SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)New Books
AUSTRALIANA
None this month
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BIOGRAPHY
| Ackroyd, Peter | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Addario, Lynsey | It’s what I do |
| Brittain, Vera | Testament of youth |
| Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert | The story of Alice (Lewis Carroll) |
| Dreyfus, Kay | Bluebeard’s bride (Alma Moodie) |
| Fishgall, Gary | Gregory Peck |
| Mezrich, Ben | Once upon a time in Russia (B. A. Berezovski) |
| Sacks, Oliver W | On the move |
| Westcott, James | When Marina Abramovic dies: A Biography |
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CLASSICS
| Carroll, Lewis | Alice’s adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass |
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COOKING
| Walters, Terry | Eat clean, live well |
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CRAFT
None this month
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GENERAL NOVELS
 | Eleni N.Gage The Ladies of Managua Set in Nicaragua, this is the story of three generations of a family, Maria the Grand daughter, Ninexin, her mother (a storied revolutionary and now a dedicated government official), Isabela, her Grandmother, who brought her up. They are reunited by the death of Maria’s Grandfather and the mysterious package that Maria brings with her to the funeral from her Grandmother’s past. Ninexin tries to make amends and fix the chasm between herself and her daughter, Isabela becomes lost in memories of her past, and Maria tries to deal with her relationship with an older man. Through all their complicated relationships, the funeral brings them together to face each other and deal with secrets and their relationship with their country. Lushly evocative of Nicaragua, its tumultuous history and its vibrant present, The Ladies of Managua brings you into the lives of three magnetic women as they face up to their past choices and discover how love can shape their futures. |
 | George, Nina The Little Paris Bookshop Nina George is a prize winning author and journalist who has published 26 novels, mysteries and science thrillers. This novel was written and published in Germany in 2013. Jean Perdu runs a bookshop from his beautiful barge on the Seine, he refers to his shop as a literary apothecary as he has a special sense of being able to select books to soothe the troubled souls of his customers. However, he himself has a troubled soul and mourns his lost love of 21 years ago, who left him with just one handwritten letter which he has not had the courage to read. After he does finally read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the South of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. This is a story filled with warmth and adventure, a love letter to books and their power to shape people’s lives and the distance one many will travel for love and friendship. |
| Aira, Cesar | The miracle cures of Dr. Aira |
| Atkinson, Kate | A god in ruins |
| Baldacci, David | Memory man |
| Berry, Steve | The patriot threat |
| Cavanagh, Steve | The defence |
| Child, Lincoln | The forgotten room |
| Coben, Harlan | The Stranger |
| Corleone, Douglas | Robert Ludlum’s The Janson equation |
| Doerr, Anthony | The shell collector |
| Dunn, Matthew | Dark spies |
| Enright, Anne | The green road |
| Gage, Eleni N | The ladies of Managua |
| Genova, Lisa | Inside the O’Briens |
| George, Nina | The little Paris bookshop |
| Giraldi, William | Hold the dark |
| Grisham, John | The fugitive |
| Hall, Sarah | The wolf border |
| Harding, John | The girl who couldn’t read |
| Hooper, Emma | Etta and Otto and Russell and James |
| Kardos, Michael | Before he finds her |
| Kennedy, Douglas | The heat of betrayal |
| Lianke, Yan | The four books |
| Mabanckou, Alain | African psycho |
| Missiroli, Marco | The sense of an elephant |
| Pellegrino, Nicky | One summer in Venice |
| Powers, Kevin | The yellow birds |
| Rothschild, Hannah | The improbability of love |
| Sánchez, Mamen | The altogether unexpected disappearance of Atticus Craftsman |
| Smiley, Jane | Early warning |
| Thomas, Diane C | In wilderness |
| Toews, Miriam | All my puny sorrows |
| Toltz, Steve | Quicksand |
| Trigell, Jonathan | The tongues of men or angels |
| Wongar, B | Didjeridu charmer |
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HISTORICAL NOVELS
| Cameron, Christian | Destroyer of cities |
| Clements, Katherine | The silvered heart |
| Garland, S J | Scotch rising |
| Gortner, C W | Mademoiselle Chanel |
| Kane, Ben, | Eagles at war |
| Kerr, Philip | The lady from Zagreb |
| Lawrence, Mary | Alchemist’s daughter |
| Wilcock, Penelope | The hawk and the dove |
| Worth, Sandra | The rose of York |
 | Gortner, C. W Mademoiselle Chanel An admiring portrait of the designer who first modernized women’s wear, told in the first person as she looks back over her life. Gabrielle Chanel came from humble beginnings: Her father, a peddler, abandoned his two sons and three daughters after their mother died, and she and her sisters were taken in by nuns. Eventually, an aunt offers the Chanel sisters a home, where they help with the family millinery business. Chanel soon tires of slaving in a shop and seeks her fortune as a cafe chanteuse with the stage name Coco. A wealthy lover, Balsan, launches her career in fashion: She designs hats for his friends, courtesans from the Paris demimonde. At a race track, she meets Arthur Capel, aka “Boy,” who will prove to be the love of her life. With his help, she opens a Paris atelier. Departing from belle epoque corsets and bustles, Chanel’s first designs, separates based on menswear with a neutral palette and a slim silhouette, catch on almost immediately with rich women in Paris, Deauville, Biarritz and beyond. Coco amasses great wealth and makes friends among the artistic elite of France, including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Serge Diaghilev. After World War I, Boy dies in a car crash, and Coco becomes even more driven. She develops a scent, Chanel No. 5, derived from the signature perfume of the assassinated czarina of Russia, and signs a contract to distribute it worldwide. As more lovers, among them an impoverished Romanov and the Duke of Westminster, enter and depart her life, she builds a lavish house in southern France and enjoys a brief sojourn in Hollywood. In her 50s as World War II and the Nazi occupation of France loom, Coco ponders her legacy and her perennially single state. Though the book is well-written and historically accurate, dramatic tension would have been better served if the fictional Coco could have demonstrated a few more character flaws and human foibles rather than being so very competent in meeting every challenge. An homage to a couture icon whose influence is still powerful today. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cw-gortner/mademoiselle-chanel/ |
MYSTERY
 | Parker Bilal The Burning Gates The Burning Gates is the fourth novel in the Makana series by author Parker Bilal. Makana is hired by an art dealer to locate a painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion, The painting had been smuggled into Egypt by a war criminal who doesn’t want to be found. But as he tries to find the painting Makana becomes involved in a mystery that many have tried to keep hidden. Parker Bilal’s work is kind of like your classic private detective novel just set in a non typical location. There are double crossings, policemen on their own missions for revenge and gangsters galore. Bilal does even try to introduce a sort of femme fatale into the mix as well but not necessarily in the traditional sense. It is punctuated by some great humour in it too, coming from Makana who has that fatalistic world view. |
 | Horst, Jorn The Caveman This is a Nordic crime novel by Award Winner Jorn Lier Horst. Horst is a former policeman and has written nine novels with the protagonist Chief Inspector William Wistig, a character the author describes as “an upright and good policeman, but first and foremost a good-hearted and sincere person … a careful and concerned investigator” with “a legitimate involvement with his fellow human beings.” This novel is set at Christmas, and the victims ‘ body has been sitting, dead, uncovered in front of his television set for four months. The weather and temperature conditions have dried the corpse into a mummy like condition. Wistig is on the case along with his daughter, Line, an investigative journalist, and both realise that aspects of his death cannot be explained. When the CIA get involved, the stakes rise and tensions mount, until there is a race against time, and Line’s life is at stake. The Caveman is intelligent crime fiction, combining a meticulous police procedural with a searing indictment of loneliness in the modern world, asking “what good does it do us to have all the riches in the world if we no longer bother about one another”. It makes for compelling reading. |
 | Lematitre, Pierre Alex If Winston Smith’s Room 101 nightmare in Nineteen Eighty-Four proved too disturbing an image for you, then it’s probably best to steer clear of Alex by Pierre Lemaitre, the first thriller by this popular French author to be translated into English. The eponymous heroine, beautiful and alone, tries to tell herself that she isn’t being watched by the man across the street. She’s almost convinced, and then she’s bundled into an anonymous white van, taken to an abandoned warehouse and subjected to an ordeal that at times is too disturbingly awful to read, let alone imagine. To say too much would be to give away the horrors of Lemaitre’s horribly well-thought-out kidnapping, but here’s a taster of Alex’s thoughts. “A wet rat is even more terrifying than a dry one: the fur looks dirtier, the eyes beadier, seemingly more vicious. When wet, the long tail looks slimy, as though it is a different animal, a snake.” Alex attempts to escape while Commandant Camille Verhoeven tries to solve the mystery of her kidnapping before it’s too late: all he knows is that a woman was abducted from the street. He doesn’t know who she is or why she was taken – there are no ransom notes, and the likelihood of finding her alive is trickling away with every hour he waits. The winner of countless French crime-writing prizes, Lemaitre is far too canny to join the ranks of thriller authors who merely revel in disturbing details and gory crimes. Where another novel would have finished, Alex is just beginning, and the book moves from read-as-fast-as-you-can horror to an intricately plotted race to a dark truth. Lemaitre – and his able translator, Frank Wynne – also find time to flesh out the cast thoroughly. Camille, the detective hero, is a victim of his mother’s smoking during pregnancy and has never grown taller than 4ft 11in. He is pugnacious, complicated, driven and, irritatingly for his superiors, brilliant. As Lemaitre puts it, “when he practises modesty and restraint he can be a little theatrical, a little too Racine”. His eclectic band of helpers range from the penny-pinching Armand, who swipes cigarettes from new recruits and sweets from the shopkeepers he’s questioning, to a wonderfully realised local policeman who has a habit of “peppering his conversation with English words… ‘personally, I find it “amusing”, as they say in English… ‘It operated as a brothel – very “discreet”, as they say in English'”. Everyone is unobtrusively brought to life through their quirks and oddities – especially the magistrate who points out to Camille that they don’t know if they’re dealing with a male or female criminal. “When he makes an insinuation like this, reminding them nothing is proven, he invariably contrives to have a moment of silence so that everyone understands the significance of the subtext.” There’s humour here, and characters to return to, but really Alex is about thrills. And as the novel barrels triumphantly towards its unexpected but satisfying conclusion, it’s in this respect that it delivers. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/10/alex-pierre-lemaitre-review |
| Aarons, Kathy | Truffled to death |
| Atherton, Nancy | Aunt Dimity and the Summer King |
| Barrett, Lorna | A fatal chapter |
| Bilal, Parker | The burning gates |
| Brandt, Harry | The Whites |
| Brown, Rita Mae | Tail Gait |
| Casey, Jane | The kill |
| Childs, Laura | Ming tea murder |
| Corby, Gary | Death ex machina |
| Cotterill, Colin | Six and a half deadly sins |
| Dunne, Steven | A killing moon |
| Emery, Anne | Ruined abbey |
| Erickson, Alex | Death by coffee |
| Grecian, Alex | The harvest man |
| Griffiths, Elly | The Janus stone |
| Harvey, Michael T | The governor’s wife |
| Hewson, David | The wrong girl |
| Hilary, Sarah | No other darkness |
| Hillerman, Anne | Rock with wings |
| Horst, Jorn | The caveman |
| Jackson, Lisa | Never die alone |
| Jardine, Quintin | Last resort |
| Lagercrantz, David | The fall of man in Wilmslow |
| Lemaitre, Pierre | Alex |
| Morrell, David, | Inspector of the dead |
| Mosley, Walter | And sometimes I wonder about you |
| Page, Katherine Hall | The body in the birches |
| Patterson, James | Truth or die |
| Pinborough, Sarah | The death house |
| Pyper, Andrew | The damned |
| Redondo, Dolores | The invisible guardian |
| Reilly, Linda | Fillet of murder |
| Sanders, Yolonda Tonette | Shadow of death |
| Thompson, Victoria | Murder on Amsterdam Avenue |
| Various | Six against the yard |
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NON FICTION
 | Jones, Dan Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter This year marks 200 years since the battle of Waterloo (1815), 600 years since Henry V’s memorable victory in the battle of Agincourt (1415) and 800 years since King John signed Magna Carta (1215) – probably the most significant document ever signed in the English-speaking world. We all have an image of the small gathering of the king and his barons for the signing of the historic piece of paper under the oaks of Runnymede. But the charter was only designed by a few rich barons to restrain the king. How has it become the cornerstone and symbol of democratic freedom around the globe? Young historian Dan Jones has assembled a timely memento in Magna Carta, in which he explores the events leading up the signing of the historic document, the events that followed, and its significance over the years up to today. The compact, accessible book includes illustrations, the text of the Magna Carta in today’s English as well as in the original Latin, and a useful timeline starting from Henry I’s charter of liberties back in 1100 through to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and beyond. Jones is a journalist as well as a scholar of history and might be recognized as the popular presenter of historical programs on the BBC. |
| Baxter, Carol J | The peculiar case of the electric constable | 364.15230942 BAXT |
| Jones, Dan | Magna Carta | 942.033 JONE |
| Robbins, Shawn | Wiccapedia | 133.43 ROBB |
| Sehgal, Kabir | Coined | 332.49 SEHG |
| Stern, Jessica | ISIS | 320.557 STER |
| Williams, Richard | How to blog made easy | 006.752 WILL |
| Various | The Great War | 940.302 DOOG |
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POETRY
| James, Clive | Sentenced to life |
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ROMANCE
| Faye, Jennifer | Best man for the bridesmaid |
| Graham, Lynne | The billionaire’s Bridal bargain |
| Lane, Soraya | His unexpected baby bombshell |
| Milburne, Melanie | Italian surgeon to the stars |
| Pembroke, Sophie | Falling for the bridesmaid |
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Anderson, Kevin | Blood of the cosmos: saga of shadows, book 2 |
| Catling, B | The Vorrh |
| Tahir, Sabaa | An ember in the ashes |
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TRAVEL
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AUDIOBOOKS
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EBOOKS
| Anne Hillerman | Rock with Wings | Mystery |
| Anne Hillerman | Spider Woman’s Daughter | Mystery |
| Ashley Hay | The Best Australian Science Writing 2014 | Non fiction |
| Ashley Hay | The Railwayman’s Wife | General |
| Carly Phillips | Dare to Love | Romance |
| Charles Todd | A Cold Treachery | Mystery |
| Gemma Halliday | Alibi in High Heels | Mystery |
| J.A. Jance | Deadly Stakes | Mystery |
| Jana DeLeon | Showdown in Mudbug | Mystery |
| Jasinda Wilder | Beta | Romance |
| Julie Anne Lindsey | Murder Comes Ashore | Mystery |
| Lisa Scottoline | Rough Justice | Mystery |
| Michael Connelly | The Narrows | General |
| Michael Connelly | The Safe Man | General |
| Stephen Marlowe | Model for Murder | Mystery |
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New Books for July 2015
The new books for July 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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