McLean, Felicity (2019) The Van Apfel Girls are Gone. Fourth Estate. The Van Apfel sisters, Hannah, Cordelia and Ruth, disappeared into the surrounding bushland during the school's Showstopper concert. Tikka was eleven in that summer of 1992 and now she has returned home to make sense of what happened to her friends. Does what she… Continue reading July Picks
Category: Top reading picks
June Picks
Sky, Emma (2019) In a Time of Monsters: Travels Through a Middle East in Revolt. Atlantic Books. After serving time in Iraq as a political advisor Emma Sky found no homecoming in the UK and soon returns to the Middle East. In her travels (2011-2016) she bears witness to the Arab Spring, and to the failures… Continue reading June Picks
May Picks
Pomare, J.P. (2018) Call me Evie. Hachette. Seventeen-year-old Kate (now called Evie) is hiding out with Jim in the isolated New Zealand beach town of Maketu. Is he keeping her safe or is there a more sinister motive? Something terrible has happened in Melbourne but Evie's fractured memories are getting in the way. Pomare uses her… Continue reading May Picks
April Picks
Swanson, Peter (2019) Before She Knew Him. W. Morrow. Hen and Lloyd are newly settled in the suburbs of Boston. When their next door neighbours, Mira and Matthew, invite them to dinner Hen spies a disturbingly familiar object in Matthew's office. It looks like something connected to an unresolved killing. The more Hen observes Matthew… Continue reading April Picks
March Picks
Barton, Fiona (2019) The Suspect. Bantam. Two eighteen year old girls go missing in Thailand, then turn up dead after a suspicious fire. Their families are frantic. Newspaper reporter Kate Waters (The Widow, and The Child) is the first with the exclusive but as the mystery unfolds her own son is thrust into the spotlight. In a… Continue reading March Picks
February Picks
Plomin, Robert (2018) Blue print: How DNA makes us who we are. Allen Lane. All aspects of our personality are profoundly shaped by our inherited DNA. Plomin launches a rethink from a psychological perspective on who we are, arguing from the stance that nurture, whether at home, school or in our broader environment, is not… Continue reading February Picks
January Picks
Norton, Graham (2018) A Keeper. Hodder & Stoughton. Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother Patricia's death to sell her childhood home. While searching through her mother's belongings she finds some letters than send her off to solve the 40 year mystery of her paternity, leading to a little stone house in the shadows of… Continue reading January Picks
Best Picks 2018
As a big reader of fiction I am always surprised that when I come to do this annual summary of the year's best reads that the most memorable titles are always non-fiction. I am pleased to present my best picks for 2018. Enjoy! 1. Kassabova, Kapka (2017) Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe. Breathtaking… Continue reading Best Picks 2018
December Picks
Askew, Claire (2018) All the Hidden Truths. Hodder & Stoughton. Ryan Summers walks into Three Rivers College and kills 13 young women, then kills himself. The Edinburgh school shooting is told from the viewpoints of three women DI Helen Birch, put in charge of the case on her first day in her new job, Moira, Ryan's… Continue reading December Picks
November Picks
Harper, Jane (2018) The Lost Man. Macmillan. Nathan and Bub Bright meet at the stockman's grave, on the border of their vast cattle properties in outback Queensland. The body of their middle brother Cameron is lying beside the grave. Something had been troubling Cameron - did he walk to his death? This novel meets somewhere… Continue reading November Picks
7:30 Bookclub 