New Book Highlights

BIOGRAPHY

Blainey, Geoffrey	Before I forget
Higgins, Chloe	The girls
Phillips, Jonathan	The life and legend of the Sultan Saladin

The girls / Chloe Higgins

Wollongong author Chloe Higgins began writing her memoir The Girls during a stint in a psychiatric ward. Years before, in 2005, her two younger sisters, Carlie and Lisa, were killed in a car accident while her father was driving. They had been returning from a ski holiday and 17-year-old Higgins had stayed home with her mother to study for the HSC. The violence with which this singular tragedy acts upon the Higgins family is visceral and devastating. Higgins’ father withdraws, punctured by guilt and shame. Higgins’ relationship to him becomes protective, stilted. He will never forgive himself. Her mother is the opposite. With only one child left, she is overbearing, suffocating. For much of the book Carlie and Lisa are referred to in the abstract, as ‘the girls’, their memory kept at a distance, too agonising to unpack. Instead, we dive into Higgins’ early adulthood, a disorientating whirlwind of substance abuse, sex work, and piercing loneliness. Higgins is conscious of the inevitable fallibility of her recollections; the narrative itself is nonlinear and fragmented, perhaps reflecting the chaos of a traumatised mind. But even as some of the memories distort and conflict, the book remains a clear-eyed, compelling portrait of grief and family. Along the way, Higgins makes determined attempts to claw her way back to stability. The story eventually catches up with itself, and she finds herself negotiating the treacherous personal and moral challenges of writing so candidly about her life and loved ones. On the one hand, she finds solace and catharsis in the writing process, but for the book to be worthwhile, she must be brutally, terrifyingly truthful. A formidable, gut-wrenching, privilege of a book. (Good Reading Magazine, August 2019)

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GENERAL FICTION

Baker, Jo	The body lies
Barrie, Sarah	Devil’s lair
Barry, Kevin	Night boat to Tangier
Bryer, Elizabeth	From here on, monsters
Chevalier, Tracy	Single thread
Coetzee, J. M.	Life & times of Michael K.
Davis, Fiona	The Chelsea girls
Dolan-Leach, Caite	We went to the woods
Evaristo, Bernardine	Girl, woman, other
Ferencik, Erica	Into the jungle
Galligan, John	Bad axe county
Goldsworthy, Peter	Minotaur
Good, Anthony	Kill [redacted]
Hilderbrand, Elin	Summer of ’69
Hind, Kathryn	Hitch
Lefteri, Christy	The beekeeper of Aleppo
Levy, Deborah	The man who saw everything
Marks, Nadia	Between the orange groves
Montefiore, Santa	The secret hours
Musso, Guillaume	The reunion
Obreht, Tea	Inland
Rhoades, Joy	The burnt country
Roberts, Nora	Under currents
Rushdie, Salman	Quichotte
Smith, Sarah Elaine	Marilou is everywhere
Tsao, Tiffany	Under your wings
Vilhauer, Ruvanee Pietersz	The mask collectors
Ward, Annie Nigh	Beautiful bad
Ward, Jesmyn	Sing, unburied, sing
Wiggs, Susan	The Oysterville sewing circle
Woods, Stuart	Contraband

From here on, monsters / Elizabeth Bryer

Set in a not too distant future, we first meet young antiquarian bookseller Cameron Raybould amongst the shelves of the bookstore left to her after the death of her beloved mentor Alister. Cam is still struggling with her grief as she attempts to keep Alister’s legacy going by running the store and taking on commissions and assessing collections. Closing the shop for the day, she makes her way to see two new clients. The first job is to assess a highly unusual collection – a job that unsettles her. The second commission is what looks like an ancient codex, which sets her on a path of enquiry and discovery that will cause her to question all that she knows and holds dear. Crossing her path along this journey is the famous and enigmatic artist Maddison Worthington who Cam finds herself working for and a young refugee, Jhon, who makes his home in the store and helps Cam to unlock the secrets of the codex. It is not a surprise to learn that this is the debut novel of a translator, as words and their meanings play a vital role in the layers of understanding that are peeled away as you turn the pages. This is a very different read and is not the sort of book you can pick up and put down at random intervals. This book demands time and commitment, even pushing the boundaries of how you physically read the words. The compelling storyline and characters make the investment worthwhile. This is an author to watch. (Good Reading Magazine, August 2019)

The burnt country / Joy Rhoades

In this lively rural romance, a sequel to The Woolgrower’s Companion, it’s now 1948 and the young heroine Kate has become sole owner of a sheep farm in northern NSW after her father’s sudden death and the departure of her abusive husband Jack. But most of the men of the township and the neighbouring farms are sceptical or openly insulting about the ability of a woman to run a farm, and she faces resistance or worse on all sides. Tensions escalate when she butts heads with the well-to-do owner of a neighbouring property who scolds her for her burning-off practices, and when a bushfire does break out, she is inevitably blamed. This is a well-crafted commercial novel with a twisty plot and some highly believable characters. Perhaps the goodies and baddies are a little too well demarcated even for this sort of novel, but it’s an engaging read nonetheless. (Sydney Morning Herald, 10 August 2019)

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HISTORICAL FICTION

Gregory, Philippa	Tidelands
Harris, Robert	The second sleep
Haynes, Natalie	A thousand ships

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MYSTERY

Anderson, Lin	Time for the dead
Andrews, Donna	Terns of endearment
Ayliffe, Tim	State of fear
Bailey, Sarah	Where the dead go
Bannalec, Jean-Luc	The Fleur de Sel murders
Barclay, Alex	I confess
Barclay, Linwood	Elevator pitch
Bengtsdotter, Lina	For the missing
Bottini, Oliver	The dance of death
Bowen, Rhys	Love and death among the cheetahs
Box, C. J.	The bitterroots
Brett, Simon	The killer in the choir
Brown, Sandra	Outfox
Bruns, Catherine	Penne dreadful
Castillo, Linda	Shamed
Chien, Vivien	Wonton terror
Cleverly, Barbara	Fall of angels
Corris, Peter	See you at the Toxteth
Davies, Michelle	Dead guilty
Dyer, Ashley	Splinter in the blood
Eldridge, Jim	Murder at the British museum
Ellis, Kate	Dead man’s lane
Ellis, Kate	The boy who lived with the dead
Green, J. M.	Shoot through
Herron, Mick	Why we die
Holt, Anne	A grave for two
Horst, Jorn Lier	The cabin
Ison, Graham	Naked flames
Khan, Vaseem	Bad Day at the Vulture Club
Lagercrantz, David	The girl who lived twice
Lindsay, Douglas	Boy in the well
MacNeal, Susan Elia	The prisoner in the castle
Meyrick, Denzil	A breath on dying embers
Patterson, James	The inn
Penny, Louise	A better man
Robb, Candace M	A conspiracy of wolves
Thompson, Victoria	Murder on Trinity Place
Thompson, Victoria	Murder on Union Square
Vargas, Fred	This poison will remain
Waites, Martyn	The sinner
Ware, Ruth	The turn of the key

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NON FICTION

Asbrink, Elisabeth	Made in Sweden	306.0948 ASBR
Box, Dan	Bowraville	364.994 BOX
Cameron-Ash, Margaret	Lying for the Admiralty	910.92 CAME
Cep, Casey N.	Furious hours	364.152 CEP
Ferguson, Adele	Banking bad	332.1068 FERG
Hill, Jess	See what you made me do	362.82 HILL
Op den Kamp, Claudy	A history of intellectual property in 50 objects	346.04 OPDE
Pascoe, Bruce	Salt	828.4 PASC
Tink, Andrew	Honeysuckle creek	629.45 TINK
Wolff, Michael	Siege	973.933 WOLF

Made in Sweden / Elisabeth Asbrink

With all things Swedish in Vogue, Sweden has become known as the land of lagom or enough. As Elisabeth Asbrink wryly puts it, the concept promotes a modern, pleasant country, with good taste in design, music and crime fiction. But as crime fiction testifies, the country also has a dark side. This quirky inventory of Swedish values explores the shades of grey behind the branding of Sweden as the shiny home of ABBA and Volvo. She looks at how forced sterilisation of the feeble minded intersected with the logic of state welfare state, the moral compromises underlying Swedish neutrality during WWII and the Nazi sympathies of the founder of IKEA. But it’s not all Bergmanesque gloom. Asbrink also celebrates the Swedes’ sacred relationship with nature, the achievements of its social reformers and the indefatigable biologist Carl Linnaeus. (Sydney Morning Herald, 20-21 July 2019)

See what you made me do / Jess Hill

In Australia, one woman is killed every week by an intimate partner. Investigative reporter Jess Hill estimates that Australian police are called to a domestic abuse incident every two minutes. In her ground-breaking new book, See What You Made Me Do, Hill examines the pervasive and harrowing reality of Australia’s domestic abuse crisis, diving deep into the psychology of the abusive mind, the roots of humiliated fury, the voicelessness of children, and the shortcomings of our justice system in addressing this nationwide emergency. Hill demonstrates remarkable compassion and consideration for both her interview subjects and her readership. Survivors were given the chance to review their stories, suggest changes, and take control of their narrative. I couldn’t stop talking about this book – pulling it out the dinner table, reading parts aloud to my housemates. These are difficult stories hold in your own head – not only due to the incomprehensible horrors unfolding in households across the country, but also because of the complexity of Hill’s research, which sometimes took further dissection and discussion to truly sink in. But above all, I felt compelled to share this book because it felt much too crucial to keep to myself. See What You Made Me Do is essential reading and should be thrust into the hands of every Australian – man, woman, medical professional, police officer, social worker, politician, teacher, writer. All of us should be forced to confront and fight this war. (Good Reading Magazine, August 2019)

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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

Chambers, Becky	To be taught, if fortunate
Chokshi, Roshani	The gilded wolves
Lee, Fonda	Jade war
Ogawa, Yoko	The memory police

The memory police / Yoko Ogawa

Ogawa returns with a dark and ambitious novel exploring memory and power—both individual and institutional—through a dystopian tale about state surveillance. The unnamed female narrator is an orphaned novelist living on an unnamed island that is in the process of disappearing, item by item. The disappearances, of objects such as ribbons, perfume, birds, and calendars, are manifested in a physical purge of the object as well as a psychological absence in the island’s residents’ memories. The mysterious and brutal Memory Police are in charge of enforcing these disappearances, randomly searching homes and arresting anyone with the ability to retain memory of the disappeared, including the narrator’s mother. When the narrator discovers her editor, R, is someone who does not have the ability to forget, she builds a secret room in her house to hide him, with the help of her former nurse’s husband, an old man who once lived on the ferry, which has also disappeared. Though R may not leave the room for fear of discovery, he, the narrator, and the old man are able to create a sense of home and family. However, the disappearances and the Memory Police both grow more aggressive, with more crucial things disappearing at a faster rate, and it becomes clear that it will be impossible for them—their family unit, and the island as a whole—to continue. The classic Ogawa hallmarks are here, a dark eroticism and idiosyncratic characters, but it’s also clear she’s expanded her range into something even deeper. This is a searing, vividly imagined novel by a wildly talented writer. (Publishers Weekly, 14 June 2019)

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New additions to eBooks at SMSA

eBooks & Audiobooks help

EBOOKS

General novels	Alharthi, Jokha	Celestial bodies
General novels	Frances, Michelle	The daughter
General novels	Landragin, Alex	Crossings
Mystery	Cleeves, Anne	The long call
Mystery	Cayre, Hannelore	The Godmother
Mystery	Cleverly, Barbara	Invitation to die
Mystery	Penrose, Andrea	Murder at Half Moon Gate
Mystery	Todd, Charles	The black ascot
Non fiction	Mallett, Xanthé	Cold case investigations
Travel	Sherman, Anna	The bells of old Tokyo

Celestial bodies / Jokha Alharthi

Alharthi’s ambitious, intense novel—her first to be translated into English and winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize—examines the radical changes in Oman over the past century from the perspectives of the members of several interconnected families. With exhilarating results, Alharthi throws the reader into the midst of a tangled family drama in which unrequited love, murder, suicide, and adultery seem the rule rather than the exception. She moves between the stream-of-consciousness musings and memories of businessman Abdallah as he flies to Frankfurt and vignettes from the lives of those in his family, the slaves who raised him under the rule of his abusive father, and the members of the large family he married into. These include, among many others, a wife who apparently loves her sewing machine more than him, her two conflicted sisters, a father-in-law conducting a torrid love affair with a Bedouin woman, and an unhappy physician daughter. The scenes establish the remarkable contrasts among the generations, whose members are united primarily by a fierce search for romantic love. The older generation has grown up with strict rules and traditions, the younger generation eats at McDonald’s and wears Armani jeans, and the members of the middle generation, particularly the women, are caught between expectations and aspirations. The novel rewards readers willing to assemble the pieces of Alharthi’s puzzle into a whole, and is all the more satisfying for the complexity of its tale. (Publishers Weekly, August 2019)

The long call / Ann Cleeves

Set in Devon, England, this thoughtful series launch from bestseller Cleeves (the Vera Stanhope series) introduces Det. Insp. Matthew Venn, who spent his childhood among the Barum Brethren, a strict evangelical community led by the charismatic Dennis Salter. As a teenager, Matthew rejected the teachings of the community and was banished. Now in his late 30s, the tightly wound and reserved Matthew works in nearby Barnstable and is married to Jon, who runs a multi-use community arts center called Woodward. When a local man turns up stabbed to death on a beach near Matthew and Jon’s house, the resulting investigation draws a few too many connections to Woodward—including that the victim volunteered there—and soon Matthew’s past and present lives begin to collide. Cleeves makes good use of Devon local color and populates this subtle, expertly paced mystery with distinctive supporting characters. Hopefully, future installments will delve even further into the intriguing Barum Brethren. (Publishers Weekly, July 2019)

Invitation to die / Barbara Cleverly

A third of the way into Cleverly’s undistinguished second mystery set in 1920s Cambridge, England (after 2018’s Fall of Angels), Det. Insp. John Redfyre is walking his dog when he stumbles across a body behind his home. The coroner determines that the dead man, who had a card in his pocket inviting him to “break bread with” a dining group calling themselves Amici Apicii, was throttled. The killer’s m.o. suggests a military connection to Redfyre, which, in turn, suggests to the reader a link to an earlier section of the book recounting the discovery of diamonds by a small group of British soldiers during the Boer War. The card from Amici Apicii also hearkens back to the book’s opening, in which a member of Cambridge University’s medieval history faculty seeks out a transient to invite to that group’s intimate gathering. The underwhelming plot is slow to unfold, and Redfyre is colorless compared with the author’s first series lead, Joe Sandilands. Cleverly has done much better in the past in concocting intriguing murder puzzles. (Publishers Weekly, June 2019)

Murder at half moon gate / Andrea Penrose

After a night of gambling, Lord Wrexford and his friend Sheffield, discover a dead body in an alley. Always a scientist, Wrexford checks on the victim, although he turns the case over to a watchman. It isn’t long before the victim’s widow shows up at Wrexford’s home begging for his assistance, claiming he had once helped her husband, an inventor, who had been working a revolutionary steam engine design. Wrexford turns to Charlotte Sloane, who under the pseudonym A.J. Quill, is recognized as a skilled satirical cartoonist. Together, the two use his society friends, her network of informers, and a group of clever street urchins to investigate the murder of a man whose inventions could change industry and England forever. The compelling follow-up to Murder on Black Swan Lane is an intricately plotted mystery set in Regency England. Its complex story line and authentic historical details bring the early days of the Industrial Revolution vividly to life. Bound to fascinate readers of C.S. Harris and even fans of Victorian mysteries. (Library Journal, March 2018)

The black ascot / Charles Todd

An investigation into an 11-year-old murder unearths some surprising revelations in Inspector Ian Rutledge’s 21st case (The Gate Keeper, 2018, etc.).Rutledge survived World War I shellshocked and living with the ghostly voice of Hamish, a comrade who died in his arms. When he helps a former soldier find his wife, the grateful man gives him a tip that might help Rutledge find one of the most wanted men in Britain, Alan Barrington, who was accused of murder over a decade earlier and hasn’t been seen since. Rutledge’s boss gives him the unwelcome job of following up the clue, which begins the inspector’s unrelenting search for the truth. Barrington had been accused of engineering a motor crash that killed Blanche Thorne and gravely injured her second husband, Harold Fletcher-Munro. Barrington had been positive that Fletcher-Munro drove Barrington’s friend Mark Thorne to financial ruin and suicide so he could marry Blanche. Rutledge starts out by investigating Barrington’s friends, including his lawyer and estate agent, both of whom have known him for years. When each refuses to confirm or deny that he’s still alive, Rutledge begins to consider the possibility that Mark Thorne did not commit suicide but was murdered by one of the several men who wanted Blanche. Conversations with friends and relatives of the parties involved with Blanche reveal many conflicting opinions. Each snippet Rutledge gleans leads him deeper into a complex maze, but he never considers giving up even when his own wartime demons come to the fore. Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping. (Kirkus Reviews, December 2018)

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AUDIOBOOKS

General novels	Lee, Sky	Disappearing Moon Café
General novels	Carlson, Dolley	The red coat
Historical novels	McElwain, Julie	Betrayal in time
Mystery	Amphlett, Rachel	Bridge to burn
Mystery	Rosett, Sara	Death in the English countryside
Mystery	Ellis, Joy	Five bloody hearts
Mystery	Lin, Harper	Macchiatos, macarons, and malice
Mystery	Blackmoore, Stephanie	Murder borrowed, murder blue
Mystery	Dumont, Diana	Peach cobbler poison
Mystery	Lovestam, Sara	The truth behind the lie

Betrayal in time / Julie McElwain

In McElwain’s outstanding fourth mystery set in Regency England (after 2018’s Caught in Time), the authorities ask FBI profiler and time traveler Kendra Donovan, the American ward of the Duke of Aldridge (one of only two people to know she’s from the future), to look into the strangling murder of English spymaster Sir Giles Holbrooke, who was found lying naked on the floor of an abandoned London church with his tongue cut out. During the autopsy, bizarre markings slowly appear all over Sir Giles’s body, possibly forming a message from the killer. Kendra and her detection team, which includes a Bow Street runner and an irreverent journalist, get on a trail that leads them deep into family jealousies and foreign espionage—and to more ritualistic murders. One of the series’ delights is how Kendra, who operates with a shocking degree of independence for a single woman in the era, must repeatedly find ways to use her forensic knowledge and instincts about homicide that don’t send polite society reaching for the smelling salts. With perfect pacing, McElwain holds the reader’s interest from the first page to the last. (Publishers Weekly, May 2019)