BOOKCLUB
Hot reads for chilly nights WORDS SALLY MACMILLAN
REAL LIFE
FABULOUS FICTION
Fashion queen Dame Anna Wintour, the longtime editor-in-chief of US Vogue magazine, is a fascinating if enigmatic figure – she’s been nicknamed ‘Nuclear Wintour’ and the chilly Miranda Priestley character in the book and movie The Devil Wears Prada is widely believed to be based on her. Journalist Amy Odell has woven together interviews with Wintour’s closest friends and colleagues with a riveting account of the cut-throat global fashion industry in her biography, Anna. Packed with insights into Wintour’s ascent to power at the influential Condé Nast publishing empire, it’s a must-read for all fashionistas. Allen & Unwin, RRP $34.99
Actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated US President Abraham Lincoln in a Washington theatre in 1865 – a shocking event that led to one of the country’s biggest-ever manhunts. While much has been written about the infamous assassin, Karen J Fowler’s Booth tells the story of the entire bizarre Booth family in an epic novel that spans some 80 years. It’s gripping stuff, involving bigamy, alcoholism, theatrical life and rural poverty – and that’s just at home. Fans of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves will marvel at Fowler’s mastery of yet another completely different world. Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99
Award-winning journalist, author and TV commentator Madonna King consulted 1,000 young women, along with parents, senior educators and health-care professionals when she researched L Platers. The resulting book is an invaluable guide for parents who want to understand and support their teenage girls as they navigate increasingly uncertain times. More than two years of dealing with the disruption of lockdowns and remote learning have added to the pressure of teenage girls’ worries about friendships and relationships, school, gender identity, alcohol, and sex, body image and mental health. L Platers is here to help. Hachette Australia, RRP $32.99
THRILLS & CHILLS The Murder Rule is the latest page-turner from Dervla McTiernan, author of the bestselling crime series starring Irish detective Cormac Reilly. This standalone legal thriller – inspired by a true story – features Hannah, a young law student who joins the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia. The Project tracks down new evidence in cases of people convicted of a crime but who profess their innocence – however, Hannah’s motivations when she uncovers evidence about the Michael Dandridge death-row case she’s working on are twisted, to say the least. HarperCollins, RRP $32.99 Melanie Blake worked in showbiz as an agent for many years, representing leading actors from long-running UK soapies as well as stars of the massive ’80s TV shows Dynasty and Dallas. Her first novel, Ruthless Women, was a bestseller, earning Blake the title “new queen of the bonkbuster”. Guilty Women features the same cast of TV stars, working on the glamorous Channel Islands setting of Britain’s favourite TV soap. Someone is missing and a scandal is about to erupt, but the show must go on. Can they get away with murder? Harper Collins, RRP $32.99 54
French Braid is the 24th novel from the muchloved, prize-winning author Anne Tyler and like many of her previous family-focused tales, it is set in Baltimore. Tyler quietly but humorously details the ups and downs of three generations of the Garretts, starting in the 1950s when husband and wife Robin and Mercy take their three children, Alice, Lily and David, on their one and only family holiday to a cabin by a lake. The tensions hinted at reverberate through the decades leading up to the present day – you won’t want this beautifully written book to end. Penguin Random House, RRP $29.99 Steve Toltz’s highly anticipated new novel is as bitingly funny as his 2008 triumph, A Fraction of the Whole. Our hero, Angus Mooney, is languishing in the afterlife, having been murdered by a man who was in love with his pregnant wife, Gracie. Angus sees his killer seducing Gracie while he contends with the same insecurities that plagued him while he was alive – it appears he’s been wrong about everything. Then the pandemic hits and the afterlife becomes even more uncomfortable. Here Goes Nothing is a brilliant take on some eternally big questions. Penguin Random House, RRP $32.99 Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March and People of the Book, is renowned for her meticulously researched historical fiction. Horse is an enthralling, complex saga that draws on the true story of Lexington, a famous 19th-century racehorse. Ranging from Washington D.C. in 2019, when two leading characters discover a discarded painting in a roadside clean-up and forgotten bones in a research archive, back to 1850s Kentucky, the novel shines a light on racism, slavery and injustice across American history. Oh yes, and there’s a powerful love story going on, too. Hachette Australia, RRP $39.99
