If you know anything about me, you’ll know I love ghost stories, though
not the really scary ones.
The one takes place in Melbourne (where I and the
author live), and includes many of our eccentricities – laugh out loud for
locals! I love reading books set places I know, especially when I get to feel
smug because I know some obscure fact mentioned in the book.
This story is Young Adult, and features an interesting premise. Anton
Marin is taking a gap year to test out the family business of dispatching ghosts
to their eternal rest. He falls in admiring hate with Rani Cross, who comes
from an English company with a different method of dispatch.
Pryor’s released a sequel, and it is absolutely sitting in my to-be-read
pile!
I love mysteries, but I find that after a while, a lot of them tend to run together in my head. So I just love it when I find a book with a setting so unique that it sticks in my mind forever. And it’s even better when the author uses that setting to show me something new about human nature, history, or society while still delivering me a plot that keeps me turning pages.
This is the first book of the Phryne Fisher Mysteries.
Phryne is a 1920s flapper who was a nurse in World War 1 and has now started her own detective agency in Melbourne, Australia. It’s a fascinating period and location, and the books bring both to life. I also love the main character: She’s a liberated woman who’s in constant conflict with a society that doesn’t know what to make of her.
Bored socialite Phryne Fisher leaves the tedium of the London season for adventure in Australia!
Tea-dances in West End hotels, weekends in the country with guns and dogs... Phryne Fisher - she of the grey-green eyes and diamante garters - is rapidly tiring of the boredom of chit-chatting with retired colonels and foxtrotting with weak-chinned wonders. Instead, Phryne decides it might be amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective - on the other side of the world!
As soon as she books into the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne, Phryne is embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, drug smuggling…
Founded in 1974, Bradt Guides is now the largest independently-owned guidebook publisher in both the US and UK. We have over 200 titles in print, with a particular focus on lesser-known places overlooked by other travel publishers. We also publish a series of Slow Travel guides to UK regions and a list of travel narratives. There are 15 people in the Bradt team, based (when Covid allows) in an office above a coffee shop in Chesham, Bucks. The following books are very different but all connected to travel in fun ways. The books were selected by Simon Willmore, Claire Strange, Iona Brokenshire, Deborah Gerrard, and Hugh Brune.
Back in the early ‘90s in Melbourne, I talked my way into a temporary job typesetting Explore Australia, a mammoth full-colour guidebook. I ended up staying several years, undertaking desk-based research, managing the photo library, and editing text and maps. I spent my days poring over cartographic proofs, sifting through glorious photos of rust-red mountain ranges, cobalt-blue skies, and dense tropical rainforest abutting white-sand beaches. I spoke to those manning the tourist information offices around the country: at Coral Bay, where the Ningaloo Reef is just a metre from the beach, at Healesville, when the cackle of a kookaburra interrupted my call, and at Cossack, a gold-rush-era ghost town with a population of one man and one dog. Some years later I sold my home, bought a 4x4, and set off to see all those places that I had visited vicariously…
A century of prejudice is laid bare in these books, but within their pages are countless subtle and overt ways that gay Australian men have given homophobes the big middle finger. We may not always have thrived, but through resistance, migration, verbal agility, notoriety, and sheer resilience, collectively we have conquered. I stand on enormous shoulders at a time when queer writing is proliferating on an inevitable tide of equality that has risen across my lifetime in this country. My selections encompass first nations and migrant stories, some of the pioneers of our gay literature, and ‘outside’ voices bravely looking in to discern us with dignity.
Danny Kelly is a living, breathing gay Greek protagonist, and the choices this driven young competitive swimmer faces about loving relationships—while he’s in the pursuit of athletic prowess—are written with a resounding ring of truth. Tsiolkas’ visceral sex scenes, underpinned by gripping descriptions of the desires behind the mechanics, speak to much more than the act itself. They go to the heart of identity in a novel with so many layers of self-definition: the migrant, the working class hero, the quintessential male, the stereotypical gay, the success story, and the abject failure. That Danny escapes his ambition alive is a miracle, and it has everything to do with digging deep and staring down expectations.
From the international bestselling and Booker Prize nominated author of The Slap comes a blazingly brilliant new novel.
Longlisted for the 2014 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
You lose everything. In front of everyone. Where do you go from here?
Daniel Kelly, a talented young swimmer, has one chance to escape his working-class upbringing. His astonishing ability in the pool should drive him to fame and fortune, as well as his revenge on the rich boys at the private school to which he has won a sports scholarship. Everything Danny has ever done, every sacrifice his family has ever made, has…
Ever since I was a young girl, I have fallen deeply into the pages of novels that feature strong female characters, with Anne of Green Gables and Little Women capturing my imagination early. As an Australian, I’ve also always enjoyed books set here but anywhere where I can walk in a relatable character's shoes is fine by me. The magical experience of being immersed in ‘her’ world, feeling what she feels, relating to her, being frustrated with her, celebrating with her, loving with her…what are books if not gifting us such experiences? Every book I have penned has been based on this ideal, an intimate experience, a close relationship. A BFF.
This book is the perfect read for a rainy day and I quickly fell in love with the main female protagonist, Georgina. Spirited, brave, and a bit foolhardy, she fulfills all the hopes you might have for a heroine in a historical romance, yet she will surprise you too. The river settings in Australia’s southeastern river belt in the 1890s are pure escapism and leave plenty of scope for adventure. Highly recommended.
A fast-paced historical romance adventure, set on the mighty Murray River in the 1890s with a flawed but loveable heroine.
1890s, River Murray, Northern Victoria
Georgina Calthorpe is unhappy living with her indifferent foster family the MacHenry's in their crumbling house on the banks of the River Murray.
Unlike the rest of the family, she isn't looking forward to the return of prodigal son Dane. With good reason. Dane MacHenry is furious when on his return he finds his homestead in grave decline. Unaware that his father has been drinking his way through his inheritance, he blames Georgina and Georgina…
Dr. Samantha Battams is an Associate Professor and has been a university lecturer, researcher, policy professional, community development worker, advocate, health service administrator, and management consultant. Samantha resides in Adelaide, South Australia, is widely travelled, and has lived and worked in Switzerland in global health. She has published academic articles and book chapters in the fields of public health and global health, social policy, and sociology. She has a passion for history and writing and has written a self-published family history and three non-fiction books.
I really enjoyed reading this tale about Australia’s first female-owned and all-female garage in Melbourne in the 1920s. I was given the book twice, once as a gift and once as I presented with the author, so knew that I just HAD to read it. I was astounded to find that the subject of my book(with Les Parsons) The Red Devil - pioneer aviator Harry Butler – had a garage (Butler and Nicholson) which had sponsored Alice Anderson’s (garage owner’s) adventurous trip from Melbourne to Alice Springs after his death.
For some reason, many gay men like to talk to me about what they find important. For my part, I love to listen. The subject often turns to couples they know and how they got together. The most interesting conversations center around how two unlikely men meet, fall in love, and marry. Because my first husband was a closeted gay man, I am interested in how gay men view love and how they decide whether to get married. I myself am neither gay nor male. I pass along what I’ve heard and learned in order to open readers’ hearts and minds. Peace.
When my husband and I got together, everyone said it wouldn’t work.
He graduated from the University of Texas while I was from University of Nebraska. At the time the schools were rabid football rivals. Both of us were avid fans. And the year we got married, the two schools played each other for the championship.
Is it any wonder I wrote about a metro-male and a good-old-boy? Not only do I write about mismatched couples, I read about them too.
In Tigers and Devils, a top Australian football player and the head of an independent film festival are attracted to each other. You don’t have to know anything about Australian football to enjoy this book.
Kennedy’s sense of humor and the main character’s married couple friends will make you believe even if you don’t have my background and haven’t had decades with your spouse.
The most important things in Simon Murray's life are football, friends, and film-in that order. His friends despair of him ever meeting someone, but despite his loneliness, Simon is cautious about looking for more. Then his best friends drag him to a party, where he barges into a football conversation and ends up defending the honour of star forward Declan Tyler-unaware that the athlete is present. In that first awkward meeting, neither man has any idea they will change each other's lives forever.Like his entire family, Simon revels in living in Melbourne, the home of Australian Rules football and mecca…
I am an art school dropout and recovering rock critic who, since 1981, has published a dozen books on Australian music and popular culture, plus worked extensively in television and as a freelance journalist. I'm too old to be called an enfant terrible, but with the way I still seem to be able to court controversy, I must remain some sort of loose cannon! Sydney’s Sun-Herald has called me "our best chronicler of Australian grass-roots culture," and that’s a tag I’m flattered by but which does get at what I’ve always been interested in. I consider myself a historian who finds resonances where most don’t even bother to look, in our own backyard, yesterday, and the fact that so much of my backlist including Inner City Sound, Highway to Hell, Buried Country, Golden Miles, History is Made at Night, and Stranded are still in print, I take as vindication I’m on the right track…
Sometimes a book comes completely out of nowhere. Such was the case with Trevor Conomy’s Down Under. Conomy was not an author with a pedigree in music journalism or anything like that, but when Down Under came out, in 2015, it spoke for itself. The life story of a song – Melbourne pub band Men At Work’s “Down Under” – what makes the book compelling is not so much the story of its fluky success, when in 1982 it become a huge hit all round the world, but rather the aftermath: How more than a quarter-century later the song went to court against a copyright infringement claim. That it lost the case was a travesty and a human tragedy, and Conomy’s short, punchy little book reveals why in all its gory detail.
This is the biography not of a person but of one of the most loved and controversial songs in the history of Australian music.
Originally released as a B-side in 1980, 'Down Under' made Men at Work the biggest band on the planet. The song became an alternative Australian anthem and its video (recorded on the sand dunes of Cronulla) became an image of Australia recognised the world over.
Even when Men at Work suddenly disappeared, 'Down Under' remained in the national psyche. Nearly three decades later, Spicks and Specks innocently revealed a link between the song and the tune…
I am so grateful that my book club chooses one Australian classic each year – otherwise I may not have found this remarkable piece of writing by a 22 year old Randolph Stow.
To The Islands is a Lear-like journey in the strange country of one man's soul. Set in a remote part of Australia's north-west, the novel tracks the last days of a worn-out Anglican missionary, weaving between the landscape and his mind as he searches for the islands of death and mystery.
Written back in the 1950s, against a background of black-white fear and violence, it is a work of mesmerizing power. Its compassionate message is as potent and relevant today as it was back then.
A novel which won the 1958 Miles Franklin and Melbourne Book Fair Awards. It is the story of an old missionary whose faith has deserted him and who, after a crisis at the mission, sets out on a journey of self-discovery through landscape as desolate as the state of his soul.
I’ve been fascinated by crime since I was young, at first reading historical true crime and then reading widely in the crime fiction genre. What intrigues me about crime is the sense of the world being broken, and although the perpetrator might be caught and punished, their actions forever change the world. I was a member of a crime book group that focused on crime novels, and I’ve reviewed a number of true crime books. I’ve also attended and spoken at the Bristol Crime Fest–an annual festival of crime writing. I regularly give talks on crime writing and how, as a crime writer, I go about picking the perfect poison.
I lived in Australia for several years and loved visiting historic buildings with their wrap-around verandas, pressed-tin high ceilings, and old-world grandeur. Greenwood’s books, set in 1920s Melbourne, remind me of those buildings. Her heroine, investigator Phryne Fisher, epitomizes 1920s glamour.
She’s wealthy, educated, sexy, and self-assured, and conducts her investigations in a dazzling array of sumptuous outfits. But what I like most about Phryne is her ability to talk to anyone, whether that’s the grandest society hostess or the roughest docker.
In this book, she’s investigating a series of murders in a theatre and also finds herself drawn to Melbourne’s Chinese community. She moves easily between worlds, often kind, always shrewd, never flinching.
From the author of the bestselling Phryne Fisher Series comes Ruddy Gore, the next historical mystery featuring the unstoppable, elegant amateur sleuth. Can Miss Fisher use her theater ties to take care of a phantasm haunting a Gilbert and Sullivan show?
"The appeal of this story is the glimpse it provides into the 1920s theater world and the opportunity it affords to observe Phryne and Lin Chung's romance from its inception."―Booklist
Perfect for Fans of Rhys Bowen and Jacqueline Winspear
Inspired the Netflix show Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Movie Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears Currently Streaming on Acorn…
