Published...Or Not

Kate Ryan takes the reader back and forth in ‘The Golden Book’ from a childhood friendship and devastating accident to adult acceptance of blame and learning about the nature of fear and love. Robert Gott continues his 1940s Melbourne based detective murder mystery series with ‘The Orchard Murders’ where obsession and religious fanaticism come to the fore.

When family stories are not told or things go unsaid between mothers and daughters or a relationship ends, there is a little death. The grief is played out in many ways through the short stories by Paige Clark in  ‘She is Haunted’.Gabrielle Williams crosses both time and continents in her riff on a ‘freaky Friday’ type transfer of souls in her adolescent novel, ‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’.

Three generations are looking for inspiration and guidance to find out how to love and live. From the India ashram in the 70’s to closed societies of the future, the outcomes for these three generations, lead to very different consequences. Miles Allinson looks into the past and future in his novel ‘In Moonland’.Stephen Orr blurs the line between fact and fiction in his account of the great Austra...

Grandmothers may live on the periphery of a family’s life but when Shirley and Beth suspect their grand daughter is being abused they abduct her with much interest from police, media and of course their family in The Unusual Abduction of Avery Conifer by Ilsa Evans. Sara El Sayed’s memoir, ‘Muddy People’, is more than just an account of a young Egyptian Muslim girl negotiating cultures. The pressu...

Poland in 1939, with the background of anti-semitism and the imminent Nazi invasion, Maria is absorbed in finding the whereabouts of her mother in  ‘Secrets my father kept’ by Rachel Givney. Against the tide of communism and nuclear devastation that followed World War Two, individuals find a simple, common good that gives them comfort. The Quaker, Wes, finds happiness with the socialist, Beth, and...

In the middle of a heatwave in Brisbane, a son disappears. This causes a family to reconnect, share their secrets, surprisingly make new friendships and investigate their skills, be it art or disappearing, in ‘The Rabbits’ by Sophie Overett.              Told in the voice of an eleven year old boy, Mark Brandi’s, ‘The Others’, provides an insight into a child’s coming of age against a backdrop of...

Japanese life is steeped in traditions, but four interconnected characters tell of how a different life can be lived in ‘The Shut Ins’ by Katherine Brabon. Charlie Donlea uses the Twin Towers collapse as the source of a cold case that must be solved in ‘Twenty Years Later’ but there is still intrigue in the present day. The FBI spy on the investigative journalist whose past could be embarrassing i...

Things are falling apart: the lake is drying up, the town is changing and who you are in a marriage and a broader family is under scrutiny, in ‘Echolalia’ by Briohny Doyle. Tania Chandler exposes the fractures in social behaviour that lead her protagonist, Sidney, to question her own mental stability. The novel, ‘All That I Remember About Dean Cola’ creates a complex scenario where memory and emot...

Murder  can be opportunistic or professional planned.  Simon Rowell has Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer investigating against time in 'The Long Game'.       In Michelle Wright’s, ‘Small Acts of Defiance’, little gestures come to mean a great deal and such is the case for Australian girl Lucie living in occupied France during world War Two.

Brendan Murray takes us back to school highlighting the challenges and rewards in his book,  “The School”, where he covers the academic yearly cycle of tests, bullying and the kindness of students. Tippy and her flamboyant uncles help to solve murders in a Nancy Drew way, but with a lot more inappropriate humour and alcohol in ‘Nancy Business’, a cosy queer crime novel by R.W.R. MDonald.

Elle has a popular true-crime podcast, her investigation into a cold case serial killer has more murders happening in this thriller, ‘Girl, 11’ by Amy Suiter Clarke.‘The Newcomer’ plays on the murder mystery genre. Laura Elizabeth Woollett gives voice and agency to the victim who is a damaged individual but, none the less, deserving of the reader’s sympathy.

'By chance the Future' by Amy Rudder blends the philosophy of why we travel, with politics and comedy with the big question what did we learn on the way? There’s no better way to appreciate how the ancient Roman’s lived than to read Anna Ciddor’s adventure of ‘The Boy Who Stepped Through Time’ where Perry finds himself living an authentic Roman lifestyle. 

Melissa Manning has created resilient characters who live in the small communities of southern Tasmania, in the linked stories of  ‘Smokehouse’.Jacqueline Bublitz merges the lives of Alice and Ruby in her novel, “Before You Knew My Name” and highlights the shared experience of women as Ruby tries to account for and solve Alice’s murder. Intriguingly, the narrator is Alice. 

Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s protagonist, Bani Adam, is encouraged to marry but must negotiate the customs and traditions inherent within his Lebanese Alawite community while simultaneously establishing where he stands in current day Australia as a young Muslim man. ‘The Other Half of You’ continues the saga that began in ‘The Lebs’.  A Room called Earth takes place in just 24 hours but Madeleine Ryan...

Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist wrote about fictional walkers, learning about themselves and others on the Camino, in 'Two Steps Forward'. Another book, with another walk and more humour. 'Two Steps Onward' has fictional friends and family walking the Way of St Francis of Assisi.  One friend has health difficulties and a lie she only wants to share with the Pope.

‘The French Gift’ could be the unpublished manuscript of a crime novel or the bond of friendship between two unlikely women, one a French Resistance fighter and the other, a murderer. Historical fiction at its best by Kirsty Manning. Alice Pung highlights the travails of a pregnant teenager looking for agency and independence in her life against the backdrop of a cultural divide, a controlling par...

In their youth, lovebirds Elizabeth and Ray had to fight to be together.  Conscription altered their happiness and Lizzy now has to fight her own stubbornness on a bizarre road trip to reunite her family in Amanda Hampson’s 'Lovebirds'.Hope lies in the resourcefulness and resilience of children in Kelly Rimmer’s novel, 'The Warsaw Orphan', set against the backdrop of war torn Warsaw.  

Could a successful female Melbourne doctor be as vulnerable as an orphaned girl from remote Pakistan? L. P. McMahon takes us on a remarkable read through the circumstances of life and surgery in 'As Swallows Fly'.We can often drive ourselves to the edge in our search for identity and meaning. Both Ethan and Harry, half-brothers, find themselves on the brink of emotional, moral and physical crisis...

John Kinsella's evocation of the Australian landscape and the voices of the ordinary people speaks eloquently of the emotions, concerns and feelings with which we can all identify in his anthology of short stories, "Pushing Back".From the formalities of a funeral home to the inside working of a kink club, death, sex and make-up are all parts of "New Animal" by Ella Baxter.

Belinda Lyons-Lee touches on the macabre history of Madame Tussaud, the lifelike images of wax and how they excited the likes of the necromancer, Philidor, and the His Grace William Cavendish in her gothic tale, 'Tussaud'.'Now That I See You' is a story of complicated love when a partner becomes transgender. Emma Batchelor tells this through letters and journal entries over an eighteen month perio...

Emily Maguire has written about ‘Love Objects’. Things that are personal becoming public and the deep hurt associated with it especially if those things are sex and hoarding. One person’s trash is another’s treasure in Sandi Scaunch’s novel, 'Chasing the McCubbin', where the world of garage sales provides hope and opportunity for those seeking direction. 

Private Investigators have to use discretion, spy craft, endless patience and self preservation to get results. Sandi Kent needs all of these to crack cases of sexual slavery in the suburbs of Melbourne in Robin Gregory’s ‘Traffic’.Disability shouldn’t be a hindrance. Indeed, it often hides a remarkable intelligence as Stuart Everly-Wilson shows in his debut novel, ‘Low Expectations'.

Can one person be a model citizen as well as a feared monster? After 20 years a small rural community hasn’t solved the disappearance of a young girl.  ‘The Silent Listener’ by Lyn Yeowart is so much more than just a crime novel. In ‘The Devils You Know’, Ben Sanders takes us into the violent world of drug running cartels and confronts us with the notion of violence as a necessity on the personal...

Both 10 year old Rae and next door neighbour Lettie have secrets and houses but not homes.  Emily Spurr has written about isolation, Splinter the dog and love in ‘A Million Things’.Shakespeare is timeless and in Kathryn Barker’s, ‘Waking Romeo’, we find that time travel had much to do with the Bard’s writing of Romeo and Juliet. 

Can the attitudes within school, work and marriage be changed? Can society become fairer? Anna Geoge has a very hopeful and insightfully humorous book about all of this happening in 'Tipping'.‘The Shaman’ is Roland Perry’s latest novel about the personal and political repercussions when wealthy companies and self interested states vie for control of the oil industry and the elusive key to controll...