Winch achieves the sensation of

Shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award for Australian Literature and Winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Prize for Indigenous Writing The White Girl follows the fortunes of two Aboriginal women, Odette Brown and her granddaughter Sissy, as they flee their country town for the city to find Sissy’s mother and escape the threat of

Hamnet, is Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel. The title refers to the name Shakespeare and his wife gave their only son. In the late 1500s in England, Hamlet was an equivalent spelling This work of historical fiction re-creates the life of Shakespeare’s family. With William Shakespeare away in London so often for his theatre work, Anne

Julia Baird’s latest book, Phosphorescence, contains a set of essays that focus on the joy of living and how to live well. Little sparkles of hard-won wisdom sprinkle the book. To create it, Julia Baird has taken some of her previous published articles, mined her own life and sought the secrets of joy and fulfilment in