SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
New Books
AUSTRALIANA
None this month
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BIOGRAPHY
| Browder, Bill | Red notice |
| Bunker, Edward | Mr Blue |
| Day, David | Paul Keating |
| Fry, Stephen | More fool me |
| Gorman, Anne | The country wife |
| Lahr, John | Tennessee Williams |
| Relin, David Oliver | Second suns |
| Richmond Mouillot, Miranda | A fifty-year silence |
| Slahi, Mohamedou Ould | Guantanamo |
| Stevenson, Bryan | Just mercy |
| Rees, Peter | Bearing witness (Charles Bean) |
| Swan, Wayne | The good fight |
 | Gorman, Anne The country wife
When she is six, Anne Gorman’s family falls apart. Her mother has a breakdown – the fallout of thirteen pregnancies, the death of two children and the struggle to survive during the Great Depression. When her devout Catholic mother smashes a statue of the Virgin Mary, her punishment is to be locked up and given shock treatment. Her children are placed in a convent where they wait in vain to be rescued by their parents.
Anne doesn’t see her beloved father again until years later when he is dying. After his death, her mother is released to mend her broken family. Anne’s determination to escape her fate fires her ambition to find a better life. Education is her passport to freedom and after graduating from university, she is ready to take on the world. But her grand plans come unstuck when she falls in love. Marrying a farmer and becoming a mother to five children is a life she had never imagined.
Yet in this alien landscape she finds love and a sense of belonging. But when Anne’s husband becomes suddenly gravely ill, she has to battle to keep the property afloat and bring up her children alone.
(Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24847457-the-country-wife?from_search=true) |
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COOKING
None this month
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CRAFT
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GENERAL NOVELS
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 | Cooney, Ellen The Mountaintop School for dogs and other second chances
The Sanctuary. High up on the mountain, the Sanctuary is a place of refuge. It is a place where humans save dogs, who, in turn, save the humans. It is a place where the past does not exist, where hopelessness is chased away, where the future hasn’t been written, where orphans and strays can begin to imagine a new meaning for family. “The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances is a wonderful and feel-good story, it really just provided me with this sense of calm while reading. I cannot describe it any better than by saying it just felt like a soothing salve for my soul. Your heart will break for these dogs, and you will also champion the fantastic (and sometimes very dangerous work) that these, for the most part, volunteers, do in order to save these great animals to free them from their life of torture and abuse, and to give them a second chance.” (The literary hoarders: http://www.literaryhoarders.com/4-star-rating/book-review-the-mountaintop-school-for-dogs-and-other-second-chances/)
Suggested Tags : Dogs, rescued dogs, animal adventure, animal companionship |
 | Hancock, Sheila Miss Carter’s war
It is 1948 and Britain is struggling to recover from the Second World War. Half French, half English, Marguerite Carter, young and beautiful, has lost her parents and survived a terrifying war, working for the SOE behind enemy lines. Leaving her partisan lover she returns to England to be one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Cambridge. “When Hancock focuses on the personal rather than the political, the novel becomes absorbing. Above all she has a vocation for putting into words the alienation that age and grief bring. The audience for her previous books will be delighted by this one.” (Carole Mansur, The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11166635/miss-carters-war-by-sheila-hancock.html)
Suggested tags : Historical fiction, WWII, saga
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HISTORICAL NOVELS
| Cadwallader, Robyn | The anchoress |
| Ekback, Cecilia | Wolf winter |
| Hight, Jack | Kingdom |
| Parmar, Priya | Vanessa and her sister |
| Sirlin, Avi | The evolutionist |
| Tobin, Sophia, | The widow’s confession |
 | Parmar, Priya Vanessa and her sister
London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of bright, outrageous artistic friends who will grow into legend and come to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. And at the center of this charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter, and Virginia, the writer. “…Vanessa and Her Sister is a remarkable achievement, all the more so for being only Parmar’s second novel. She has had the blessing of Vanessa Bell’s granddaughter and daughter-in-law, and her research has clearly been meticulous. But it’s the central portrait of Vanessa’s emotional life and her journey to a more disillusioned, if pragmatic, self-knowledge, that makes this novel, with its familiar setting, so fresh and compelling.” (Stephanie Merrit, The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/15/vanessa-and-her-sister-priya-parmar-review)
Suggested Tags : Virginia Wolfe, Vanessa Bell, artist, Bloomsbury Group, emotional betrayal |
MYSTERY
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 | Brookmyre, Christopher Dead girl walking
Famous, beautiful and talented, Heike Gunn has the world at her feet. Then, one day, she simply vanishes. Meanwhile, journalist Jack Parlabane has lost everything: his career, his marriage, his self-respect. A call for help from an old friend offers a chance for redemption — but only if he can find out what happened to Heike. “Dead Girl Walking is one of Brookmyre’s most accomplished books in terms of plotting and style, and it throws scares and dark laughs at the reader in equal measure.” (Doug Johnstone, The big Issue: http://www.bigissue.com/reviews/book-reviews/4809/dead-girl-walking-review – 07/04/2015)
Suggested tags : Jack Parlabane, missing person, |
 | Swanson, Peter The kind worth killing
On a late flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Over one too many martinis, the two strangers play a game, one in which they begin revealing more and more intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his wife, Miranda–how his marriage has gone stale, how a week ago he caught her in a serious betrayal. . . . Maybe they were a mismatch from the start, he the rich businessman, she the beautiful artist. But what begins as playful banter between Ted and Lily takes a swift turn when Ted claims, half-seriously, that he would like to kill his wife for what she’s done. Then Lily surprises him by saying that she’d like to help. After all, everyone dies, what difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than life intended?
“Grabbed me right from the beginning, and kept me hooked until the end. . . . The author did a great job pulling off a difficult challenge and writing style. The uniqueness of this, and the skill with which it was executed, made for a really great book.”
(Mystery Playground: http://www.mysteryplayground.net/2015/01/book-review-kind-worth-killing.html)
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NON FICTION
| Bonnett, Alastair | Off the map | 910 BONN |
| Castor, Helen | Joan of Arc | 944.026092 CAST |
| Hari, Johann | Chasing the scream | 363.450973 HARI |
| Kemp, Martin | Art in history, 600 BC-2000 AD | 709 KEMP |
| Mak, Geert | In America | 917.304932 MAK |
| Paul, Gill | Royal love stories | 929.7094 PAUL |
| Perry, Roland | The Queen, her lover and the most notorious spy in history | 941.081092 PERR |
| Ropper, Allan H | Reaching down the rabbit hole | 616.8 ROPP |
 | Bonnett, Alastair Off the map
A tour of the world’s hidden geographies — from disappearing islands to forbidden deserts — and a stunning testament to how mysterious the world remains today. At a time when Google Maps Street View can take you on a virtual tour of Yosemite’s remotest trails and cell phones double as navigational systems, it’s hard to imagine there’s any uncharted ground left on the planet. In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical imagination. (Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18222723-unruly-places?from_search=true)
Suggested Tags : geography, navigation |
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POETRY
None this month
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ROMANCE
| Burrows, Annie | Regency |
| Logan, Nikki | Her knight in the outback |
| Marinelli, Carol | Baby twins to bind them |
| Mortimer, Carole | The taming of Xander Sterne |
| O’Neil, Annie | The firefighter to heal her heart |
| Porter, Jane | His defiant desert queen |
| Roberts, Nora | O’Hurley born |
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Abercrombie, Joe | Half the world |
| Cogman, Genevieve | The Invisible Library |
| Gaiman, Neil | Trigger warning |
| Koontz, Dean R. | Saint Odd |
| Stay, Mark | Robot overlords |
 | Abercrombie, Joe Half the world
Sometimes a girl is touched by Mother War. Thorn is such a girl. Desperate to avenge her dead father, she lives to fight. But she has been named a murderer by the very man who trained her to kill. She finds herself caught up in the schemes of Father Yarvi, Gettland’s deeply cunning minister. Crossing half the world to find allies against the ruthless High King, she learns harsh lessons of blood and deceit. Beside her on the journey is Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill, a failure in his eyes and hers, but with one chance at redemption. Will Thorn forever be a pawn in the hands of the powerful, or can she carve her own path?
“Abercrombie has a knack for building characters with pathos and wit. Both plot and setting are believable, and readers will easily immerse themselves in Thorn and Yarvi’s world. The fast-paced story draws readers along while setting up what promises to be an explosive final showdown.”
(Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780804178426)
Suggested Tags : fantasy, revenge, loyalty, science fiction |
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TRAVEL
| Davis, Wade | One river | TRV 918.11 DAVI |
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
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AUDIOBOOKS
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New Books for April 2015
The new books for April 2015 are now available to borrow, with new ebooks and audiobooks.
We hope you enjoy them!
- New books may be borrowed for a period of two weeks only and may not be renewed.
- Books remain listed as “New Books” for two months.
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