Published...Or Not

Tosh Greenslade applies his satirical eye in 'The Scomo Diaries' revealing that elections are more a marketing campaign than true politics. Cathy Koning writes about her experience with cancer in ‘Life Blood’ and also talks about how she became a self publisher of this and other books.

Grade 6 is a year of growth and change, with puberty happening to climate awareness.  Fiona Wood has also included blending families and humour in ‘How To Spell Catastrophe’.In Hilde Hinton’s, ‘A Solitary Walk on the Moon’, we find behind ordinary people and events, lies the majesty and the pathos of life. Evelyn creates a family of misfits who each have a weakness but will that family hold togeth...

In ‘The Mother’ Jane Caro has written a story about the difficult and sensitive area of coercive control, how a relationship can become toxic and what a mother will do to protect the family she loves..Toni Jordan highlights the humour and pathos of a man struggling to cope with his altered circumstances after going bankrupt and the challenges of facing a contemporary world of digital influencers a...

‘Sheilas: Badass women of Australian History’ is researched and written by Eliza Reilly, with just as much determination and innovation as the woman had in their defying the rules and norms of their times. Carmel Shute relates the history of ‘Sisters-in-Crime’ and what is happening to celebrate its 30th year.

‘Facts and Other Lies’ gives background information about why fake news spreads and how politicians, especially right wing conservatives have exploited it so successfully. Ed Coper uses extensive research but writes cleverly with specific examples and humour and even explains how individuals can defuse disinformation. Josh Kemp distorts perceptions with a drug addled protagonist and a ten year old...

In ‘When We Fall’ a mother has moved back to the small town she grew up in. Her daughter, Alex, wants to know who her father is, but finds that she is involved in a murder mystery instead, and there is a possibility that she could be murdered too! Sean Rabin takes us into the not too distant future where radical environmentalism is required to save the planet in, ‘The Good Captain’

Twenty years after a younger, impulsive sister returns from a summer overseas, she dies. She has left her reliable older sister instructions of where to scatter her ashes with letters to read of explanation.  There are hidden secrets and undisclosed truths that connect very different families in Jane Cockram’s ‘The Way From Here’. The dislocation the characters feel in Rhett Davis’ novel, ‘Hoverin...

The Dalhunty family have only their prestigious name after generations of pastoral wealth. Their downturn is also reflected in the demise of the riverboat trade on the Darling. ‘The Last Station’ is written with detailed depictions or rural life, action and humour by Nicole Alexander. We inherit property but we can also inherit the past. Robert Lukins grapples with these notions in ‘Loveland’ as M...

Insight and satire abound in short stories about The advertising industry in ’Sadvertising’ by Ennis Cehic. Dominique Wilson traverses one hundred years of Australian history in her novel, ‘Orphan Rock’, giving us a glimpse at the attitudes and mores that have changed and those things, like pandemics, that have stayed the same. 

Australia is diverse, Keren Heenen is one of the sixteen writers who surprise you, as they take you to places you know, or think you know, in ‘The Furphy Anthology’, selected stories from the Furphy Literary Award in 2021. Far from being about an isolated case of abuse, Mandy Beaumont’s, ‘The Furies’, speaks to the endemic victimization of women in society and one doesn’t have to look too far beyo...

Most people have obsessions, Katherine Collette has written about those who take on speech making in ‘The Competition’.  This delightful read has a mixture of memorable characters who find happiness despite themselves. Megan Albany’s account of someone dying of cancer balances both the tragic and comic in her novel,' The Last List of Vivian Walker', where the mundane and ordinary in characters’ li...

Emily Brugman writes of the Finnish migrants building homes and families in Australia, connected by hard work, crayfish, the beauty and the terror of the sea and nature in ‘The Islands’.Garry Disher’s cold case mystery in, ‘The Way It Is Now’, counterpoints the past and the present when a now mature but suspended policeman finds more similarities with his constable father than he realized.  

During a bombing raid over Yorkshire in WW2, a German pilot is shot down and protected by a farming family for what reason and what risk? Karen Turner has written a big book of sacrifice and love and what the past can teach us in ‘Stormbird’.  Garry Disher’s cold case mystery in, ‘The Way It Is Now’, counterpoints the past and the present when a now mature but suspended policeman finds more simila...

In Joy Dettman’s ‘The Hope Flower’ there is a volatile mother, her children raise themselves away from the gaze of the authorities, but when she emerges after body shaping surgery, will it be for hope or hell? Michael McGirr provides us with a potted history of philosophy connecting the ideas and themes in a very personal way to his own real life experiences and challenges in, ‘Ideas to Save Your...

Patsy Popenbeek is one of 40 contributors to ‘South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century’ which are strictly for grown ups! Maxine Beneba Clarke’s poetry is both funny and alarming. Her collection, ‘How Decent Folk Behave’ shows the power of poetry in addressing contemporary issues; the treatment of women, the moral corruption of politics, and the challenge to find a social bala...

Second time around, Evie is reliving her 20’s, will she find the love she is looking for and the career she wants? Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus join together to make the romantic comedy ‘Fancy Meeting You Here’ twice as funny. Chris Hammer takes us to an isolated outback opal mining region for his latest murder mystery, ‘Treasure and Dirt’, where the intrigue is as deep and dangerous as a mine shaf...

Not all crime novels have to have serial killers or gore. ‘Who sleuthed it?’ is a light hearted and fun read with animals helping to solve crimes. These short stories are by 19 different writers from many countries and edited by Lindy Cameron. Eugen Bacon’s collection of speculative short story fiction, ‘Danged Black Thing’, transports us into other times and other realities but her delight with c...

'The Colonial’s Son' is historical fiction from the Palmer River goldfields to the political power play of Europe, Peter Watt writes of the fighting by bushrangers or armies to achieve their ambitions. In ‘Dark Rise’, C. S. Pacat creates a fantasy world where there is an ambiguity between good and evil – the light and the dark. Nothing is what it seems. 

A step-mother, younger than the groom’s daughters, creates uncertainty in the family with secrets and lies being revealed. Sally Hepworth has written another page-turner in ‘The Younger Wife’ which starts with the wedding and a murder. Katherine Kovacic adapts the Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries television series for the page fleshing out the character of Peregrine Fisher as the young 60’s sle...

An oldie but a goodie! A relevant read about everyday violence, the media's obsession with pretty dead girls and the search for answers in a country town community.

Hannah Kent ‘s book ‘Devotion’ in part tells how devout Lutherans emigrated to South Australia but more so about two young woman in the group who find friendship and committed love that follows them beyond the grave. The vast desolate openness of central Australia is the perfect setting for murder – no one can hear you scream. Margaret Hickey utilizes this landscape in ‘Cutters End’ as the setting...

A young man runs from Melbourne into the excesses of capitalism in New York and again into the rural heartland of Ohio . Will he find what he is looking for in Emily Bitto’s novel, 'Wild Abandon'. Mirranda Burton has written/illustrated a graphic novel entitled, ‘Underground’ that provides an insight into Australia’s growing resistance to the Vietnam War including a wombat that was drafted and who...

The best of creativity and compassion and the worst of unchecked greed and entitlement are in ‘The Eighth Wonder’, a historical fiction set in the Gilded Age of New York by Tania FarrellyAntoni Jach, in his latest work, ‘Travelling Companions’ demonstrates that travelling is more about the journey than the destination as well as the people you meet along the way.

Erin’s teenage friends were charged with a horrific murder. 16 years later and as a crime writer, she gets to investigate it herself, in ‘I Shot the Devil’ by Ruth McIver. Ann Rennie’s, ‘Blessed’, is a collection of reflections about the simple things in life that are, in their own way, keys to more profound thinking.

Jacquie Byron has created a feisty 65 year old woman, getting older but perhaps not wiser. Friends had become unwelcome in her seclusion until circumstances, being the new neighbours, breach her fortress and heart in the humorous ‘Happy Hour’.J P Pomare explores the psychological intrigues made possible by the voyeuristic capabilities of the digital age in his new book, ‘The Last Guests’, where yo...