Reviewed by Dr Tracey Churchill Initially flicking through this book, I became so excited that finally our beautiful spider fauna has been exposed for its true nature: incredibly diverse, often colourful and always uniquely adapted to their special part of the world! I am personally indebted to the authors who have achieved in one wonderful
Reviewed by Gretchen Winters Pamela Hart has written a very engaging love story, loosely based on Louise Mack, an Australian, and one of the few women correspondents to report from the frontline during WW1. The author has described the privations and danger of wartime conditions in WW1 very convincingly. Pamela Hart is an award-winning author
Reviewed by Ian Lipke It is still largely true that if you want a carefully-contrived, slow-moving but inexorable crime story you look among the British writers. Largely true, because there are plenty of ‘duds’ there too. Peter Robinson is among the good ones. Sleeping in the Ground is a cracker. Peter Robinson is a Yorkshire
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Michael McGuire’s first novel Never a True Word tells the story of the day by day life of a political adviser to a senior Cabinet Minister. McGuire’s knowledge of the relationship between politics and the media is encyclopaedic. He writes about toxic personalities and underhand schemes designed to keep the information
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Every now and again, a novel comes along that is so different, so affecting and so unforgettable, that you simply must tell everyone you know to read it…you will never forget this one – for all the right reasons. — Heat magazine The novel Together by Julie Cohen is one
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders January 1942 and the Americans are in retreat – just one month after the devastating Japanese attack on the American base at Pearl Harbour, that forced the United States into World War II. General Macarthur’s headquarters in the Philippines is under siege and 76,000 Americans are eventually captured. Some
Reviewed by E.B. Heath Dystopian fiction often responds to a current reality, expanding its boundaries, illustrating what might happen. Orwell’s 1984 brought the horror of a totalitarian state, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale depicted totalitarianism via a Christian theocracy, John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids depicts a world that refused to tolerate any behaviour outside of
Reviewed by E.B. Heath I have never liked romantic fiction – so why did I find Veronica Henry’s The Forever House so very enjoyable? From the first page Veronica Henry makes the reader feel there! ‘There’ is the English Cotswold town of Peasebrook, where Belinda Baxter has established her own estate agency. Belinda has
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This was not her bedroom…The memories rushed back: Valentin, poison, her grandmother, the hospital, small gangster bears, muscled warmth around her, a bass heartbeat against her ear. Silver allowed the deluge to crash over her… (82) This is a pretty amazing story! It combines elements from the best that romance writing
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Heart of the Sky is a story about the Australian outback and the stoic women, disadvantaged by the great distance from treatment and support but not immune to the ravages of disease. Fiona McArthur, mother of five boys and a cricket fan, found inspiration for this book through Jane McGrath’s
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Kayte Nunn’s book Angel’s Share is a story which transports the reader from the competitive corporate world in London to the open-ness and beauty of a valley of vineyards in the Australian countryside with its ‘searing bright light and cloudless blue sky’. Matilda Cameron was a woman who directed million-pound
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Every now and again a book comes along that is different from the run of the mill yarn that crosses my desk with unfailing regularity. Pachyderm bubbles with the good humour of its creator. I mean if a character reports that he’s had his head up an elephant’s arse you’d want
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Dear Banjo is a love story set in the cattle country of Western Australia. But it is not just a boy meets girl – something goes wrong – they hate each other –and after several ups and downs they end up together. This is a story filled with human emotion. Willow
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Nora Roberts always produces a fine story with a neat balance between romance and suspense. Come Sundown belongs to the same stable but is more exploratory of the darkness of the mind of a psychopath. There is fun and laughter and love and mystery as one has come to expect, but
Reviewed by Ian Lipke It is tempting to damn a writer who dares to publish just the interesting bits of any classic piece of literature. One would have thought that Paradise Lost is a work beyond the savagery of the vandal’s pen, to gut Milton’s great work seems sacrilegious, something that is just not