Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The author, Annabelle Brayley, is a trained nurse who has lived on an isolated sheep and cattle station in South West Queensland. Because of this she has firsthand knowledge of the hardship and isolation experienced by people in the outback and the medical teams who elect to minister to these people.
Reviewed by Clare W. Brook I’m feeling almost in touch with all that is modern having just read No Way! Okay, Fine by Brodie Lancaster. Brodie is a dedicated young professional film, television, and modern music commentator, writing for publications such as Rookie, Pitchfork, Junkee, Film Fatales and Rolling Stone. Her debut book, No Way!
Reviewed by Ian Lipke It is no secret that Luke Jennings has taken four stories from Kindle and turned them into a novel. But what sort of novel and how successful has he been? Let me answer the second question. He has been an outstanding success. Jennings has created a secret agent with a history
Reviewed by Rod McLary The author has set Her in western Victoria in the early twentieth century and the novel spans some ten years in the life of the eponymous character Her. She has no other name except that which she gives herself after a customer refers to ‘pretty garland lillies’ in her hearing. She
Reviewed by Gretchen Winters I enjoyed reading Felicity Castagna’s latest novel. Felicity won the 2015 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction for her previous novel, The Incredible Here and Now, that was also adapted for the stage by the National Theatre of Parramatta. Felicity’s work has appeared on radio and television and she
Reviewed by E.B. Heath I have just read the second edition of Battle Scars and am basking in the reflected courage of a determined, gutsy woman, while at the same time not being at all confident that I could match Charlene Ericson’s herculean task in over-coming stage 3C ovarian cancer. It would be a good
Reviewed by Clare W Brook The Last Man in Europe by Dennis Glover is a novel about writing a novel, the personal history of its author and the era in which he lived. The work of fiction in question is one of the most important books written in the twentieth century, and remains vital reading
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The Country Wedding is the latest book for Australian romance writer Barbara Hannay. This novelist has written more than forty novels which have been translated into twenty-six languages worldwide. The Country Wedding is actually two love stories and is set in the tropical Atherton Tableland. It is a story about love
Reviewed by Ian Lipke When you read a Michael Connelly novel, you feel as though you’re right in the middle of the action in the Los Angeles Police Department. I wouldn’t know what life in the LAPD is like, having read Connelly, I have no wish to know. I’ll observe all the politicking and the
Reviewed by Ian Lipke The French Revolution was never ‘over’. Its achievements and triumphs – like its deceptions and atrocities – were of a scale that made its stature unique. Its reverberations were felt across the globe after 1789 and they live with us still. The aim of the French revolutionaries is given boldly in
Reviewed by E.B. Heath The past is never dead. It’s not even past. William Faulkner Tom Griffiths’ new book The Art of Time Travel, has been a revelation! I understood history as static, a dry, dates-and-dead- people package, but I now find myself in the grip of an enthusiasm experienced by the newly converted. This engaging
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke “It’s funny, isn’t it? She said. “How we find out more from books than we do from life sometimes?… Books give us the benefit of a lot of people’s experiences…They give us more options to choose from – more ways to live – than we could ever find on our own”.
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Into the Heart of Tasmania: a Search for Human Antiquity by Rebe Taylor doesn’t look like a treatise. Its cover doesn’t speak to the casual observer in academic language but it’s a different story between the covers. Here is a thoroughly researched study of the highest scholarship. This is a volume
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke We are the ones that disappeared, That ran, that got lost, that chose to go. We are the ones tricked or chosen, sold or taken by larger hands than ours. We are the eyes that turned from the fist. We are the feet that