Abracadabra by Robert Dessaix Brio Books Currently living in Hobart with Peter Timms, his partner of 40 years who is also a writer, Robert Dessaix is in demand as a guest speaker but sometimes the audiences for his words of wisdom are quite small. While podcasts can attract huge audiences around the globe, Dessaix’s talks […]
Scrubbed By Nikki Stamp Allen & Unwin Nikki Stamp remembers being inspired by heart surgeon Dr Victor when she was young, and now she is only one of 11 female heart surgeons in Australia. In Scrubbed, she reflects on the journey – from the brilliant times to the darkest times. Stamp dispels any notion that […]
In post pandemic world where most of the population has been wiped out by a Super-flu, two teenagers confront each other, unsure of each other at first they slowly strike up a friendship that sees them banding together to seek out a new future. Erik J Brown’s new young adult queer romance All That’s Left in […]
Outback Teacher by Sally Gare Allen & Unwin If you went to teachers’ college in the 1950’s, you were expected to serve time in a country school. The government paid your fees and gave you a pitiful living allowance and if you didn’t spend your first two years teaching at a country posting and accepting […]
Speaking in Tongues by Tom Tilley ABC Books Tom Tilley has shared other people’s stories on national radio for more than a decade, and now he shares his coming of age story. As the host of triple j’s nightly news and currents affairs program Hack, Tom spoke to half a million national radio listeners each […]
Libby Lawrence is Good at Pretending By Jodi McAlister Wakefield Press Nineteen year old Libby Lawrence has finally scored a major role in the university amateur theatre group after treading the boards in the chorus. Apart from studying drama and law, working at the local bookshop and throwing herself into her first lead role, Libby […]
The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird by Diane Connell Simon & Schuster Twelve year old Ricky (formally known as Vicki) believed that there were two types of disaster. There were catastrophes like landslides and tidal waves and there was the type of disaster that “crept up and slithered in”. Ricky’s disaster arrived with stealth and […]
The Second Cut by Louise Welsh Canongate Louise Welsh has lived in Glasgow most of her life. Her debut novel The Cutting Room was twenty years ago when she was angry about the open and institutional hostility towards LGBTQI+ people during the Keep the Clause campaign. The central character of her seductive novel, openly queer […]
A Previous Life by Edmund White Bloomsbury Publishing Ruggero Castelnuovo is a Sicilian aristocrat and a world famous harpsichord player in his seventies. Married to American writer Constance who is 40 years younger, he breaks a leg while heli-skiing in Switzerland and the two of them decide to write their respective sexual memoirs and read […]
Remember Me by Charity Norman Allen & Unwin In June 1995, twenty-six year old Tawanui woman Leah Parata went hiking in the rainy New Zealand uplands in search of the endangered native Marchant snail she was studying. She never returned to her mother’s place and she seemed to have vanished completely. No traces were found […]
