The Wilder Aisles

Two new crime books for your winter reading, and one not crime, but you could say a crime was committed in a certain way.

The first is a rather unusual approach to writing a crime novel as it tells the story of a cold case through the format of a fictional true crime TV series, using interviews, newspaper reports and so on.

The name of the fictional Netflix series is Infamous: Who Killed Luke Ryder. The book is Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter, who is well-known for her DI Adam Fawley books. (Unfortunately I have never come across them, but I will rectify that soon.) While I found it a bit difficult at the beginning, I soon got into it and really enjoyed reading it.

Thirty years ago, Andrew Howard, the step-father of filmmaker Guy Howard, was found dead in the garden of the family home. No-one saw or heard anything and there was no sign of a break-in. What was he doing outside on a cold night? The whole family – Andrew’s wife, Caroline, and his three children, are under suspicion except for Rupert, who was 10 at the time. The question is: can the docu-drama solve this long ago murder? Why was Andrew Howard killed, and do any of the suspects found by the investigators amount to anything? This is a great fun read.

The second book is The Cook by Ajay Chowdury. It is a follow-up to The Waiter, which I haven’t read, but intend to do, after reading this. The story revolves around a restaurant in Brick Lane in London. It is called Tandoori Knights, and the cook of the title is Kamil Rahmann, who was once a detective in Kolkata, but now spends his time in a hot, steamy kitchen serving delicious Indian food to a devoted clientele. After the dead body of a woman who is known to Kamil, Salma Main, is found in her apartment building, Kamil feels compelled to find out what happened. His friend Naila is very keen to join him in the investigation; she was a student at the same college as Salma, and undertakes to investigate on the campus. Along with this investigation, some locals are becoming concerned about the rise in homeless deaths in the area near the restaurant. Anjoli, Kamil’s boss and friend, believes they are being murdered. At first the two cases seem not to have anything in common, but as they develop, connections emerge, stretching from London to Lahore. I have been to Brick Lane, like probably lots of readers, and it was good to read a book set in such an old, interesting part of London, although probably much has changed since I was there some time ago.

I picked up a copy of Such a Fun Age, flicked through it and thought I might read it one day. I bought it and put it aside for another day. Well, that day came, and I was very pleased that I had it on the table beside my bed, with the others that were waiting their turn. The book, by Kiley Reid, is the story of a nanny, Emira, Briar, the child she looks after during the day and Alix, Briar’s mother.

Emira is at a party when she gets a call from Alix that something has happened at the house and she needs Emira to come and take Briar away from the difficult situation. Emira takes her to the local upmarket food store where she is confronted by the security guard and others, who want to know what a black woman is doing with a white child in a store at 11.30 at night. They refuse to believe the truth – that Emira is Briar’s nanny. Kelley, a bystander, intervenes on her behalf. After the incident, a relationship develops between Emira and Kelley. What follows is an interesting study in race relations and the lives of young people living in New York.

As the biggest secret of all is revealed, Emira has no choice but to forge a new life for herself. There are a couple of twists along the way, but the last one really surprised me, and made me rethink the whole story. Although set in 2015, Such a Fun Age could easily have taken place earlier, as little seems to have changed. I know this is not a new book,and many of you would have read it, but to those who haven’t I really recommend it. I really enjoyed it and the story stayed with me for a long time.

– Janice

$62

Homelands

Timothy Garton Ash

Drawing on 50 years of interviews and experience, Homelands tells the epic story of how Europe in the early 21st century, having emerged from its wartime hell, recovered and rebuilt, liberated and united to come close to the ideal of a Europe “whole, free and at peace”, and then faltered. Homelands is both a singular history of a period of unprecedented progress and a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the war in Ukraine. A stunning blend of contemporary history, reportage and memoir.

Love Language

Linda Marigliano

$35

Linda Marigliano has built a career out of performing for other people. In her day-job as an on-air presenter or in her family home, she contorted herself into “the cool girl” or “the good girl”. Her “love language” had warped into acts of service that pleased everyone but herself, without boundaries or exceptions. This memoir is Linda’s determined reclamation of her identity; a fiercely relatable and viscerally honest account of what it means to love and be loved.

Hitler Stalin Mum & Dad

Daniel Finkelstein

$30

The Rooster House

Victoria

Belim

In 2014, while the Russian state was annexing Crimea, Victoria discovered her great-grandfather’s diary, one page scored deep with the single line: “Brother Nikodim, vanished in the 1930s fighting for a free Ukraine.” She had never heard of this relative and no one seemed willing to tell her about him. Victoria became obsessed with recovering his story, and returned to her birth country again and again in pursuit of it. In the end her winding search took her back to the place she had always known it would – to the Rooster House, and the dark truths contained in its basement.

Good Girls

Hadley Freeman

$35

From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War. It is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about his parents’ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century. It is a story of persecution and survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through.

The Best Minds

Jonathan Rosen

$65 Penguin

A novelist’s gripping investigation of the forces that led his childhood best friend from academic stardom to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. The Best Minds is a powerful account of an American tragedy, set in the final decades of the American century, an era that coincided with the emptying out of state mental hospitals. It is a story about the bonds of friendship, the price of delusion and the mystery of identity. The Best Minds is both a beautifully rendered coming-of-age story and an indictment of the profound neglect of mental illness in our society.

From Hadley Freeman, the bestselling author of House of Glass, comes her searing and powerful memoir about mental ill health and her experience with anorexia. Freeman takes the reader inside her head to translate the language of Anorexia Speak: “Boys like girls with curves on them” (If you ever eat anything you will be mauled by thuggish boys with giant paws for hands.) “Have you tried swimming? I find that really improves my appetite.” (You need to do more exercise.) Hadley Freeman starts with the trigger that sparked her illness and moves through four hospitalisations, offering extraordinary insight into her various struggles.

Orwell: The New Life

D.J. Taylor

D.J. Taylor’s new biography, the first full-length study for 20 years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material – letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues, the recollections of the dwindling band of people who remember him, new information about his life in the early 1930s – to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man. The definitive biography of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

$18

On Peter Carey: Writers on Writers

Sarah Krasnostein

Exploring dislocation and longing, Sarah Krasnostein dives into Peter Carey’s literary tour de force, True History of the Kelly Gang, shining new light on the impossibly vulnerable Ned Kelly. Carey, who moved from Australia to America, conjured Kelly after seeing Sidney Nolan’s paintings of the bushranger at the Met. In this moving essay Krasnostein, who moved from America to Australia, interrogates notions of home, history, distance and identity in Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel.

Grave Secrets

$25 Penguin

The team at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM) have played pivotal roles in some of Australia’s highestprofile homicide cases. A world-renowned centre of forensic science, it has also led major recovery operations, from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 2014 shooting down of flight MH17. Grave Secrets is a gripping account of the work of these forensic scientists on the frontline of Australia’s major crime and disaster investigations.

What We’re Reading

The Power of One

Frances Haugen

In 2021 Frances Haugen went public as the former employee who blew the whistle on Facebook by copying tens of thousands of documents. What she revealed was that Facebook not only set its algorithm to reward extremism, it knew that its platform was being used to foment violence and spread falsehoods. The Power of One is the inspiring story of a woman’s fight to reveal the truth. $35

Victoria reviews: The Year My Family Unravelled

Cynthia Dearborn

This is the familiar story of a daughter who has escaped to the other side of the world to get away from her dysfunctional family but has had to go back to deal with ageing parents suffering from dementia. What is great about Cynthia Dearborn’s book is the emotion, tension, and the hope that shines through, despite the decline of the parents, and health system (a worldwide problem it seems). An enthralling book, right to the end.

Morgan reviews: Why We Are Here

Briohny Doyle

$33 Penguin

In a departure from her previous cli-fi novels, This Island Will Sink and Echolalia, Briohny Doyle brings us a poignant and life-affirming auto-fiction that ponders the big question: why we are here. COVID, lockdown, grieving, loneliness and the healing power of dogs all combine to riveting effect. For lovers of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy.

Jane reviews: Ghosts of the Orphanage

Christine Kenneally

$35 Hachette

The incidents of murder, and physical, sexual and mental abuse in the worldwide orphanage system, as detailed in this book by Christine Kenneally, are shocking: it’s a story of evil, hatred, and unrelenting horror. It’s due to books like this, based on 10 solid years of research, that we are able to shine a strong spotlight on this issue. This is a monumental book. Not for the faint-hearted.

$35

Trump’s Australia

Bruce Wolpe

Leading expert and US and Australian politics insider Bruce Wolpe reveals the many ways in which Australia was damaged by Donald Trump’s presidency. Trumpism contaminated public debate, emboldened local political and religious extremists, diminished Australia’s economy and international relations – and much more. Wolpe predicts America’s democracy won’t survive a second Trump term. He explains how Australia can draw on its strengths to protect its democracy, economy and society from Trumpism.

End Times

$37

Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.

The Palestine Laboratory

Antony Loewenstein

$35

The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe’s most brutal conflicts – from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’s and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas. In a global investigation that uncovers secret documents, based on revealing interviews and on-theground reporting, Antony Loewenstein shows how, as ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate tools for despots and democracies.

The Great Greenwashing

John Pabon

Black Inc

$35

Saving the planet is big business. Realising this, savvy companies are hopping on the sustainability bandwagon. Some may have altruistic ends in mind, but most want to make a quick buck. As ethical spending and consumer options increase, greenwashing is not only proliferating, it’s also becoming harder to discern, so how is someone at the supermarket supposed to decipher all this?

In The Great Greenwashing, John Pabon pulls no punches in arming consumers and business professionals with the tools they need to educate themselves, filter out the BS from the truth, and make a positive impact.

Dispatches from the Diaspora

Gary Younge

For the past three decades Gary Younge has had a ringside seat during the biggest events and with the most significant personalities to impact the black diaspora: accompanying Nelson Mandela on his first election campaign, joining revellers on the southside of Chicago during Obama’s victory, entering New Orleans days after hurricane Katrina or interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Stormzy and Maya Angelou. Dispatches From the Diaspora, analyses how much change is possible and the power of systems to thwart those aspirations.

Escape from Kabul

Levison Wood and Geraint Jones

The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. The collapse of the Afghan government and its army and the rise of the Taliban shocked the world. As the Taliban went door to door to execute “collaborators”, a small international task force set out on a daring mission to evacuate as many Afghans and their families as possible. Escape from Kabul is the harrowing true story of Operation Pitting and the Kabul airlift told through first-hand accounts, including politicians, officers, interpreters and soldiers of the Afghan Special Forces.

Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth 1

Tracy Borman

Anne Boleyn is a subject of enduring fascination. By far the most famous of Henry VIII’s six wives, she has inspired books, documentaries and films, and is the subject of intense debate even today, almost 500 years after her violent death. Piecing together evidence from original documents and artefacts, this book sheds new light on two of the most famous and influential women in history.

Fortune’s Bazaar Vaudine England

Many of Hong Kong’s most influential figures during its first century as a city were neither British nor Chinese. England describes those overlooked in history including the opium-traders who built synagogues or churches, ship-owners carrying gold-rush migrants, property tycoons, and more. Fortune’s Bazaar is a vibrant new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis.

Explore Australia

$17

Black Inc

$28

Black Inc

$35

Voice to Parliament Handbook

Thomas Mayo and Kerry O’Brien

Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo and acclaimed journalist Kerry O’Brien have written this handbook to answer the most commonly asked questions about why the Voice to Parliament should be enshrined in the Constitution, and how it might function to improve policies affecting Indigenous communities, and genuinely close the gap on inequalities. This guide offers simple explanations you can share among friends, family and community networks in the buildup to the referendum.

Quarterly Essay 90

In this compelling essay, Megan Davis draws out the significance and the promise of the Voice to Parliament and what it could mean for recognition and justice. Davis presents it as an Australian solution to an Australian problem. For Indigenous people, it is a practical response to “the torment of powerlessness”. She highlights the failure of past policies, in areas from child protection to closing the gap, and the urgent need for change.

Mind of the Nation

Michael Wesley

In this eloquent book, Michael Wesley investigates the forces shaping Australia’s universities and their relationship to Australian society. Are universities too commercial? Do they provide value? Are they inclusive? Are they underfunded? What do we want from these institutions, especially post-COVID? Unless a new national vision for higher education is found, Australia’s universities could be set for decline. This is a groundbreaking examination of universities in Australian life – and, more than that, of the “mind of the nation”.

Prudish Nation

Paul Dalgarno

Interviewing more than 30 Australia-based authors and thinkers while examining his own journey towards being openly nonmonogamous, Paul Dalgarno pulls together social history and first-hand accounts of what it means to have “unconventional” relationships in 21st-century Australia. Do terms such as LGBTQIA+ help or hinder progress? How does transitioning now compare to transitioning in the 1990s? Entertaining, insightful, funny and thoughtprovoking, Prudish Nation adjusts the country’s bedside lamp to show us a little more clearly who and what we really are.

Archipelago of Us

Renee Pettitt-Shipp

Five years after first living in the Indian Ocean Territories, Renee Pettitt-Schipp finds herself returning, haunted by memories of the asylum seekers she taught there in Australia’s detention system. Why do the islands still have a hold on her and why are her memories such troubled ones? Closer to Indonesia than Australia, Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands are out of sight and out of mind to most Australians, but they are the sites of some of our frontier wars, the places where our identity is laid bare and where there is time and space enough to ask, can we be better than this?

Back to Bangka

Georgina Banks

Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Allied ships are evacuating thousands from Singapore. One ship, the Vyner Brooke, is badly bombed and sinks. Its survivors swim for hours to the nearest land, a beach on Bangka Island, but it is soon discovered the place is occupied by Japanese forces. One of the survivors is Australian Army nurse Dorothy “Bud” Elmes, the great-aunt of Georgina Banks. Banks retraces Bud’s steps in Indonesia, and then deep in archives back in Australia. Back to Bangka is a deeply moving intergenerational family story; a gripping retelling and investigation of events that throw a spotlight on women in wartime.

Red, White & Blown: Is the United States of America a Cult?

Guy Rundle

Renowned journalist Guy Rundle uses reports from the 2022 midterm US elections and a series of non-political stories to make the argument that the US is best seen as a cult that is now experiencing the morbid symptoms of its failure. Rundle argues that thinking about the US in this way means that much that is inexplicable about it slots into place. Red, White & Blown poses the question: why are we slavishly attaching ourselves to a cult with a death wish, when in our history we have successfully avoided the very things that have made the US so?

Being Human Lewis Dartnell

Humans are a wonder of evolution. Powerful yet dextrous, instinctive yet thoughtful, we are expert communicators and innovators. Our exceptional abilities have created the civilisation we know today. But we’re also deeply flawed. Our bodies break. Diseases thwart our boldest plans. Lewis Dartnell explores how our biology has shaped our relationships, our societies, our economies, and our wars – and how it continues to challenge and define our progress. $35

Blue Machine

From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, Helen Czerski explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls of the ocean’s complex, interlinked system. Timely, elegant and passionately argued, Blue Machine draws on years of experience at the forefront of marine science and captures the magnitude and subtlety of this complex force.

The Trials of Life David Attenborough

$35

This is the third and last of Sir David Attenborough’s great natural history books based on his TV series and completes his survey of the animal world that began with Life on Earth and continued with Living Planet In Life on Earth, Sir David showed how each group of animals evolved. In Living Planet he looked at the way they have adapted to the whole range of habitats in which they live. Now, in Trials of Life, he completes the story by revealing how animals behave – and why.

Sci-fi & Fantasy

Perilous Times

Thomas D. Lee

For hundreds of years Sir Kay and his fellow knights of the round table have been woken from their long slumber whenever Britain had need of them; they fought at Agincourt and at the Somme. But now a dragon has been seen for the first time in centuries and there are rumours of Arthur himself returning. And Kay is not the only ancient thing to come crawling up out of the ground; Lancelot is back as well, Thomas D. Lee mixes Arthurian legend with contemporary fantasy in this sharply witty and relevant debut novel.

The Dark Cloud

Guillaume Pitron

A simple “like” sent from our smartphones mobilises what will soon constitute the largest infrastructure built by man. In The Dark Cloud, Guillaume Pitron investigates the underbelly of digital technology, addressing the pressing question of the carbon footprint it leaves behind. He reveals not only how costly the virtual world is, but how damaging it is to the environment.

Powering Up

Alan Finkel

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel shares his compelling insights and expertise and makes the case for Australia leading the way in the global transition to clean energy. Finkel considers the entire supply chain, from raw materials through power infrastructure, the workforce, transportation and household customers. He reveals the outlines of a new geo-economic order and explains in persuasive, practical terms how we can get there.

How to Stay Smart in a Smart World

Gerd Gigerenzer

$27

Drawing on examples from all spheres of life – media literacy, online dating, self-driving cars, the justice system, health records –Gerd Gigerenzer shows how, when it comes to data and decision making, the elegant and nuanced simplicity of human reasoning beats complex algorithms time and time again. Filled with practical examples and cutting-edge research, How to Stay Smart in a Smart World is a liferaft in a sea of information and an invitation to shape the digital world in which we want to live.

Winter’s Gifts

Ben Aaronovitch

A brand new stand-alone novella in the bestselling Rivers of London series. FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds leaves Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, where she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town – and there’s no sign of retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases – a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness – Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today.

Winter reading is upon us and we’ve been cosying up in our reading socks (yes, they’re a real thing and we sell them!) with a smashing selection of new books. So, what are we reading?

Dasha is first cab off the rank and recommends the translated French bestseller My Husband by Maud Ventura. This is one messed-up story about a wife driven to obsess over her husband and marriage – EVERY painstaking detail of their relationship. Despite this description (!), the book is completely enthralling and you’ll be waiting for the other shoe to drop. (Letitia loved this one too.)

If you want to escape the winter cold and imagine yourself pool-side, Dasha recommends The Guest by Emma Cline, an engaging, psychological, dream-like novel by bestselling author of The Girls (that wild novel about the Manson murders).

Letitia has been talking non-stop about Australian debut novel Girl in a Pink Dress by Kylie Needham – describing it as “flawless”. A woman’s story from muse to esteemed painter, this novel traverses the art world, power, sex, young love, tenderness and fury. Exceptional.

Is sapphic academia a category of literature? Seems so. Mrs. S by K. Patrick is a swoon-worthy novel set in a privileged English boarding school. An Australian matron, the beautiful wife of the headmaster … what could go wrong? A smouldering debut.

Also, don’t miss The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan, a very astute, funny and touching novel about modern relationships and marriage.

Our newest bookselling recruit Lachlan might be late to the Outback Noir Crime Party, but is making up for time with Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town (General Fiction Book of the Year at the ABIA Awards!). It’s a book that transcends crime, with characters you’ll fall for and a truly heartbreaking resolution. Lachlan also inhaled The Rush by Michelle Prak, a turn-of-the-screw type thrill ride set in the South Australian outback. Part Wolf Creek, part The Hunted, and breathlessly paced.

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