Lothian Children’s Books
By on
Book title: If We Were Dogs by Sophie Blackall
Reviewer: Cathy Stirling
If We Were Dogs is a playful and emotionally rich picture book that celebrates friendship and imagination. This book is perfect for children aged 3-8, as well as any grown up or older reader who is sharing the story with them.
Told mainly through the voice of a bold, expressive child who imagines a world where they lead and their friend follows. But while the words race ahead, the illustrations beautifully unfold to reveal the other friend’s perspective. This visual narrative encourages the reader to slow down, to notice the subtle signs of different rhythms. The story gradually shifts when the friend finds their voice.
This is a story about friendship and love and...
Macmillan Australia
By on
Book title: The Golden Sister by Suzanne Do
Reviewer: Elizabeth Blackwood
From its opening, The Golden Sister launches the reader into a swirling narrative of grief, mystery, and redemption. Suzanne Do’s debut novel follows Lili Berry, an aspiring realtor and self-professed black sheep of her family, whose life is turned upside down with the death of her twin sister, Honey. Whilst police insist that the death was an unfortunate overdose, Lili is convinced that there is more to the story and won’t stop until she gets to the truth.
Lili’s life has always been one of comparison against her golden sister, while an unsympathetic mother and toxic work colleagues have driven her into a life on autopilot. An outsider in both her home and work...
HarperCollins
By on
Book title: The Italian Secret by Tara Moss
Reviewer: Nataša Aster-Stater
“The secret needed an answer … even if that answer was potentially devastating”.
‘The Italian Secret’, by Tara Moss, is filled with prose and imagery that has all the beauty of Tuscany, but is also grounded in the dark underbelly of a detective crime mystery.‘ The Italian Secret’ is the third instalment of the Billie Walker Series, set in the 1940s, and Moss's latest offering has the reader following a trail which runs through three different storylines and time periods, headed by three different women. It stretches from Naples, 1943, to the Pacific Ocean, 1907, and Sydney, 1948, with the latter being where we meet the often steely and fashionable Private...
S&S Summit Books
By on
Book title: The Leap by Paul Daley
Reviewer: Garth Thomas
Paul Daley’s The Leap is the latest offering from the Australian bush-noir genre. In a similar style to ‘Wake in Fright’, ‘Scrublands’ or ‘An Isolated Incident’ – the hero of ‘The Leap’ is an outsider dropped into contemporary outback Australia. Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill is a British diplomat with past trauma, hoping to coast out his remaining years with a cushy posting in Canberra. But that dream fades when an Australian air hostess is murdered in Saudi Arabia, and the two British women accused of the crime face the death penalty. Under Saudi law, those found guilty can be spared if the victim’s family accept a ‘diyyeh’ – in this case, one million pounds from the British...
Ultimo Press
By on
Book title: Left Behind by Martine Kropkowski
Reviewer: K. T. Major
Left Behind is a story about four campers – two couples – who arrive on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island) but find their holiday fraught with simmering interpersonal and relationship tensions. The first half of the book is presented in an ‘omniscient’ point-of-view—the reader is allowed insight into each of the four characters’ inner worlds. Then, three of the campers go missing as a tropical cyclone approaches, and the second half of the book switches to Annabelle’s point of view. The only camper left behind, she struggles to search for her husband Luke and friends Des and Julianni while the natural world disintegrates around her from the impact of the storm.
...
UQP
By on
Book title: Pictures of You by Tony Birch
Reviewer: Kennedy Estephan
It’s not often that a collection of short stories written by the same author engages so thoroughly. Perhaps it is the gravity of the themes tackled—domestic violence, cultural loss and unresolved father-son issues, to name a few; Or the way the characters are drawn: human, flawed and relatable despite their marginal existence. Or it could be the prose itself: profound and yet simple, personal and yet universal, evocative and yet grounded. Or perhaps even the perspectives employed, many belonging to vulnerable kids growing back in the nineteen sixties and seventies in city suburbs, all of which provide the reader with a precious glimpse of complex and hard worlds...
Giramondo Publishing
By on
Book title: KONTRA by Eunice Andrada
Reviewer: Neen Ramos
Eunice Andrada’s KONTRA is a masterstroke – a book that refuses, seduces, and cuts through the air like a voice that’s had enough of being polite. Centring the kontrabida, the so-called villainess of Filipino teleseryes (soap operas), Andrada reclaims the woman who’s always punished for wanting and refusing to behave. The poems move between the poet and the persona until those lines blur completely. The result is a work that feels alive, daring, and devastatingly precise.
The concept alone is thrilling, but it’s the execution that makes this book extraordinary. Andrada doesn’t tidy up the kontrabida or turn her into a misunderstood heroine. She lets her stay complicated – proud,...
S&S Bundyi
By on
Book title: Secrets by Judi Morison
Reviewer: Tina Faulk
Ruth has kept her secrets hidden for sixty years; now she’s forced to give them up to her daughters and grandchildren. Her story is also Australia’s story, the darkness beneath the comforting reassurance of the ‘Lucky Country’. Her daughters are divided in their opinions, and Ruth’s grandson is doing time on drug charges; she must, at last, tell secrets that she had held for so long.
Secrets is about family secrets, ones that Ruth, the matriarch of the family, holds tightly to until she finally knows she has to relinquish them. It’s a very human story, of an unloved child growing up among secrets that she must painfully discover, and at last, have the courage to reveal. It’s a...
Pink Shorts Press
By on
Book title: Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere by Alex Cothren
Reviewer: Garth Thomas
Welcome to the short fiction lab! Author Alex Cothren is the scientist … or is he more an alchemist or sorcerer? He weaves his magic through this compendium of short stories whose writing palettes draw from straight prose, a mock academic thesis, a parody transcript of a Royal Commission and even a tilt at a Reddit-style online chat. This is satire. This stretches the craft envelope. This is an author flexing their literary muscles.
These stories are set five or ten years into the future, where mankind’s shrinking ethics and increasing technology are doing us little favour. Climate change, so-called ‘illegal’ immigration, the switch from thoughtful...
- ← Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next →