SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
New Book Highlights
BIOGRAPHY
| Fairweather, Jack | The volunteer |
| Francis, Susan | The love that remains |
| Kraus, Dita | A delayed life |
| Mackintosh, Clare | A Cotswold family life |
The volunteer / Jack Fairweather
Nothing about Auschwitz is pleasant reading. Thankfully, a former correspondent for the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph, delivers a well-written, riveting work. The protagonist is Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki (1901-1948), part of Poland’s cavalry reserves, much of which was decimated by the blitzkrieg’s main panzer thrust. With Warsaw surrounded, most military leaders left the country, but Pilecki and another officer banded together and organized the remaining soldiers. During this time, Germany continued to pit ethnic groups against each other and, mostly, against the Jews. Nationalism was flourishing, and attacks on Jews escalated. When Pilecki tried to fuse their group with the mainstream underground, his partner asked him to form a new group—in Auschwitz, to fight from the inside. Once inside, a Polish work foreman got him a builder’s job, which allowed him to start developing resistance cells among prisoners. In addition to some brave locals, newly released prisoners passed on his reports to Warsaw and then to London. Using myriad sources to paint the pictures of the camp’s horrors, including the prime source, Pilecki’s memoir, which has only recently been translated, Fairweather shines a powerful spotlight on a courageous man and his impressive accomplishments in the face of unspeakable evil. An inspiring story beautifully told. (Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2019)
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GENERAL FICTION
| Burke, Declan | The Lammisters |
| Castle, A. M. | The perfect widow |
| Choo, Yangsze | The night tiger |
| Disher, Garry | The sunken road |
| Enright, Anne | Actress |
| Greaney, Mark | One minute out |
| Grippando, James | The big lie. |
| Hardcastle, Sophie | Below deck |
| Keyes, Marian | Grown ups |
| McBride, Eimear | Strange hotel |
| McEwan, Ian | The cockroach |
| McPhee-Browne, Laura | Cherry Beach |
| McQuiston, Casey | Red, white & royal blue |
| Miller, Andrew | Independence Square |
| Morrey, Beth | Saving Missy |
| Napolitano, Ann | Dear Edward |
| Pooley, Clare | The authenticity project |
| Reid, Kiley | Such a fun age |
| Steadman, Catherine | Mr. Nobody |
| Thomas, Scarlett | Oligarchy |
| Trenow, Liz | Under a wartime sky |
| Tsao, Tiffany | The majesties |
| Unsworth, Emma Jane | Adults |
| Wyld, Evie | The bass rock |
The bass rock / Evie Wyld
The fates of three separate women unfold against the backdrop of the Bass Rock, which sits in a bay off the Scottish mainland. In 1720s Scotland, Sarah has been accused of witchcraft and flees for her life. In the aftermath of WWII, Ruth marries a widower, becoming stepmother to two young boys. She lives in a large house near the sea, haunted by those who have come before her. Fifty years later, the house is empty. Viviane is recovering from a breakdown by cleaning up her dead grandmother’s home, where she uncovers the secrets of the old house, which may offer her a way forward in her own life. The women are separated by centuries, yet their interlinked stories contain similar elements of cruelty, madness and psychological and physical abuse. All the women have violence inflicted on them by the men in their lives and simmering female rage underlies these stories. There are a couple of unsettling incidents where the men take part in what they see as harmless fun but which the women perceive very differently. Wyld shows the difference between fun and frightening is not a fine line but an absolute gulf. This modern Gothic novel is intricately crafted, leaping across time and generations and weaving together the separate narratives into a satisfying conclusion. The novel simmers with anger at the violence women endure but there are notes of hope. It is haunting and riveting and you won’t be able to put it down. (Good Reading Magazine, March 2020)
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HISTORICAL FICTION
| Hadlow, Janice | The other Bennet sister |
| Mantel, Hilary | Mirror and the light |
| Robinson, Steve | The penmaker’s wife |
| Watt, Peter | The Queen’s colonial |
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MYSTERY
| Airth, Rennie | The decent inn of death |
| Black, Benjamin | The secret guests |
| Bonner, Hilary | Deadly dance |
| Bowen, Rhys | Above the bay of angels |
| Carrisi, Donato | Into the labyrinth |
| Childs, Laura | Broken bone china |
| Connolly, Sheila | Many a twist |
| Connolly, Sheila | The lost traveller |
| Dalbuono, Nadia | The devil |
| Delany, Vicki | A scandal in scarlet |
| Diamond, Katerina | Woman in the water |
| Dugoni, Robert | A cold trail |
| Fellowes, Jessica | The Mitford scandal |
| Gardner, Lisa | When you see me |
| Griffiths, Elly | The lantern men |
| Hannah, Sophie | Haven’t they grown |
| Herron, Mick | The catch |
| Hicks, D. L. | The devil inside |
| Hunter, Cara | All the rage |
| Ide, Joe | Hi five |
| Kane, Andrea | The silence that speaks |
| Kellerman, Jonathan | The museum of desire |
| Koomson, Dorothy | Tell me your secret |
| Kubica, Mary | The other Mrs |
| Leon, Donna | Trace elements |
| Luna, Louisa | The Janes |
| Martin, Faith | A fatal secret |
| Massey, Sujata | A murder at Malabar Hill |
| McKinlay, Jenn | Buried to the brim |
| McTiernan, Dervla | The good turn |
| Moore, Liz | Long bright river |
| Mosley, Walter | Trouble is what I do |
| O’Connor, Carlene | Murder in an Irish village |
| Onda, Riku | The Aosawa murders |
| Patterson, James | Blindside |
| Patterson, James | Lost |
| Peters, Ellis | Fallen into the pit |
| Preston, Douglas | Crooked river |
| Quintana, Jenny | Our dark secret |
| Rhodes, Kate | Burnt island |
| Robb, J. D. | Golden in death |
| Todd, Charles | A cruel deception |
| Yokomizo, Seishi | The Inugami curse |
The Mitford scandal / Jessica Fellowes
Louisa Cannon, still in the orbit of the inimitable Mitford sisters in 1928 London, finds herself caught in their mysteries for the third time—and longing to be reunited with her partner in sleuthing, Guy Sullivan of the CID. Since leaving her job as a servant with the Mitford family Louisa’s been scraping by. One odd job finds her serving at a grand party in the London Season, where wealthy, debonair Bryan Guinness is wooing Diana Mitford when, suddenly and horribly, a maid peering at the glamorous scene falls through a skylight to her death. It seems a tragic accident, but Louisa had noticed Rose Morgan, another maid, accepting a mysterious packet from a rough-mannered stranger at the back door. When Rose disappears after the party, newly promoted Guy Sullivan refuses to let the matter drop. In a stroke of good fortune, Diana offers Louisa a position as her lady’s maid, and they set off together on Diana and Bryan’s honeymoon in Paris. Guy, acting on a tip about Rose, follows a hunch and his heart to find Louisa in Paris despite his own engagement to another woman. His presence is both a relief and a complication for Louisa, for he appears the morning after the sudden death of Shaun Mulloney, one of the Bright Young Things who attend Bryan and Diana. Was his death merely an allergic reaction mixed with excessive drink, or was it something more sinister, perhaps arranged by his jealous wife? The gendarmes think it’s a case of allergic reaction; Guy and Louisa find only traces of Rose; and Diana, Bryan, and their friends, accompanied by Louisa, embark on a trip to Venice. But this adventure is marred by tragedy as well, as yet another Bright Young Thing dies of opium overdose. And this time, Nancy Mitford is placed under arrest. A richly detailed period piece whose implausible solution is outweighed by its deft weaving of historical fact and imagined intrigue. (Publishers Weekly, 20 November 2019)
Haven’t they grown / Sophie Hannah
The premise of Sophie Hannah’s new thriller is entirely, darkly irresistible. It opens as Beth swings past the home of Flora Braid, a friend she last saw 12 years ago. Beth watches from her car as Flora unloads her kids; they haven’t aged a day. Back at home, Beth, her husband and her teenage children attempt to unpick how this could be. Perhaps Beth was hallucinating, they speculate. Or it was a mistake. Or, says Zannah, Beth’s daughter, the first two kids died, and the second lot were named in their honour. But: “I’ve had no other delusions or hallucinations. This isn’t part of a pattern. That makes me a reliable witness. I trust myself,” says Beth, who sets out to uncover exactly what’s been going on. From 2006’s Little Face, in which a mother insists her newborn baby is a stranger, Hannah has always excelled at the knotty, impossible twist and Haven’t They Grown is as complex and as sinister as ever. (The Guardian, 28 January 2020)
The Aosawa Murders / Riku Onda
The Aosawa murders deals with the aftermath of a crime: here, it’s the poisoning of 17 people, including children, during a family party in 70s Japan. The case is closed when the delivery man who brought the cyanide-laced alcohol and soft drinks to the house kills himself, leaving an apparently incriminating note, but Inspector Teru is convinced that he knows the identity of the real culprit. So, apparently, does neighbour Makiko Saiga, who writes a bestselling book about the case, though the “clues” in her narrative are somewhat oblique. We hear from these two and various others, including the sole surviving member of the Aosawa family, mysterious Hisako, 30 years after the murder. Tantalising as a scene glimpsed through a half-open door, this is an utterly immersive puzzler in which nothing is entirely cut and dried. (Sydney Morning Herald, 17 January 2020)
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NON FICTION
| Flanders, Judith | A place for everything | 411 FLAN |
| Gornick, Vivian | Unfinished business | 070.92 GORN |
| Grose, Peter | Ten rogues | 994.02 GROS |
| Hammer, Joshua | The falcon thief | 364.16 HAMM |
| Keefe, Patrick Radden | Say nothing | 364.1523 KEEF |
| Larson, Erik | The splendid and the vile | 940.54 LARS |
| Mackintosh-Smith, Tim | Arabs | 306.442 MACK |
| Maigret, Caroline de | Older but better, but older | 305.48 MAIG |
| Wilson Anastasios, Meaghan | The Pacific | 910.92 WILS |
| Wong, Joshua | Unfree speech | 321.8 WONG |
Arabs / Tim Mackintosh-Smith
This extraordinary book was written in a tower house in Sana’a in Yemen during the current war. It would be impossible to do justice to a 2000-year history in 300 words but the reader can be assured that Arabs delivers a reliable overview, beginning with the pre-Islamic kingdoms, which emerged in Biblical and classical sources, and then the advent of Islam and the Arab empires of the Umayyads and Abbasids, and then the long decline as a political power from about the 12th century CE and on to the post-Colonial modern era. What makes the book special is the author’s evident love for and appreciation of the language and culture. Mackintosh-Smith traces how the centrifugal forces embedded in Arab society – the eternal conflict/symbiosis between the Bedouin and agriculturalists, interacts with the centripetal force of language and, sometimes, religion. Since at least the Crusades the Arab succeeded the Persian as the existential ‘other’ in the European mind but, as those dreadful postmodernists such as Said (Orientalism), like to point out, we have mainly made it up ourselves. This lack of understanding has reasons: the language is insanely difficulty (not just prefixes and suffixes but infixes as well); the culture opaque and the geography challenging. Islam is poorly understood, and most Westerners have no conception that it is just as diverse as Christianity. Mackintosh-Smith does a great service in producing a serious but highly readable and brilliantly written account of this massive subject. (Good Reading Magazine, March 2020)
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ROMANCE
| Kleypas, Lisa | Chasing Cassandra |
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Aaronovitch, Ben | False value |
| Arnold, Luke | The last smile in Sunder City |
| Gibson, William | Agency |
| Rather, Lina | Sisters of the vast black |
| VanderMeer, Jeff | Dead astronauts |
Sisters of the vast black / Lina Rather
Rather unflinchingly tackles questions of faith, war, and penance in this far-future novella debut. After a brutal conflict, the Earth Central Governance (ECG) has turned its back on four far-flung human colonies. Forty years later, nuns in the Order of Saint Rita travel through space aboard a living space ship, providing blessings, humanitarian aid, and medical care to those in need. Sister Faustina, who has served for 16 years on Our Lady of Impossible Constellations and is an orphan of the Great War, suspects ulterior motives when the ECG emerges from its decades-long isolation to advocate radical changes in the Church. The Reverend Mother, head of the order, took her vows for reasons other than faith, but as the specter of Earth’s violent past reaches across the star systems to intrude upon their mission of mercy, she finds she must confront the sins of her former life in order to provide the most vulnerable any hope of a safe future among the stars. Rather exhibits expert control over her characters and world, providing sufficient detail to feed the imagination without detracting from the steady pace of the story. The only significant flaw is the ending, which is chock full of philosophical meaning but perhaps too abrupt. Readers will hope to see more of Sister Faustina, the Reverend Mother, and their unlikely crew. (Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2019)
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
| General novels | Bui, Joey | Lucky ticket |
| General novels | Linley, Sarah | The beach |
| General novels | Rader-Day, Lori | The lucky one |
| General novels | Williams, T. A. | Dreaming of Verona |
| Mystery | Detwiler, L.A. | The one who got away |
| Mystery | Kong, Debra Purdy | The opposite of dark |
| Mystery | McTiernan, Dervla | The good turn |
| Mystery | Todd, Charles | A divided loyalty |
| Mystery | White, Nicola | A famished heart |
| Non fiction | Young, Sally | Paper emperors |
The lucky one / Lori Rader-Day
An online project to trace the fates of missing persons and unidentified murder victims bears poisonous fruit for two women it brings together. Everyone involved in the Doe Pages has their reasons–civic-mindedness, moral outrage, obsessive curiosity–for the interest they share in gathering information about the anonymous parties whose photos they pore over. Alice Fine’s reason sets her apart. Taken from her home when she was only 3, she was lucky enough to be rescued by her father, a police officer in Victorville, Indiana, apparently before anything terrible happened. In the generation that’s passed since then, Harrison Fine has quit the force, moved to Chicago, been widowed, and become the can-do junior partner in the contracting firm of King and Fine, where Alice is working in a meaningless hanger-on position the day she’s scanning the contents of the Doe Pages and spots the photograph of the man she’s convinced was her kidnapper. By the time Alice catches up with Richard Miller, she and a pair of her online buddies have uncovered evidence that he lived many lives before the last one came to an end when he was stabbed 12 times. One of these lives, Rader-Day begins hinting early on, involved Merrily Cruz, who knew Miller as Richard Kisel, the man so close to her mother for so long that he was practically her stepfather, the man who on her 30th birthday leaves her a text message–“Hey, kid, it’s best if I don’t bother you anymore. Have a good life”–that so interests state trooper Graciano “Gonzo” Vasquez that it pretty much guarantees that “Rick Kisel was going to ruin their lives, all over again.” The ensuing developments send both heroines spinning down converging rabbit holes to their dimly remembered pasts until Alice concludes, “She was in Wonderland.” It’s not a pretty place. Another harrowing nightmare by a master of the sleepless night. (Kirkus Reviews, 1 December 2019)
A divided loyalty / Charles Todd
Inspector Ian Rutledge’s 22nd case revolves around two young women found dead in utterly unexpected places. Scheduled to give evidence in an ongoing investigation, Rutledge can’t go to the village of Avebury–where a body has been found stabbed to death in the center of a circle of prehistoric stones–in the place of Chief Inspector Brian Leslie when Rutledge’s nemesis, Chief Superintendent Markham, sends Leslie there when he’d been looking forward to a couple of days off. Instead, Rutledge ends up going to the Shropshire village of Tern Bridge, where a woman eventually identified as Bath schoolmistress Serena Palmer has been stabbed and tossed into a grave dug the day before for someone else. After a witness’s unexpectedly keen eye and sharp memory puts Rutledge on a trail that leads with disconcerting suddenness to Serena Palmer’s killer, he’s sent to Avebury after all, since Leslie’s conscientiously thorough inquiries have identified neither the killer nor the victim. This mystery, Rutledge finds, is just as murky as the Shropshire murder was clear, and he despairs that he’ll ever have anything to add to Leslie’s report. Constantly threatened by Markham, who’s still holding the letter of resignation Rutledge submitted to him after his last case (The Black Ascot, 2019, etc.), and intermittently needled by the ghost of Cpl. Hamish McLeod, the corporal he executed in a trench in 1916 when he refused to lead troops into further fighting in the Somme, Rutledge struggles with a case whose every lead–a necklace of lapis lazuli beads, a trove of letters written to the victim–leads him not so much to enlightenment as to ever deepening sadness. The final twist may not surprise eagle-eyed readers, but it will reveal why Todd’s generic-sounding title is painfully apt. If you’re in a receptive mood, nobody evokes long postwar shadows or overwhelming postwar grief better than Todd. (Kirkus Reviews, 1 December 2019)
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AUDIOBOOKS
| General novels | Brooks, Brenda | Honey |
| General novels | Ferguson, Melissa | The dating charade |
| General novels | Wesson, Rachel | Orphan train escape |
| Historical novels | Chiavaroli, Heidi | The tea chest |
| Mystery | Butler, Ellen | Fatal legislation |
| Mystery | Delany, Vicki | There’s murder afoot |
| Mystery | Frazer, Margaret | The novice’s tale |
| Mystery | Griffin, J. M. | Who’s dead doc? |
| Mystery | Lehane, Con | Murder off the page |
| Mystery | Shelton, Paige | The loch ness papers |
| Mystery | Thomas, Will | The limehouse text |
The tea chest / Heidi Chiavaroli
Chiavaroli delivers an endearing tale of two women separated by centuries who are searching for guidance and strength. In the present day, Hayley Ashworth is determined to make history by becoming the first woman to complete Navy SEAL training, and also to move past her troubled childhood with a drug-addicted mother. Weeks before her training, Haley leaves California and returns to her hometown of Boston to reconcile with her mother. While home, she runs into her old boyfriend, Ethan, whom she hasn’t seen since breaking his heart years ago, and together they find an old tea chest at a shop that appears to be from the Boston Tea Party. A document inside from 1773 reveals the chest’s owner to be Emma Winslow, a woman caught up in the political scandal surrounding the Boston Tea Party. In a parallel narrative, Emma, from a Loyalist family, longs to have a say in her future and join the side of liberty. Fearing the unknown, she battles the thought of betraying her father to fight for a new country. As Hayley learns more about Emma and her brave struggle, Hayley realizes that anything is possible, even letting go of her ambitions. Organic faith elements and Chiavaroli’s skillful switching between time lines separate this from similar historical inspirational romances. Fans of Francine Rivers will enjoy this. (Publishers Weekly, 25 November 2019)
The dating charade / Melissa Ferguson
Ferguson’s delightful debut follows a first date that turns quickly into a childcare quagmire. After yet another date with a man who forgot to mention he was married, 33-year-old Cassie Everson gives up on dating and focuses on her work at Girl Haven, a center for disadvantaged teen girls. Firefighter Jett Bentley has had a crush on Cassie since high school. After Cassie’s best friend, Bree, goes into Cassie’s dating app to set up a date with Jett, Cassie doesn’t even give Jett a chance. Undeterred, Bree and Jett conspire to create a surprise that hard-to-please Cassie can’t help loving. But after the dreamy date, both their nights take a sudden turn. Cassie has to intervene when one of her Haven girls, Star, along with Star’s two sisters, is threatened with being taken into foster care. Meanwhile, Jett is surprised when his sister, Trina, shows up with her twins and a new baby—and then disappears. Since both Jett and Cassie had told each other they weren’t ready to take care of children, each resorts, in a somewhat confusing plot twist, to shenanigans and misdirection to hide the fact that they are caring for children. While light on faith elements for inspirational fiction, Ferguson’s humorous and chaotic tale will please rom-com fans. (Publishers Weekly, 14 October 2019)
The loch ness papers / Paige Shelton
At the start of Shelton’s agreeable fourth Scottish Bookshop mystery, American Delaney Nichols, who works at the Cracked Spine Bookshop in Edinburgh, Scotland, is soon to be married. But weddings seldom go off as planned, and Delaney’s is fraught with complications. First, the minister dies, leaving Delaney scrambling for a replacement; the tailor shop folds, leaving her dressless; and finally her new friend, Norval Fraser, a sweet, eccentric old man who’s obsessed with the Loch Ness monster, is accused of murdering his greedy nephew. Delaney’s wedding plans take a back seat as she tries to prove Norval innocent and find the real killer. Delaney’s friends and her family, who have traveled to Scotland from Kansas, are amazingly forgiving about being ditched while she investigates the murder. The killer’s motivation is a bit of a fizzle, but Shelton stocks her tale with appealing characters and intriguing Nessie lore. Cozy fans will be rewarded. (Publishers Weekly, 11 February 2019)
The limehouse text / Will Thomas
Convincing period detail and memorable characters lift Thomas’s fast and furious third Victorian whodunit to feature enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his callow assistant, Thomas Llewelyn. A pawn ticket found among the effects of Barker’s previous sidekick, Quong, leads the pair to Limehouse, London’s Chinatown, where they discover an ancient Chinese book on martial arts. A number of parties seek the book, including someone willing to kill to gain its secrets. Barker draws on his encyclopedic knowledge of the London underworld and his extensive network of allies to advance the investigation. While the murderer’s identity won’t surprise many, and Barker’s talents, which include mastery of the martial arts, border on the superhuman, Sherlock Holmes fans in particular will be pleased by how well Thomas evokes the Baker Street sleuth and the spirit of Conan Doyle’s stories. (Publishers Weekly, 17 April 2006)
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New Books — March 2020
The new books for March 2020 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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