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
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 of
Reviewed by Dianne Nielsen He drank with Ava Gardner, Clive James and Truman Capote, fished with Hemingway, and debated with Churchill…and that was only part of his remarkable story. Alan Moorehead escaped (his word) Melbourne in 1936 for a successful journalistic career in Britain and Europe. He was present at many of the great historical
Reviewed by Dianne Nielsen Having enjoyed Sanjida Kay’s first book Bone by Bone I opened The Stolen Child in anticipation of a similar reading experience. I was not prepared for the tension that gripped and released then gripped again. This is a book that is full of darkness. The story concerns a young English couple
Reviewed by Gretchen Winters ‘Gold can be trusted where governments cannot. An ounce of gold could buy roughly the same amount of bread today as it did in ancient Rome. No other currency has stood the test of time.’(Prologue to this book) It’s hard to resist a story written by a real-life Indiana Jones.
Reviewed by Gretchen Winters I did not enjoy reading this first novel by Peter Polites. It was raw, depressing, and contained just too much information about the gay community and the Greek boy, Bucky. While Peter Polites has obvious writing ability I felt there was too much shock value contained in every chapter. I’ve read
Reviewed by Angela Marie ‘Telly!’ my baby sister cried one last time. As I lifted the bat. Had a family. Once. With her latest novel, RIGHT BEHIND YOU, author Lisa Gardner strips away the fairy tale that all families love and protect their children. In young Sharlah and Telly Ray Nash’s world, A
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Short Cuts to Glory was an ABC TV Entertainment production based on an original idea by Helen Greenwood. This book was written and introduced by Matt Okine, a regular presenter on several TV shows including ABC TV’s It’s a Date and Dirty Laundry Live and SBS’s Legally Brown. It includes just