SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
New Book Highlights
BIOGRAPHY
| Aldred, James | The man who climbs trees |
| Anderson, Catherine | The end of all our exploring |
| Anonymous | The secret teacher |
| Hesthamar, Keri | So long, Marianne |
| Jobbins, Sheridan | Wish you were here |
| Knight, Caroline Jane | Jane & me |
| Lourie, Richard | Putin |
| McKeon, Kathy | Jackie’s girl |
| O’Farrell, Maggie | I am, I am, I am |
| Tomalin, Claire | A life of my own |
Jackie’s girl / Kathy McKeon
In 1963, the author was brought from Ireland to New York City to find work as a domestic servant. After a miserable year with a difficult mistress, she learned about a position available, working for “Madam.” It was the luckiest break of her life. Upon arriving at the impressive Fifth Avenue apartment house, she was shown into a parlor. While waiting, a young boy, John, and his dog came in and showed her tricks, establishing a friendship that would last for years. Her easy interaction with John was en ough to secure a position as a personal assistant. She cleaned, mended, and ironed Madam’s clothes and filled in for the governess, Maud. McKeon’s story is one of so many young Irish girls in service but this isn’t a tell-all exposing personal secrets of the Kennedy family. Her travels with the family to Cape Cod, New Jersey, and elsewhere induced great loyalty, and Madam returned her employees’ loyalty. She was also very possessive, and many weekends and days off were cancelled because Madam needed her. Even after she married, McKeon still worked for Mrs. Kennedy, just not as a live-in assistant. In a wonderfully readable narrative, she shares good and bad times with the family and their children, always faithfully protecting their privacy. McKeon’s delightful memories have been tucked away for 50 years, and thankfully, she has brought them out to share the enchanting magic of Camelot with us all. (Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017)
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CLASSICS
| Leskov, N. S. | Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and other stories |
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CRAFT
| Wang, Cindy | Literary yarns |
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GENERAL FICTION
| Blanchard, Tania | The girl from Munich |
| Buckler, James | Last stop Tokyo |
| Butler, Juliet | The less you know the sounder you sleep |
| Carpenter, Elisabeth | 99 red balloons |
| Carroll, Steven | A New England affair |
| Coleman, Claire | Terra nullius |
| Connolly, John | He |
| Cook, Robin | Charlatans |
| Gaardboe, Pia | Award winning Australian writing |
| Garlock, Dorothy | The nearness of you |
| Gross, Andrew | The saboteur |
| Grossman, David | A horse walks into a bar |
| Hamilton, Glen Erik | Every day above ground |
| Hannah, Sophie | Did you see Melody? |
| Hoeg, Peter | The Susan effect |
| Keyes, Marian | The break |
| Krauss, Nicole | Forest dark |
| Laguna, Sofie | The choke |
| Lunde, Maja | The history of bees |
| Madeleine, Laura | Where the wild cherries grow |
| Marcus, Carmen | How saints die |
| McKnight, Harriet | Rain birds |
| Messud, Claire | The burning girl |
| Miller, Zoe | A house full of secrets |
| Moriarty, Cass | Parting words |
| Morris, W. F. | Pagan |
| Morwood, Carolyn | Dig two graves |
| Mozley, Fiona | Elmet |
| Murphy, Devin | The boat runner |
| Murray, Sabina | Valiant gentlemen |
| Olsson, Fredrik T. | Acts of vanishing |
| Orwell, George | Down and out in Paris and London |
| Overton, Hollie | The walls |
| Pamuk, Orhan | The red-haired woman |
| Patterson, James | The store |
| Paul, Gill | Another woman’s husband |
| Presser, Bram | The book of dirt |
| Reid, Taylor Jenkins | The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo |
| Reyn, Irina | The imperial wife |
| Rooney, Kathleen | Lillian Boxfish takes a walk |
| Rostlund, Britta | Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier |
| Rouda, Kaira Sturdivant | Best day ever |
| Rushdie, Salman | The golden house |
| Ryan, Chris | Warlord |
| Storey, Erik | A promise to kill |
| Tallent, Gabriel | My absolute darling |
| Tanabe, Karin | The diplomat’s daughter |
| Thynne, Jane | Solitaire |
| Udall, Tor | A thousand paper birds |
| Van der Kwast, Ernest | Mama tandoori |
| Wright, Stephen | A second life |
| Wu, Ming-Yi | The stolen bicycle |
| Yap, Felicia | Yesterday |
| Zevin, Gabrielle | Young Jane Young |
The burning girl / Claire Messud
About to start her senior year of high school, narrator Julia painfully traces the loss of her childhood friend Cassie, a bold rule-breaker who goaded and thrilled cautious Julia even as she relied on her friend’s good sense to keep them safe. In seventh grade Cassie drifts away to a more popular crowd, adding insult to injury by dating and then dropping Peter, an older boy she knows Julia likes. With characteristically lucid prose, Messud perfectly captures the agonizing social insecurities of middle school. Payback comes when Cassie’s widowed mother, Bev, falls in love with Dr. Anders Shute, who may have an unhealthy interest in Cassie and certainly encourages Bev to confine and control her in ways that lead to a crisis. By this time, Julia has new friends of her own and a more secure social niche in ninth grade; she knows Cassie is in trouble but is too hurt and too invested in her new role—this is very much a book about masks and performances—to respond when Cassie tentatively reaches out. Although their shared past gives Julia the knowledge to forestall disaster when Cassie vanishes, Messud also suggests that we never truly know another, not even those we love best. That stark worldview only slowly becomes apparent in a narrative that for a long time seems more overwrought than events call for but by the novel’s closing pages it packs an emotional wallop. Emotionally intense and quietly haunting. (Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017)
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HISTORICAL FICTION
| Conway, Martha | The floating theatre |
| Gregory, Philippa | The last Tudor |
| Harffy, Matthew | The serpent sword |
| Hartsuyker, Linnea | The half-drowned king |
| Ihimaera, Witi Tame | Sleeps standing |
| Potzsch, Oliver | The castle of kings |
| Womersley, Chris | City of crows |
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MYSTERY
| Adler-Olsen, Jussi | The scarred woman |
| Bonini, Carlo | Suburra |
| Callaghan, Tom | A summer revenge |
| Cleeves, Ann | The seagull |
| Coben, Harlan | Don’t let go |
| Coleman, Reed Farrel | Where it hurts |
| Coulter, Catherine | The devil’s triangle |
| Ellison, J. T. | Lie to me |
| Fellowes, Jessica | The Mitford murders |
| Goss, Theodora | The strange case of the alchemist’s daughter |
| Handler, David | The girl with kaleidoscope eyes |
| Hardie, Mark | Truly evil |
| Harper, Jane | Force of nature |
| Jennings, Maureen | Night’s child |
| Kava, Alex | Before evil |
| Kellerman, Jonathan | Crime scene |
| Khan, Ausma Zehanat | The unquiet dead |
| La Plante, Lynda | Good Friday |
| Lagercrantz, David | The girl who takes an eye for an eye |
| Lewis, Susan | Hiding in plain sight |
| Lindgren, Minna | Escape from Sunset Grove |
| Lovegrove, James | Sherlock Holmes |
| Marston, Edward | The circus train conspiracy |
| Miranda, Megan | The perfect stranger |
| Muller, Marcia | The color of fear |
| Ohlsson, Kristina | Buried lies |
| O’Neill, Anthony | Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Seek |
| Overholt, Cuyler | A promise of ruin |
| Penny, Louise | Glass houses |
| Pronko, Michael | The last train |
| Redondo, Dolores | Offering to the storm |
| Robb, J. D. | Secrets in death |
| Stewart, Amy | Miss Kopp’s midnight confessions |
| Tracy, P. J. | Nothing stays buried |
| Vargas, Fred | The accordionist |
| Ward, Sarah | A patient fury |
| Westlake, Donald | Forever and a death |
Suburra / Carl Bonini and Giancarlo de Cataldo
This massive crime epic, already adapted for TV, is translated by Antony Shugaar in unfinessed fashion (“Samurai ripped them into shreds. His friend never even fired a shot. Then they shovelled the remains into trash bags and dropped them into the Tiber”). Italy, with its endemic political and religious corruption, is fertile territory for crime fiction. Choosing the Berlusconi era as it enters its long-overdue final phase, Bonini and De Cataldo (a magistrate and journalist respectively) name their narrative for Suburra, a rundown and lawless area of Rome. The financial crisis of 2008 has allowed the Mafia to gain even greater influence over the police, their own criminal foot soldiers, far-right extremists and a deeply compromised Catholic Church plagued by sex scandals. There’s no nuance here, but Suburra is a reminder that crime fiction can say as much about a society as other genres. (The Guardian, 15 September 2017)
The unquiet dead / Ausma Zehanat Khan
Ausma Zehanat Khan’s award-winning debut novel, The Unquiet Dead has its roots in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s – specifically, the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, a place that had the status of a UN-protected “safe area” – and the text is interspersed with real testimony from war crimes trials. In the present day, Esa Khattak, second-generation Canadian Muslim and head of Toronto’s community policing section, is tasked with investigating the death of wealthy businessman Christopher Drayton. On discovering that Drayton is, in fact, Detective Drazen Krstic, former lieutenant colonel in the Bosnian Serb army and overseer of horrendous war crimes, Khattak realises that his death might not have been the accident it first appeared. Although somewhat uneven – the dead man’s avaricious fiancee seems to belong in a different book, as does the femme fatale who almost wrecked Khattak’s career – The Unquiet Dead is a powerful and haunting story. (The Guardian, 15 September 2017)
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NON FICTION
| Archer, Graham | Unmaking a murder | 364.152 ARCH |
| Bahrami, Beebe | Cafe Neandertal | 569.9 BAHR |
| Broinowski, Anna | Please explain | AUS 324.294 BROI |
| Coetzee, J. M. | Late essays | 824.4 COET |
| Ferrante, Elena | Frantumaglia | 853.92 FERR |
| Keightley, Alan | Ian Brady | 364.15232 KEIG |
| Kells, Stuart | The library | 027.009 KELL |
| Maynard, Roger | Hero or deserter? | 940.5425957 MAYN |
| McConachie, Campbell | The fatalist | 364.15232 McCO |
| McGrath, Kim | Crossing the line | AUS 363.738 MCGR |
| Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth | Everybody lies | 302.23 STEP |
| Thomas, Merlin | The longevity list | 613.0438 THOM |
| Wickham, Chris | Medieval Europe | 940.1 WICK |
| Winch, Sarah | The best death | 306.9 WINC |
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POETRY
| Pope, Alexander | An essay on man |
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Bennett, James | Raising fire |
| Cargill, C. Robert | Sea of rust |
| Rawson, Jane | From the wreck |
Sea of rust / by Robert Cargill
Cargill takes readers to Earth’s post-human future in which robots struggle to survive and remain free of their own robot overlords. The last human died 15 years ago at the end of the human-robot war that arose from a robot uprising. The robots fought for their freedom, but it was short-lived: now the world is dominated by One World Intelligences, massively powerful AIs bent on absorbing individual robots into their ever growing hive mind. North America is the battleground for two OWIs, VIRGIL and CISSUS. As the OWIs have seized the means of production, the robots who remain must trade, fight, and scavenge for parts to keep surviving. One such scavenger is Brittle, a former Caregiver robot haunted by memories of the war and the fates of the humans she once served, first as a nurse and then as a friend. All Brittle wants is to retain her independence and keep ticking, but some of her vital parts are failing, and Caregiver robots are rare—rare enough that the only other one around, Mercer, wants Brittle’s parts, too. An attack by Mercer locks both robots into a race for time, and an attack by CISSUS drags Brittle, Mercer, and other bots into a tense secret mission that may end the OWIs’ hungry rule—if our heroes can survive explosions, plasma cannons, betrayal, and their own deterioration. Innovative worldbuilding, a tight plot, and cinematic action sequences make for an exciting ride through a blasted landscape full of dying robots. (Kirkus Reviews, 15 August 2017)
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TRAVEL GUIDES
| Lonely Planet Guide | India | TRV 915 LONE |
| Lonely Planet Guide | Finland | TRV 914.89 LONE |
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TRAVEL ANECDOTES
| Dempster, Lisa, | Neon pilgrim | TRV 915.23 DEMP |
| New York Times, The | Footsteps | TRV 808.8 NYT |
| Tesson, Sylvain, | Consolations of the forest | TRV 957.50 TESS |
Consolations of the forest / Sylvain Tesson
Fed up with the complications of the big city, Tesson moved to a former geologist’s hut on the shores of Lake Baikal in the dead of winter. His nearest neighbors were hours away from him, but this only made the location even more ideal. Tesson brought along more than 70 books and ample supplies of cigars and vodka to help him “tame” what had become his enemy: time. Just being in the world and partaking of its simple pleasures—such as observing nature and the passing of the seasons—had gone by the wayside. Alone in the Siberian wilderness, Tesson “reconnect[ed] with the truth of moonlit nights [and] submit[ted] to the doctrine of the forests.” He fished, drank, meditated, wept, dreamed, hiked and chopped wood, reveling in the almost heretical simplicity of his life. The few hardy men and women he met helped him appreciate the joys, and pains, of human communion. The forbidding but beautiful taiga helped Tesson realize that everything, including the snow and ice that covered it, was as gloriously “alive” as he was. The deeper he probed his own mind and heart, the more aware he became of himself as just another animal, like the wolves and bears with whom he shared the landscape. Solitude may be necessary and healing; but living life as a fully realized human being with attachments to society is an art rather than a thing to be despised. Moving, wise and profound. (Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2013)
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
| Biography | Blain, Georgia | The museum of words |
| General novels | Berry, Ellen | The little bakery on Rosemary Lane |
| General novels | Lake, Alex | Copycat |
| General novels | Lunde, Maja | The history of bees |
| General novels | Tallent, Gabriell | My absolute darling |
| General novels | Ware, Ruth | The lying game |
| Historical fiction | Macallister, Greer | The magician’s lie |
| Mystery | Connelly, Michael | The late show |
| Mystery | Diamond, Katerina | The angel |
| Mystery | Ward, Sarah | A patient fury |
| Science fiction & fantasy | Kristoff, Jay | Nevernight |
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AUDIOBOOKS
| Biography | Goodwin, Daisy | Victoria and Albert |
| Mystery | MacBride, Stuart | Cold granite |
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New Books — October 2017
The new books for October 2017 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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