I remember Georgia Blain being in the year level above me at school for one year. I knew of her, but didn’t know her. About twenty years later I discovered one of her books in the library and loved it and devoured everything she had written at that time. Since then I have read most Read More …
Karen Hamilton’s debut novel, The Perfect Girlfriend, starts with the prologue set in 2000, where a young girl is responsible for her younger brother and it ends tragically. She says that since that day her ‘mind excels at taking me to safe places, whenever I need it most’. It then takes us to the present day Read More …
P is for Pearl is the first young adult novel for Eliza Henry Jones, who has had two adult novels published, both of which I enjoyed. This one is set in Tasmania, and the descriptions of the cold, grey and wet weather match the brooding mood of the book. It is told in the first Read More …
Ali Berg, Creative Director for the Hedgehog Agency, and Michelle Kalus, a primary school teacher, both love books and writing and started Books on Rail, leaving books on trains to encourage people to put down their devices and turn the pages of an actual book. This wonderful concept has been taken a step further, in Read More …
Susi Fox’s debut novel, Mine, reflects her background as a doctor who, like many these days, has taken to writing about her experiences. Sasha the protagonist is a pathologist, who gives birth to the long waited for child for her and husband Mark. An emergency caesarean was required, and she is in the local hospital Read More …
I read Brigid Kemmerer’s novel for young adults, Letters to the Lost, where Rev Fletcher was a secondary character. In More than We Can Tell he and Emma are the central characters and narrate the story in turns. Emma, to the chagrin of her mother, a paediatric cardiologist, is into gaming like her father. She Read More …
Jenny McLachlan’s novel for young adults, Truly Wildly Deeply, challenges stereotypes around disability. Sixteen-year-old Annie has mild cerebral palsy and wants to become more independent so has moved to a new school. She needs a wheelchair if she needs to go long distances but can walk when she doesn’t. She meets Hilary, and they start Read More …
Shivaun Plozza’s second book for young adults centres around seventeen going on eighteen-year-old Marlowe. After years of illness she had a heart transplant. She is over-protected by her vegan-warrior mother, and her younger brother Pip makes her laugh and smile with his interesting choices of costumes. Her mother has just opened a shop, Blissfully Aware, Read More …
I have really enjoyed all of Lisa Genova’s novels, Still Alice and Inside the O’Briens being my favourites. Her latest, Every Note Played, now joins them. This time neuroscientist Genova tackles ALS – Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neuron disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease, which destroys neurons, affecting the use of muscles in Read More …
Tracy Sorensen’s debut novel, The Lucky Galah, is an interesting one. Narrated in parts by Lucky, the Galah, it is set in the town of Port Badminton in Western Australia that ‘sits like a sandy freckle on the top lip of the open mouth of Shark Bay, just below the nostril of the Sandhurst River’. Read More …
