Reviewed by bonne nuit This light-hearted story entrances the reader as she is taken inside the intimate day to day occurrences that occur with marked regularity around Elle Wheaton. Elle is a girl who is most interested in the important things in a girl’s life – shoes, for instance, or friends, or even a career.

Reviewed by Ian Lipke When mankind accepts evil, the good tread with great care that they are not themselves ensnared. Charles Ballantyre almost delayed too long. His daughter’s happiness and the life of a good man hung in the balance. In Scotland 1893 a poacher is shot and killed on the estate of a wealthy

Reviewed by Mike Clarke   If anybody could be described as a living encyclopaedia of sport it would be Matthew Syed. A columnist and feature writer for The Times, he has twice won ‘Sports Journalist of the Year’ at The British Press Awards. He is a regular contributor to BBC programmes and a sportsman in

Reviewed by Ian Lipke “Let ‘em drool!” A short sharp rejoinder from a brittle character who plays a large part in Charlie Donlea’s The Girl Who Was Taken. Nicole Cutty, amoral, tough and brash has no concern about nude breasts when young men hover. When she and other high school senior girls disappear from the

Reviewed by Ian Lipke Antigone Kefala is a contemporary Australian poet and prose-writer of Rumanian heritage. Her family moved to Greece but settled in New Zealand after World War II. Having studied French literature at Victoria University Antigone Kefala relocated to Australia in 1960. She has taught English as a second language and worked as a university and

Reviewed by Ian Lipke   Sustained beyond reverberation; resonant beyond deafness (from The Disappeared) is an apt appellation to Hazel Smith’s active conscience. She has never been known to dodge the odd bit of controversy and her latest collection of poems follows a well-worn path. If there is one word readers might use to describe

Reviewed by Ian Lipke He gave a light shrug. “Why not? It’s what they deserved. They were nothing but cockroaches. All we did was clean out the kitchen.”  In such a manner does Lone Theils introduce her readers to a Rwandan mass murderer and through him to Nora Sand, an investigative journalist with the Danish

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 done.

Reviewed by Jill Kenneth Cook’s Fear is the Rider  was originally written as a television series. Cook subsequently rewrote it as a short novel. It does not have the finish, the depth and complexity of his later novel Wake in Fright, but can be just as uncomfortable to read. In the right hands, it would

Reviewed by Ian Lipke He used to stop terrorists…Now he is one. So goes the blurb on the front cover of Stephen Leather’s Takedown. Is there anyone left in doubt about the genre to which this book is likely to belong? It’s in-your-face action all the way. Leather is in the entertainment business and writes

Reviewed by Ian Lipke ‘…the steel blade took the full force…ending up buried in his chest up to the hilt.’ Tragedy strikes in Rachel Rhys’ novel, A Dangerous Crossing. It is 1939 and the Second World War is about to savage Europe. But this seems to be of little interest to the passengers on board