Book Reviews & Author Interviews
Book Review: A Gift for my Sister
Two sisters struggle to count their blessings and recognise the importance of family. To those around them, they are strikingly alike. To each other, they couldn't be more different.
Book Review - Gone Viral: The Germs That Share Our Lives
If this sounds like it's not your kind of book, think again. As a book about infectious diseases, who better to write it than an expert in the field? But Frank Bowden is also an expert in humour.
Book Review: The Snow Child
This is a love story, a fairy story and a story about friendship on the wild frontier land of Alaska, which means that there is something here for most readers.
Book Review: On a Dark Wing
Forget the Grim Reaper, Jordan Dane's version of Death is a handsome boy with a radiant body and irresistible blue eyes.
Book Review - Luther: The Calling
A word of warning: my wife, who loves crime thrillers and the Luther TV show, put this down after a couple of chapters; she found it too gory and cruel.
Book Review: Bittersweet
Sabrina Falks is the quintessential golden girl; a beautiful, successful actress with a seemingly perfect life and a perfect fiancé to boot. Younger sister Mimi is lost, messy and utterly lacking in any sense of responsibility.
Book Review: Legend
There's something about the way that young adult books get straight to the good stuff that I enjoy, and Legend is no exception.
Book Review: The Necessary Aptitude - A Memoir
Pam Ayres and her poems have been around for a while, but not heard of lately until her recent Australian tour. Her easy-to-read memoir may be more appreciated by older readers, as she describes her childhood in post-war England.
Book Review: The Sixth Key
In the tradition of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Adriana Koulias weaves a tale of esoteric intrigue in The Sixth Key.
Book Review: Pure
In 1785 Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer from the provinces, confronts the huge job of destroying the overflowing cemetery and aged church of Les Innocents in the centre of Paris. He is instructed to remove all trace of church and cemetery down to the last knucklebone and organ key.
Book Review: Last Chance Café
For Margot, life has always been about looking after those around her.
Book Review: What's New, Pussycat?
When Delilah's boyfriend proposes, it seems the next logical step in their 10-year relationship. Except to Delilah, that is.
Book Review: Skyward
When ER nurse Ella accepts a position as caregiver to a young girl with diabetes, she gets much more than she bargained for.
Book Review: Planet Word
A foreword by Stephen Fry, with a caricature of himself on the jacket, sets the style for this most fascinating book about language. The subtitle, 'The story of language from the earliest grunts to Twitter and beyond', lets you know you're in for a fun and educational ride.
Book Review: One Day
It all begins on July 15, 1988, the night Emma and Dexter graduate. They have one night together but in the morning, they will go their separate ways.
Book Review: Tiger Men
Tiger Men is a sweeping saga of three families who lived through Tasmania's golden era, who witnessed the birth of Federation and who, in 1915, watched with pride as their sons marched off to fight for king and country in the Great War.
Book Review-Billy Connelly's Route 66: The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip
The big yin on the ultimate road trip. Well, that sounded great. Until I realised that this is a book written about making a documentary about the ultimate road trip.
Book Review: Explosive Eighteen
The eighteenth book in this series follows the same formula as all the others, but I still love it.
Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Karou has two vastly different lives. In one she is a young art student in Prague. In the other she carries messages for Brimstone, who lives in the world of 'Elsewhere'.
Book Review: The Real Katie Lavender
Katie Lavender is not easily shocked. Until a letter arrives a year after her mother's death, changing how she feels about pretty much everything she thought was a given in her life.
Book Review: The Sense of an Ending
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigate the girl-less sixth form together trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit.
Book Review: The Brotherhood
When Sergeant John White, mentor, saviour and all-round good guy; is murdered during a routine call-out, the tight-knit community of Tasmania is rocked to the core.
Book Review: The 7 Spiritual Laws of Superheroes
Decoding the seven essential laws that govern the realm of superheroes, Chopra uses multiple traditions and myths - from Buddha to Batman - to offer seven new spiritual laws that can positively transform our lives and literally save the world.
Book Review: Mud, Sweat and Tears
Bear Grylls is a man who has always sought the ultimate in adventure.
Book Review: What I Did
Billy is a six-year-old boy with an enquiring mind. His childish grasp on some words often creates problems. One day in the park, Billy was playing with his dad and decided to run and hide.
Book Review: Already Home
Jenna Stevens returns home after the breakdown of her marriage and her loss of confidence in her own abilities as a chef.
Book Review: Bad Sisters
Three ambitious, rivalrous sisters and a deadly secret, which one of them is determined to keep at any cost...
Book Review : James Phelan's Alone Quarantine
Alone - Quarantine is the third and final instalment in James Phelan's YA psychological thriller series.
Book Review: The Jefferson Key
Modern-day pirates, attempted murder of the US president, secret service and private contractors and the unshakeable Cotton Malone all come together in The Jefferson Key.
Book Review: I've Got Your Number
Poppy has lost her engagement ring - an heirloom belonging to her fiance's family - just in time for the future in-laws to arrive in town. MORE
Book Review: The Troubled Man
It's tricky coming in at the last novel of the 10-book Kurt Wallander series, but Henning Mankell gives us plenty of time to get to know his contrary detective as he butts in on another officer's case that hits close to home.
Book Review: The President's Vampire
Vampire super-agent Nathaniel Cade and his US government handler Zach Barrows return in the second instalment of their war on horror. Stopping strange fusions of man, fish and snake from attacking a yacht off the coast of Somalia shouldn't be a big deal, but Cade and Barrows get raked over the coals for interfering in a CIA operation when they return to the States.
Book Review: All Day Long the Noise of Battle
Gerard Windsor brings to life an otherwise forgotten battle in the Vietnam War, this time through the memories of the men who fought it.
Book Review: Smokin' Seventeen
This is the 17th in the series but she isn't wearing out her welcome. Stephanie Plum is back again in Smokin' Seventeen.
Book Review: Cold Light
When sentiment interferes with the sometimes dark truths of the world, it is often the least likely people who step up to question it.
Book Review: Darkness, My Old Friend
Set in the sleepy town of the Hollows, former police detective Jones Cooper, restive and unhappy in his retirement; initially discounts psychic Eloise Montgomery's warning that he will endanger his life in an attempt to save someone.
Book Review: Before the Poison
Chris, a successful Hollywood composer of the "music no one listens to in movies", moves to an isolated house in the Yorkshire Dales after the death of his wife.
Book Review: The 3rd Victim
A blood-soaked nursery. A missing baby. A traumatised mother. David Cavanaugh doesn't want to touch this case.
Book Review: Flash and Bones
In a series that remains surprisingly fresh in its 14th outing, Dr Temperance Brennan is called to a landfill site backing on to the Charlotte speedway track in North Carolina in the run up to the biggest NASCAR race of the year.
Book Review: Kill Alex Cross
The next instalment in the Alex Cross series does not disappoint. The president's son and daughter are abducted and Detective Alex Cross is first on the scene.
Book Review: Where Spirits Dwell
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, journalist Karina Machado has gathered enough anecdotal evidence to show unexplained or paranormal events can happen to the most normal of people.
Book Review: The Best of Me
Dawson and Amanda were high school sweethearts facing obstacles from all sides. Dawson's eventual decision to call it off breaks both of their hearts, but he does it for Amanda's sake.
Book Review: Four Seasons with a Grumpy Goat
Fresh air, green grass, fluffy lambs and gently lowing cattle. A veggie patch, an orchard and compost heaps.
Book Review: The Fear Index
His name is kept carefully guarded from the general public but within the secretive inner circles of the ultra-rich, Dr Alex Hoffman is a legend - a visionary scientist whose computer software turns everything it touches into gold.
Book Review: Citrus County
Toby and Shelby are not like the other kids. Fifteen years old and marooned in sleepy Citrus County, Florida, they stand apart from the cliques of jocks and cheerleaders.
Book Review-War of the Worldviews: Science vs Spirituality
With a keen interest in both science and spirituality I was excited to find two leading minds in both fields willing to go head-to-head in a debate-style book such as this.
