Read on for thoughts about books and reading and teaching and life. But mostly books.
All in reads for grown ups
Jane Harper’s The Dry and The Lost Man are crisp and startling crime novels set in the heart of Australia. This September, her latest novel, The Survivors, shifts to the wilderness of the Tasmanian coastline. Is this latest story as good as the others?
The short answer is: yes.
This moment when, for a tiny space in time, Australia’s history crossed paths with the much bigger story happening in south-eastern Europe has been little explored in fiction, but Danielle Binks’s warm and brilliant middle grade debut, The Year the Maps Changed, captures it all through the eyes of the fierce and immediately endearing Winifred – or Fred, to her dad.
Michael Christie’s Greenwood is as towering, timeless and complex as the species it is named for.
In this promising debut from Andrew David MacDonald, 21-year-old Zelda figures that most of life’s challenges can be overcome with a little Viking courage and ingenuity.
If you’re going to read one book on a 731-kilometre road trip to farewell your grandmother, let it be Kassandra Montag’s debut novel, After the Flood.
In this review-interview, author Barbara Hannay shares about the inspiration and the heart behind her new family drama, Meet Me in Venice.
In Shoot Through, JM Green’s latest in the Stella Hardy trilogy of thrillers, we encounter a wisecracking, distinctly Aussie heroine who doesn’t mind crossing a few moral boundaries in order to get at the truth.
Three of the best: the non-fiction reads you should pick up before Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Heading to SWF? You should definitely check out The Lost Man, The Fragments, The Scholar and The Life to Come before you do.
