BIOGRAPHY

A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern

A thoughtful memoir by the former prime minister of New Zealand. Ardern’s story opens at a nervous crossroads: She may or may not be on the verge of assuming the leadership of her country, depending on the entanglements of parliamentary backroom brokering, and she may or may not be pregnant. It turns out that she both wins the job and is with child, which leads to the first of many critical moments she faces, with a sharp question raised: “Is it okay for the prime minister to take maternity leave while in office?” The scrutiny was already intense. At 37, Ardern was the country’s youngest leader in more than a century and a half, was a woman, was a leader of the leftist Labour Party—and, incidentally, was a lapsed Mormon. For all that, Ardern writes, in her first 100 days in office she and her team pushed through numerous reforms, including world-leading work on combating climate change, committing her country to carbon neutrality by 2050, “not because we want to…but because we have to.” No sooner did Ardern say those words than did news break of the Christchurch mass shootings of Muslim New Zealanders, which prompted changing gun laws that involved “debating the line between meaningful reform and onerous burden.” Add to that, soon after, the ravages of Covid-19. Thanks to a lockdown and general conformity to social distancing rules, New Zealand’s life expectancy increased, Ardern notes. But even so, a swirl of online conspiracy theories fueled a kind of homegrown MAGA movement whose members even occupied Parliament, as if to ape the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack. It’s small wonder that Ardern resigned in 2023, a decision she relates with pained honesty about whether she had the will to continue in the job. An account of life in the political trenches that is alternately inspiring and dispiriting. Kirkus Reviews, May 2025.

A Voice for the Voiceless by the Dalai Lama

A subtly reasoned argument for a free Tibet after 75 years of Chinese occupation. “The responsibility for the nation and people of Tibet was placed upon me the moment I was recognized as the Dalai Lama at the age of two.” When he became Tibet’s leader at 16, the year Chinese soldiers swarmed into the formerly independent nation, he entered into numerous discussions with Mao Zedong (“truly unlike anyone I had met”), Zhou Enlai (“clever and smooth-talking”), and other Communist leaders, one of whom warned him that he should flee because Tibet would meet the same fate as Hungary, freshly crushed by the Soviets. When it became apparent that Mao intended to absorb Tibet as a strategic buffer and as part of the symbolic restoration of “territories that had once been part of the Manchu Qing empire,” the Dalai Lama went into exile and, as he notes, has never since been able to return to his native land. “Mao probably realized that with me gone out of Tibet,” he writes, “China would struggle with the question of legitimacy both of their authority and their presence in Tibet. He was right.” Today, he adds, the regime of Xi Jinping is bent on assimilating Tibet, suppressing religious practices, and removing children to Mandarin-speaking boarding schools. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama still finds hope for Tibet in the roiling undercurrents of Chinese society—the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, for example, which, he holds, by no means “marks the end of the Chinese people’s quest for greater freedom, dignity, and democracy.” A surprising discovery is that the Dalai Lama has long been willing to leave Tibet within the People’s Republic of China, but with control over its own internal affairs and a democratic government. An autonomous Tibet? As envisioned here, that would surely be the Dalai Lama’s greatest legacy. Kirkus Reviews, April 2025.

The Unseen Anzac by Jeff Maynard

Jeff Maynard is an author, documentary maker, broadcaster, editor and book reviewer from Melbourne. His previous book ‘Wings of Ice’ is about the Polar Air Race. The Unseen Anzac is the story of George Hubert Wilkins, later Sir Hubert Wilkins; polar explorer, pilot, Army captain, skilled and dedicated wartime photographer and extraordinarily brave man. The book is divided into three logical sections: Part I is about Wilkins’ early life until August 1917 when he was appointed an official photographer to the AIF. By then he had already been recognized for his polar exploits and photographic skills. Part II is the main focus of the book and covers his time as official war photographer until June 1919. Part III covers from June 1919 to the present, his life after the war and his many exploits, which is probably worthy of a further book. He died in the United States in 1958. The book details his extraordinary work as an official war photographer, assigned to Charles Bean. Wilkins was very much influenced by Bean’s desire to ensure an accurate record of what Australians did during the Great War and to collect and catalogue artifacts, art, photographs and Bean’s detailed written record for future generations. While not the only official photographer, Wilkins was certainly the most prolific and dedicated. He was fastidious about annotating exactly when and where photographs were taken and identifying units and soldiers involved, if not so diligent about claiming credit for his work! Wilkins spent months on the front line, going ‘over the top’ such as at Polygon Wood. He took photographs from no-man’s land looking back to the Australian lines. He was wounded, had his equipment damaged several times and was awarded the Military Cross and Bar as an unarmed correspondent. General Monash in a speech described Wilkins as the bravest man in the AIF! The book contains a selection of photographs of battlefields, places and his life. The author also provides an outline of other photographs of battles and places and some of the background to the actual photography. This includes AWM serial numbers for those who wish to do further research. There is a useful Bibliography and Notes as well as a brief list of military acronyms to help the reader. The author has produced a well-researched account of a unique Australian who made a major contribution to our understanding of WWI. The book is well written and easy to read, especially through the operations of 1917-1918. It is an excellent account of the life of an extraordinary Australian and should be of interest to many general readers. Military History and Heritage Victoria, May 2016.

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GENERAL FICTION

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels including Anxious People and A Man Called Ove. His writing is lovingly detailed, and his stories have been described as warmhearted, charming, wise, funny, and powerful. As a reader, I’ve loved how Backman’s stories capture one from the very first page. I’ve long admired the way his stories are written: pages filled with compassionate characters, wonderful details, and beautiful descriptions. That’s why I was so thrilled to read his latest novel, My Friends. The story of My Friends follows the lives of four friends during one particular summer and how from that one summer a famous painting was created which features these four friends. The story also follows an eighteen-year-old girl named Louisa. To tell the story of Louisa and the four friends in the painting the chapters in My Friends alternate between the present and the past. The present story belongs to Louisa while the past story (taking place twenty-five years earlier) belongs to teenagers Joar, Ted, Ali, and the artist (who painted the famous painting). The novels of Fredrik Backman feature themes of loss, change, sadness, grief, the power of friendship and how life can be complicated and at times messy, but there are also themes of joy, hope, and second chances. My Friends carries on some of these themes through the character of Louisa, who is grieving the loss of her best friend. Louisa finds her only comfort in the form of a picture postcard with a painting printed on it; a postcard she took from one of the many foster homes she lived in. It “was the first thing Louisa ever stole” and “the first really beautiful thing she ever touched.” The power of friendship, change, and hope features prominently in the story of the four friends. Especially touching is the way the friends leave each other at the end of the long summer days they spend together. They simply say to each other “Tomorrow.” To them “Tomorrow” is a promise, a strength they offer each other to get through the evenings—because though their days are filled with sunshine and hanging out and laughing together at a pier in their seaside hometown, their evenings are filled with abuse, anger, frustration and pain. The novel takes an in-depth look at friendship and what it means to be a friend, to be so close and to know each other so well—to have a bond so deep, that it can create an unforgettable and cherished work of art, capturing one moment in time, that will affect the life of a young woman twenty-five years in the future. Backman’s words take us into the world of these four friends, so you can smell the sea air, hear the laughter, and experience the joy of being young and reckless. His words help us to see the smallness of their world and the frustration of their home lives. At the same time, we can feel the grief Louisa experiences and the way she is a survivor. I enjoyed the time spent with the four friends and Louisa, and the way the novel really hits its stride when the story of Louisa and the four friends intertwines when two characters meet and take a cross-country journey. There is much in My Friends that fans of Backman and those new to his novels will love. It’s a tender heartwarming novel exploring the challenges and joys of life itself, of loving and trusting others, of unexpected change and unexpected hope. Chicago Review of Books, May 2025.

On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

Our narrator, stuck in place temporally, looks for a change in scenery. The first book in this seven-volume novel series introduced readers to Tara Selter, a bookseller who has mysteriously been forced to relive November 18th over and over. In that book, Tara chronicled her sometimes desperate efforts to recruit her husband for clues about the rationale behind her predicament. As the second book opens, a year of reliving the same day with no explanation hasn’t exactly defeated Tara, but she’s listless: “I have no pattern of sounds and silence around which to organize my day, I have no plans, I have no calendar.” And no changing seasons, either—the bulk of the book chronicles Tara’s efforts to travel across Europe to capture the sensations of winter, summer, and spring that reliving the same day has denied her. From France, she heads to her native Belgium, where she visits her family, then heads to Norway for winter, London for a sense of a rainy spring, southern France for a whiff of summer. After two years of traveling, she settles in Dusseldorf, Germany, where she sinks into a fall-like contemplation of her next move. A cliffhanger ending suggests an accelerating plot in the coming books, but here Tara’s situation is more an opportunity for Balle to consider how much our identity is tied to sensory details and our sense of time’s passage: “I want the cold and dark of winter, not just a single day of showers and chilly sunlight, not just mild days with rain and more rain, not just gray skies and a nip in the air.” Tara contemplates this intellectually: An ancient Roman coin she carries with her is a symbol of history, boundaries, and mortality, but Haveland’s translation also captures the twitchy urge to both keep moving and seek the comforts of home. A speculative, lyrical study of our sensory self. Kirkus Reviews, October 2024.

The Manuscript by Lucy Bloom

What do you do if you’re a successful author and you get dudded by the men in your life? Turn them into characters in your book and kill them off. At least that’s the approach Edith Scott takes. After five successful books, Edith decides to switch genres and write an action thriller. She has financial stability and, as she approaches her 40s, her life is freer than before. She loves exploring the world of online dating and having sex with handsome men. There’s Dan in Sydney, Julien in Paris, Hugo from London, and other minor dalliances. But the men she cares about are not always kind in return. When she is unexpectedly ghosted, she decides to take her revenge by writing them into her novel and killing them off. If only she knew that real life is also dealing with them in ways Edith never expected … This entertaining and thought-provoking novel is set in Sydney, Paris, London, Berlin and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s a humorous look at online dating, modern relationships and the funny coincidences that life serves up, with a good dose of karma thrown in. The Manuscript is a fun, fast-paced read. Good Reading Magazine, April 2023.

 The First Gentleman by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

The former president teams up again with the industrial-strength tale-spinner to deliver an action-packed mystery. Cole Wright is in big trouble. Thanks to the dogged diggings of former Boston Globe reporter Garrett Wilson and his partner, sometime lawyer Brea Cooke, the former New England Patriots tight end is on trial for murdering his cheerleader girlfriend 17 years earlier. Thing is, Cole is now married to Madeline Parson Wright, the president of the United States. Of them, Brea spits, “They’re not a couple—they’re a damn criminal enterprise.” Garrett and Brea are shopping a book in which they claim to have hard evidence that Cole Wright killed Suzanne Bonanno, but as they probe deeper into the story, things become murky: Mafiosi, a contract killer, FBI agents, overworked cops, a law professor with deep insight into Cole’s enemies, and sleek political operatives all wait their turn to complicate the tale. For all the tangled threads, Clinton and Patterson turn in a taut yarn that’s satisfyingly stuffed with red herrings, a neatly engineered conspiracy, and more than a few dead bodies. One is tempted, of course, to read between the lines: The first gentleman is, after all, married to the first woman president, and there’s a vast right-wing effort to stymie her efforts to forge a “Grand Bargain” that, among other things, is going to “increase the legal immigration quota by a million people per year for a decade,” raise the corporate tax rate to an ironclad 15%, and “bring back Al Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative from the 1990s.” Suffice it to say that the primary audience for the book is not the MAGA crowd. Carefully constructed, entertaining escapism with a political edge, and just the thing for beach or airplane reading. Kirkus Reviews, June 2025.

One Hundred Flowers by Genki Kawamura

Genki Kawamura’s “One Hundred Flowers” is a tender meditation on memory, familial bonds, and the evanescence of everyday moments. The story orbits around Yuriko, a seemingly serene piano teacher whose quiet New Year’s Eve reunion with her son, Izumi, masks the turbulence of a past never fully addressed. Years ago, Yuriko mysteriously disappeared for an entire year—a vanishing that was neither explained nor confronted. Now, as she begins to slip into the fog of memory loss, the emotional reverberations of that absence resurface, compelling her family to grapple with what was left unsaid. Kawamura’s prose is imbued with a delicate lyricism, capturing life’s fleeting, almost imperceptible joys—the perfume of a solitary bloom, the hush of a twilight bookshop, the promise of a blank diary page. These sensory details act as fragile threads connecting Yuriko’s fading present with her once-vivid past. As Izumi braces himself for impending fatherhood, he becomes desperate to uncover the woman behind the silence before her recollections dissolve entirely. At its core, the novel is a masterclass in portraying the intricacies of love, regret, and emotional distance within families. Kawamura paints his characters with nuance and grace, allowing their inner conflicts to unfold with quiet intensity. Through Yuriko and Izumi, the narrative explores the unspoken legacies we inherit and the deep ache of not knowing those closest to us. The novel’s central motif—learning to release the past with compassion—resonates with quiet power, offering solace in the face of inevitable loss. “One Hundred Flowers” distinguishes itself as a poignant exploration of impermanence and reconciliation. Kawamura’s understated storytelling, paired with Cathy Hirano’s elegant translation, offers a contemplative window into human vulnerability. As The Japan Times notes, the novel’s charm lies in its realism and emotional authenticity. For readers who find beauty in the stillness of ordinary life and the emotional terrain of memory and forgiveness, this is a profoundly affecting read. Storizens, April 2025.

The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club by Martha Hall Kelly

Kelly (Lilac Girls) delivers a transporting tale of a grieving 30-something woman who uncovers family secrets during a visit to Martha’s Vineyard. After Mari Starwood’s mother dies of an aneurysm in Los Angeles, she finds the name and address of famous painter Elizabeth Devereaux among her mother’s belongings. Wondering what her mother’s connection was to the painter, Mari travels across the country to meet the elderly woman on Martha’s Vineyard. There, Elizabeth tells Mari the story of two sisters on the island during WWII—19-year-old aspiring writer Cadence Smith and her 16-year-old sister, Briar, who is obsessed with looking for German U-boats off the New England coast. Kelly adds plenty of intrigue to the plot, as Elizabeth reveals how Briar’s interest in the enemy’s activities gets her into serious trouble. Meanwhile, a tragic subplot follows the Smith girls’ older brother, Tom, who ships out with the Navy just after getting his blue-blooded girlfriend pregnant. The connections between the story lines come into focus as Mari grapples with a newfound understanding of her relationship to the island. This twisty tale is not to be missed. Publisher’s Weekly, May 2025.

Twist by Colum McCann

A (fictional) Irish writer explores brokenness in McCann’s latest. Anthony Fennell is at sea. Not literally, at least at first. The Irish writer and narrator of McCann’s latest novel finds himself with a “stagnant” career and “unsure what fiction or drama could do anymore.” He’s drinking too much and writing too little. “What I needed was a story about connection, about grace, about repair,” he says. He gets it when a magazine editor asks him to profile a crew that repairs breaks in the underwater cables carrying information across continents. Fennell soon sets off to South Africa to meet fellow Irishman John Conway, the chief of mission for the Georges Lecointe, a ship that works in the Atlantic Ocean. Fennell sets sail with Conway and his crew after a series of ruptures in cables near Congo; at first, he is beset by seasickness, but soon rallies and learns as much as he can about Conway. It’s not much; the engineer and diver plays his cards close to the vest. He opens up a little after his partner, a Black South African actress named Zanele, is viciously attacked in England. But not long after, the crew is rocked by a disappearance, and Fennell goes back to South Africa, unsure what to make of his stint on the sea. This is a deeply interior novel, and McCann does an elegant job depicting Fennell as a man wrestling with something that might be a midlife crisis, but might be something much deeper. As usual, his writing astounds; McCann hasn’t lost the shining prose that marked his earlier novels like Let the Great World Spin (2009). What a beautiful, sparkling book this is. Another astounding novel from a fiction master. Kirkus Reviews, January 2025.

You Are Here by David Nicholls

Two solitary adults take the plunge into postpandemic socialization to quell their growing discomfort from loneliness. Marnie Walsh, a 38-year-old London copy editor, embraces the fact that she has more control over her time than her friends with spouses and children do—but she starts to question the appeal of her lifestyle when an autogenerated year-in-review photo compilation reveals only “her oven light-bulb, a recipe for hearty lentil soup, a close-up of an ingrowing hair…all accompanied by Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend.’” Marnie’s most steadfast friend, Cleo Fraser, is eager to capitalize on Marnie’s recent self-awareness and invites her on a trip to the northern countryside. This is much to the dismay of Cleo’s colleague, geography teacher Michael Bradshaw, who had planned this walk across northern England from west coast to east as a solo undertaking. Michael is just as lonely as Marnie but even more depressed. While Marnie’s coping mechanism is a Bridget Jonesian style of self-deprecating humor, Michael’s is to walk the countryside until numbness sets in. Cleo’s intention is to bring a group of singleton friends together, but given Michael’s recent, painful separation from his wife, “trying to picture himself on a date now was like trying to imagine himself bungee-jumping, theoretically possible but under what circumstances?” As Michael and Marnie walk together, they begin to banter, and the fresh air and copious pints at trailside pubs revive long-buried versions of themselves. Like their arduous walk, this love story isn’t glamorous or fast-paced but it’s worth the mileage. Given the witty dialogue and sublime natural settings (think Wordsworth and Brontë), it’s not hard to imagine this as another of Nicholls’ big-screen adaptations, like One Day (2009). A relatable and satisfyingly realistic love story to cure any lingering lockdown blues. Kirkus Reviews, May 2024.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A female astronaut in the 1980s encounters sexism and finds romance as she chases her dreams. Joan Goodwin has always been obsessed with space, which is why she became an astrophysics professor at Rice University. But then, something happens that she’s only dreamed about—NASA announces that it’s looking for female scientists to join the space program. Joan is accepted on her second try, and in 1980, she begins training with a group of male and female candidates who, while all brilliant, have a wide range of personalities. Some of the men are sexist and spend most of their time cracking offensive jokes, but Joan finds a friend in kind-hearted pilot Hank Redmond, who gives her plenty of opportunities to learn. Joan finds both camaraderie and competition among the women—there’s determined Lydia Danes, who embodies the “I’m not here to make friends” ethos, and the more supportive Vanessa Ford, who quickly becomes one of Joan’s most trusted allies. As the group trains together, they begin to feel like a family—and as Joan grows closer to Vanessa, she realizes that life on Earth may contain just as many wonders as the cosmos. The story cuts back and forth between a disaster in 1984 and the story of Joan’s journey through the space program. Reid keeps the tension high, making this perhaps her most propulsive novel yet as she balances the drama of Joan’s personal life with the fast-paced action of a catastrophe in space. Even with the high-stakes action, the touching and surprising love story is the emotional heart of the book. A heart-pounding race against the clock combined with a love story adds up to a novel that’s impossible to put down. Kirkus Reviews, May 2025.

Count My Lies by Sophie Stava

A woman with a penchant for deceit becomes entangled with a wealthy couple who live in a world where nothing is quite what it seems. Sloane Caraway lies about everything to everyone because “the truth is so uninteresting.” But behind the easy bravado is a young woman who longs to feel special in ways that her often difficult working-class life never allowed. When she runs into Jay, a handsome game developer, in a Brooklyn park, she presents herself as a nurse named Caitlin. She tends to Jay’s bee-stung daughter with assumed authority, all while dreaming of another encounter. She gets her wish when she meets Jay’s wife, Violet, in the same park and receives an invitation to their home. Asked to become a nanny for the couple’s daughter, Sloane enters a world that is anything but perfect. Stava engages readers start to finish not only with characters who hide their motivations from each other, but also a narrative built on unexpected twists: As much as Sloane wants to literally become Violet and have her beautiful life, Violet wants nothing more than to dispense with her identity and escape a cheating husband who loves her only for her money. Shifting points of view add psychological complexity to each of the three main characters. There are no heroes or villains in this story: only people drawn to each other for things—like money or freedom—that they desire enough to engage in dangerous games of deception. This compelling, tautly plotted book will appeal not only to lovers of Gone Girl–style tales of suspense but anyone with a taste for smart, well-crafted fiction. A page-turning thrill ride of a story from a debut novelist. Kirkus Reviews, January 2025.

Tom Clancy’s Line of Demarcation by M. P. Woodward

Woodward’s top-notch latest Jack Ryan Jr. novel (after Tom Clancy: Shadow State) finds the Campus, a covert government organization, locked in a deadly contest between the Russians, corrupt foreign officials, and an international drug lord. Lead Campus operator Ryan is in Georgetown, Guyana, working undercover as the CEO of Athena Global Shipping Lines. Guyana has recently begun to exploit a massive new oil field that promises to be the largest previously untapped reserve in the world. Jack is lunching with Guyana’s minister of the interior and attorney general when he’s caught in sudden crossfire. He escapes, but the two officials are killed, setting in motion a multipronged plot that finds separate teams of Campus agents tasked with fighting a Russia-backed Guyanese coup and rescuing Campus operator Domingo “Ding” Chavez, who’s deep undercover with a drug gang. Woodward juggles each subplot with aplomb, and ushers the proceedings toward the exact sort of explosive climax Clancy readers expect (with bonus points for the inclusion of hydrogen-powered killer Jet Skis). It’s a standout entry in the series. Publisher’s Weekly, May 2025.

Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang

Zhang debuts with a witty and insightful thriller about the pitfalls of influencer culture. Julie Chan and her twin sister, Chloe, were four years old when their parents died in a car accident. Chloe was adopted by the Van Huusens—an affluent couple in New York City—while Julie was sent to live with her grouchy, penny-pinching aunt. Now, at 24, Chloe and her luxurious lifestyle have attracted over a million social media followers, lucrative brand partnerships, and frequent all-expenses-paid trips to exotic locales. Julie, meanwhile, spends her days scanning coupons behind a cash register at SuperFoods. After years without contact, Chloe calls Julie and delivers a brief, garbled “I’m sorry” before she’s cut off. A worried Julie heads for New York, where she finds her sister dead. When the police mistake Julie for Chloe, the temptation proves overpowering, and she decides to step into her twin’s designer shoes. Suddenly, Julie is welcomed into the upper echelon of the country’s influencers—but she soon discovers that the newfound attention brings with it the kind of danger that may have cost Chloe her life. Zhang offsets the novel’s fast and entertaining first two acts with a gonzo final third, displaying impressive audacity for a newbie. It’s a marvel. Publisher’s Weekly,  April 2025.

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HISTORICAL FICTION

Tyrant by Conn Iggulden

The middle entry in a trilogy—following Nero (2024)—about Roman Emperor Nero’s turbulent life. In the year 50, the 30-something Agrippina marries the 60-something Emperor Claudius, who adopts her son, Lucius, and renames him Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. The young lad is a handful, having managed with his friends to kill their tutor with a sack full of wasps. Luckily, he’s a minor and has his mother’s fierce protection. Quite the beauty, Agrippina “strangles poor Claudius in her skirts” and is rightly called “a destroyer.” Enemies seek to disgrace her and expose her to Claudius as a “faithless whore.” She kills him with foxglove powder supplied by her auspex, Locusta, opening the door for Nero to become emperor at age 16. But wait, what about Britannicus, the emperor’s biological son? Claudius said he’s next in line to be emperor, but the boy is an obstacle in the way of Agrippina’s ambition. Younger than Nero, Britannicus is but a pesky detail. Earlier, Nero tried to get him killed in a chariot race and nearly succeeded. Iggulden weaves a complex yarn based on events reported 50 years after the fact by writers such as Tacitus, so readers may wonder if the real Nero was as nasty as he appears to be. The best answer is to call it fiction and enjoy. Many details are marvelous, like the mock naval battles held in arenas that Roman engineers flood with sea water. It’s about the depravity of a mother and son seeking raw power and about the clash of wills that proves her undoing. Great characters, superb storytelling. Kirkus Reviews, April 2025.

The Cardinal by Allison Weir

Weir (the Six Tudor Queens series) delivers an insightful tale of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s rise to power, his friendship with Henry VIII, and the ways in which both men’s lives are complicated by their love affairs. Wolsey, the son of a butcher, enters the priesthood after attending Oxford. In 1509, he’s tapped to become a member of the Tudor Court’s Privy Council under Henry, all while maintaining a secret affair with Joan, the sister of a fellow priest. Wolsey quickly establishes himself as Henry’s trusted adviser, eventually earning the title of lord chancellor. While reveling in the king’s trust and representing him in dealings with the French monarch, Wolsey becomes the target of nobles who resent his influence over Henry. The tension boils over after the king becomes enamored of Anne Boleyn and Wolsey tries and fails to obtain an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon, leading to charges of treason against Wolsey. The prose can be clumsy (Wolsey is seen “resolutely quelling his teeming thoughts”), but Weir capably dramatizes the cleric’s desperate quest to remain in the king’s favor, even as he yearns for a “parallel life” in which he could live openly with Joan. It’s an immersive tale of Tudor intrigue. Publishers’ Weekly, May 2025.

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MYSTERY

Nightshade by Michael Connelly

For almost 40 years, Michael Connelly has shown readers the grit and grime behind the glamorous veneer of the City of Angels; first as an award-winning newspaper reporter then as inarguably one of the greatest crime novelists of recent decades, setting a high bar across nearly 40 novels, many featuring iconic detective Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch. As the excellent Bosch: Legacy streaming adaptation finishes its run, Connelly continues to expand his fictional universe. Nightshade introduces a new hero, and new setting. Thanks to department politics and a great ability to step on the wrong toes, LA County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has swapped homicide investigations on the mainland for low-key policing on rustic Catalina Island, a land of exiles and misfit toys. But when the body of an unidentified young woman is pulled from the bottom of the harbour, Stilwell can’t resist encroaching on the investigation. Risking his career, and more, to uncover the truth. As with a brilliant guitarist performing onstage, who makes things seem far easier than they are, there is a deceptive effortlessness to Connelly’s storytelling that belies the high level of craft. Nightshade unfolds in a smooth narrative, speckled with telling details about character and place, incorporated with practised ease into an intriguing, page-turning mystery. Another terrific read from an exceptional storyteller. Good Reading, May 2025.

  Whisky Valley by Joan Sauers

We are back in the Southern Highlands with Rose and her eclectic band of family and friends. As with Echo Lake, her first murder mystery, the action comes thick and fast, almost at hurricane speed, with Rose at its centre with the different storylines, swirling fast paced around her. Rose had moved to the Southern Highlands to find herself after a divorce and live a quiet, contented life with her dog. Excited about an upcoming classical music festival about to take place in the area, Rose is ecstatic to learn that the brilliant star is a long-time friend of her son, Sam. After the first concert, Billy, Sam’s friend, goes missing, together with a priceless violin loaned to him by a wealthy patron. Billy turns up dead, murdered, and Sam becomes the main suspect. Rose immediately springs into action to prove Sam’s innocence. The fast-paced plot sees Rose find love and dealing with unexpected information concerning her beloved Father’s death – all the while probing every possible lead to find the killer. Hold onto your hats … one minute Rose is in Sydney, on the trail of the priceless violin and the next minute she is surrendering to hot passion by the side of the creek! The author ensures we never lose interest in the plot by giving each of the satellite characters a crisis of their own, all intertwined with Rose. There is an interesting thread that runs throughout … the author deftly illustrates the damage done by familial lies but also why there are certain secrets that should be kept hidden. A very good read. Good Reading, June 2025.

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NON FICTION

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POETRY

Let The Light Pour In by Lemn Sissay

Let the Light Pour In is “an experiment in hope”. For 10 years, the My Name Is Why author had been rising at dawn each day, writing a poem and posting it on social media. Those poems have since been turned into songs and tattoos, and emblazoned as murals on city walls. The project also yielded this collection of poems about early morning and the meeting of darkness and light. In his introduction, Sissay says that poetry is “a daily practice. My meditation. It can take minutes or hours. A friend advised me to ‘Wake with enthusiasm to the dawning of each day’. I like that ‘cause when I write I feel like I am opening the windows to let the light pour in.” The poems, narrated with verve and charm by their author, feature conversations between night and light – “‘How do you do it?’ said night / ‘How do you wake up and shine?’ ‘I keep it simple,’ said light / ‘One day at a time’” – and between head and heart. While there is a tendency towards mawkishness in some, others are witty or profound, telling of love, resilience and the power of nature and the elements (“The moon tells the sky / The sky tells the sea / The sea tells the tide / And the tide tells me”). In this season of short days and long, dark nights, Let the Light Pour In’s bite-size verse seeks to remind us that darkness is fleeting and that, whatever may be bringing us down, light is around the corner. The Guardian, January 2024.

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ROMANCE

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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

In terms of sheer scope and volume, there’s rarely been a better time to be a fantasy fan. More people than ever are reading in this space than ever before, spread across a wide variety of popular subgenres. There’s dystopian fantasy, urban fantasy, cozy fantasy, and of course, romantasy, which is dominating so much of the publishing industry at the moment. As someone who reads in all these spaces, it’s genuinely so exciting to see the impressive creative variety of the titles hitting shelves. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed by this influx of new kinds of stories and are secretly longing for a book that feels like the best kind of old-school fantasy throwback, then Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils is for you. A doorstopper of an epic that clocks in at over 500 pages, The Devils has a little bit of everything: A high fantasy world with deeply considered lore and history, a squad of morally gray central characters bound together whether they want to be or not, and a seemingly impossible quest. There are also monsters, magic, religious strife, murder, and betrayal of almost every stripe, and a variety of complex relationships that run the gamut from familial to romantic. Despite its epic size and scope, the story is propulsive and briskly paced, easy to follow, and features an alternative version of medieval Europe with plenty of sly, entertaining nods to the more obvious differences that will delight history buffs. The story follows the titular Devils, known more formally as the servants of the Church of the Holy Expediency. They’re a group of criminals, monsters, and other undesirables who are working off their various ecclesiastical convictions in the service of Her Holiness Pope Benedicta, the youngest (at just ten years old) to ever hold her position. But, despite her youth, she is powerful in the ways of magic, and firm in her convictions that evil (or devils in this case) can be deployed in the service of good. If you’ve seen any variation of Suicide Squad, you’ve heard all this before, but it’s as effective a set-up as ever. Evocative and atmospheric, The Devils’ world is vividly rendered, from the crowded streets of the Holy City in which our tale begins, to the various villages and pilgrim camps they visit along the way. There’s blood, violence, and no small amount of shockingly descriptive gore. The book is stuffed with battle sequences and action set-pieces, ranging from a haunted house where our heroes have to use severed heads to communicate their positions to a high-seas battle with what is essentially a squadron of crab-people. Most of the Devils’ adversaries (save for a pair who show up towards the story’s end) are largely one-note and unmemorable—save for the one royal cousin who has somehow managed to sew literal wings onto his body. Delightfully unhinged in all the best ways, this is a book that’s as much about vibes as it is about plot, and the vibes are (not to put to papal a spin on it) pretty darn immaculate. The character dialogue and banter is top notch, and the story is unafraid to acknowledge the trauma that dogs its heroes’ heels and has helped shape them into who they are. This is a crew I’d go on many more adventures with—and hopefully we’ll get the chance to do just that. Paste Magazine, May 2025.

The Book That Held Her Heart by Mark Lawrence

The feeling of emotional devastation lingers long after closing the back cover of Mark Lawrence’s The Book That Held Her Heart, the final volume of his mind-bending Library Trilogy, which began with the highly acclaimed The Book That Wouldn’t Burn and continued with its sequel, The Book That Broke the World. The centerpiece of the Library Trilogy is the Athenaeum, an infinitely large library that, according to legend, was designed and constructed by Irad, the grandson of Cain and great-grandson of Adam and Eve. Irad is embroiled in an age-old battle with his brother, Jaspeth, who vows to destroy the Library to free humanity from the yoke of memory and the corrupting influence of knowledge. The Library becomes a literal and figurative battleground in this epic war between knowledge and ignorance, a battle that began between Irad and Jaspeth but continues with their proxies across every age and land. The two lead protagonists of the Library Trilogy are Livira, a young woman whose fate becomes intertwined with that of the Library, and Evar, a young man who grows up trapped inside the Library and raised, together with his four adopted siblings, by two android-like figures known as the Assistant and the Soldier. While Livira and Evar’s storylines are already well established during the first two volumes of the Library Trilogy, The Book That Held Her Heart opens with a new point-of-view character, Anne Hoffman. Anne is a Jewish girl living under Nazi rule in prewar Germany. She grows up in the peace of her grandfather’s secondhand bookshop, until her sanctuary is pierced by the twin evils of antisemitism and fascism. Mark Lawrence has taken a major gamble by incorporating a real-world storyline in his fantasy universe, but in a trilogy about book burning, the inclusion of Anne’s perspective seems both natural and timely. Lawrence quotes the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote in his 1820–1821 play Almansor the famous admonition, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen,” which translates as, “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.” The Book That Held Her Heart deals with some very weighty themes, including dehumanization of “the other,” the double-edged sword of memory, and the inherent danger of knowledge in the absence of wisdom. Mark Lawrence handles all of these themes with depth and nuance. Fortunately, these heavy themes never bog down the story itself, which maintains a brisk pace throughout. This is a hard balance to pull off, and I marvel at Lawrence’s ability to keep the reader thoroughly engaged and entertained while also delivering a philosophical and emotional gut-punch to his unsuspecting readers. Grim Dark Magazine, November 2024.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

“This is what the human story is, not the emperors and the generals and their wars, but the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing.” Kim Stanley Robinson has a view of historical process that is refreshingly other to that of much science fiction. Even his Great Men (and Women) live in a social context and are bearers, rather than creators, of historical significance. His “Mars trilogy” covers centuries of progress and the “terraforming” of Mars into a habitable place, a liveable society. This new book is a thought experiment that asks: what if medieval Europe had been wiped out by the Black Death? In a sense, not a lot. The seven centuries covered in The Years of Rice and Salt include genocide and exploitation and universal war, just as they include the growth of feminism, the discovery of the telescope and the Enlightenment. Robinson assumes that the West that Europe became is not in possession of special virtues, but that other cultures had their own equivalents of its vices. The world he shows us is not better or worse: very different in surface details, but much the same at its core. It is the worst of times; it has the possibility of becoming the best of times. But 700 years is a long span to make cohere as a novel. In the Mars books, Robinson simply had various protagonists be pioneers of life-extension as well as of planetary colonisation. Here, the recurring characters are three and more souls endlessly reincarnated and struggling to remember the purpose – of universal betterment – to which they swore themselves centuries earlier. Without, in general, being major players, they manage to help inch the world along. Robinson can write action and adventure as well as anyone, but in the end this is an ethical fiction about the true purpose of humanity. His supple, thoughtful prose is always up to the challenge, whether exciting us with ideas, thrilling us with spectacle or presenting us with moments of elegy or quiet passion. It is not just the reader who, in section after section, recognises the same characters in new guises. They discover each other time and time again with delight, sometimes meeting twice in a life after early death and sometimes waiting almost until old age for that fulfilment. After years of rice and salt come moments of happiness and celebration. The Independent, March 2002.

The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan

In The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan, book three of The Empire of the Wolf trilogy, we finally find out what is driving Bartholomew Claver to such great evil. We see the dark fate of Sova and the crumbling of the Empire of the Wolf. Most importantly, we also get to see the fates of Helena and Vonvalt play out across the page. Having started out so strongly with The Justice of Kings, and then followed up with the rare achievement of an even stronger book two in The Tyranny of Faith, my hopes were absolutely sky high–and Swan has delivered on those expectations in spades. In The Trials of Empire we once again view the story through the eyes of Helena, Sir Konrad Vonvalt’s clerk-turned-retainer. Vonvalt is in a dire position as the Magistratum has been dismantled, he and his people are outlaws, and Claver is in control of a significant force of Templars with eyes on the throne. They must span the borders of the empire to find allies, allies who the emperor has spent untold lives trying to conquer and are very unlikely to want to help. And while they travel and hide and hope, waking nightmares haunt Helena, bringing dark portents and promising a far worse end for the empire than just a sword in the guts. Helena’s life seems to be on the path to a very different, far more bleak outcome than she originally hoped for when Vonvalt took her from the mud and into his service. Her internal monologue first person style once again wonderfully delivers the story, always hinting at more beyond the page, and describing her complex relationship with Vonvalt and the story through the lens of an exhausted young woman who sees herself as so small and insignificant when standing next to the colossal grandiosity of dark events she is a key part of. The slowly building, but eventually drastic change in Vonvalt and Helena’s relationship is incredibly well delivered. It shows Helena’s growth and Vonvalt delivering on his darkly prophetic words spoken in earlier books. It shows the way that life cannot be black and white, and that good people must sometimes do bad things to achieve the right outcomes for the greater good, but that this also circles back to have a profound impact on those people and their friends and families. We go deep into the otherworldly side of Swan’s world in The Trials of Empire, peeling back the religious Neman Church’s scripting and worship layers that sit over the reality of death. This theme and delivery was one of my favourite aspects of The Trials of Empire, with the depiction of the afterlife feeding on the fallen of a battle a moment where I needed to put down the book and just take in a deep breath of sheer enjoyment. Early on in The Trials of Empire, I was missing some of the legal procedural aspects of the first two books as Swan really gets his epic dark fantasy chops rolling off the page in impressive form. Throughout there are ruminations on topics such as the death penalty that give you a high level theoretical discourse on Sovan law and Helena’s views on it, but I did miss the lawman’s consistent procedural aspect and the legal banter that I enjoyed so much in books one and two. I needn’t have worried, however, as Swan did an excellent job of holding it back in a way that made sense in the circumstances until just the right moment in one of the most satisfying scenes in the entire book. The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan is a morose and satisfying ending to The Empire of the Wolf trilogy. It’s as bloody as Mathew Ward’s Legacy trilogy, as enjoyable as I could have hoped for as a reading experience, and certainly leaves a door open for more of Helena’s life to be put to page. There are very few trilogies I would commit to re-reading cover-to-cover, back-to-back, but Swan’s trilogy can take its place next to The Broken Empire, The Empires of Dust, and The First Law. Grim Dark Magazine, May 2025.

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New additions to eBooks at SMSA

eBooks & Audiobooks help

EBOOKS

A Fashionably French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

It’s 1950 in Paris, and Tabitha Knight is once again finding dead bodies. In Cambridge’s third “An American in Paris Mystery” (following A Murder Most French), Tabitha discovers the body of an up-and-coming haute-couture designer who has been strangled with a piece of lace. The next day, she finds another body (this one stabbed with scissors) inside the same fashion house. Tabitha gives in to her curious nature and investigates the murders, especially when it starts to appear that Christian Dior, or an employee of his fashion house, may be behind it all. Inspector Merveille is also investigating, and he’s not enthusiastic (or surprised) that Tabitha is involved in the case. Meanwhile, Julia Child, Tabitha’s friend and neighbor, gives her tips about life, love, and cooking. Readers will be enchanted by Cambridge’s amazing descriptions of Julia Child’s food, Parisian caf’s, and the gorgeous fashions in this pleasurable mystery set in postwar Paris. One needn’t have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this installment, but don’t be surprised if readers want to go back and see what they missed. Come for the historical Parisian setting and mystery, stay for the food and wine. Library Journal, February 2025

Liar’s Test by Ambelin Kwaymullina

Fifteen-year-old Bell Silverleaf, a Treesinger, is the only survivor of her grove, which fell to a mysterious sleeping sickness. She now lives among the Risen, worshippers of gods who used to walk among the people. The Risen invaded her land, oppressed her people, and abused her for years, which makes it even more surprising when Bell, along with six other girls, is invited to participate in the Queen’s Test, a series of challenges meant to determine the next queen, who will rule for 25 years. It’s the same outcome every cycle: two girls will die, two will fall into an endless slumber, and two will advise the winner, the next queen. Bell isn’t content with just being one of the survivors: she aims to secure the queenship and use her power to help the remaining Treesingers. But her wits may not be enough to save her when the Risen gods and her own Ancestors arrive to change the stakes of the game. While thoughtful examinations of colonization, heritage, religion, and systemic oppression are occasionally muddled, intriguing and layered worldbuilding that draws on the author’s Australian Indigenous culture steals the show in this serpentine fantasy adventure by Kwaymullina (The Things She’s Seen). Publisher’s Weekly, March 2024

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AUDIOBOOKS

The Shadows of London by Nick Jones

A time traveler ready to settle into a new home and a new reality is convinced to return to the past to prevent a gang murder. Having traveled back in time to rescue his sister Amy from her mysterious childhood disappearance in And Then She Vanished (2021), Joseph Bridgeman is in no rush to return to the past, even when friendly William P. Brown comes to Joe’s antiques shop and offers to be his time-travel mentor. Joe’s having enough trouble reconciling his new life. When he saved Amy, the previous version of him disappeared, and now he’s trying to fit into the alternate Joe’s timeline. The Joe who grew up with Amy was the family golden child, a little less reticent and a lot more into making big deals. And don’t even start on the differences in his relationships with women: Joe had been spending a lot of time with Alexia Finch, and now he’s evicting her. Alternate world Joe strikes again! Joe and Amy are pretending that Joe’s suffering amnesia after a bike accident to explain his total lack of recognition of his old life and ways, but Brown isn’t confused when he confronts Joe about messing around with the past. In fact, Brown, who isn’t as friendly as he seems, is determined to press Joe into returning to the past to save a woman offed by gangsters. Joe thinks his time-travel days have ended, but when Brown threatens to restore Amy to her own past, Joe has no choice but to take the case and travel back to 1963 to see what he can do. Surprisingly, most of the focus is on the present, which is easier for those who know the characters’ history to understand. Travels to the past drive the plot, but it’s the complexity of the present that makes this book worth spending time with. Kirkus Reviews, April 2021

A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge by Kate Khavari

In the fourth book in Khavari’s 1920s-set series (after A Botanist’s Guide to Society and Secrets), Saffron Everleigh returns to Ellington, the family estate, when her grandfather has a heart attack. Bill Wyatt, a dangerous man from her past, is there, posing as her grandfather’s doctor. Claiming she owes him for burning notes to a deadly poison and ruining a lucrative sale, Bill orders Saffron to locate information on her late father’s project which may interest a new buyer. He gives her less than a week, or her family will pay the price. With help from her beau Alexander and best friend, Elizabeth, Saffron chases down clues only to repeatedly run into dead ends. The situation grows more complicated when a medium arrives and begins holding seances to communicate with loved ones lost in the Great War, including Saffron’s childhood sweetheart. Is Madame Martin in league with Bill? When she discovers secrets about her family during her search for information to appease Bill, Saffron wonders if this is a fight she can win. This series continues to delight and is perfect for readers of Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series or Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock mysteries. Library Journal, April 2025

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Listen straight through–or savor slowly? That will be your struggle because Horowitz’s delicious mystery-within-a-mystery is, as they say, “fiendishly clever” and terrifically narrated. Samantha Bond begins enticingly with her husky vibrato and fully realized performance as a contemporary book editor who’s been given a murder-mystery manuscript. Soon, we’re in the midst of that book, set in 1955 and performed by Allan Corduner with a delightful bow toward the storytellers of old. A village busybody has fallen and broken her neck, and when her boss is murdered (a suit of armor is involved), famous detective Atticus Pund arrives to assist the police. When the manuscript ends abruptly, our editor determines to follow the clues, a potentially lethal decision. Oh boy, oh boy. AudioFile Magazine, 2017

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Vanessa Johansson adds charm and texture to this light mystery with a twist. Her warm, approachable tone fits Mia Crawford’s book-loving, anxious personality, which contributes to her transformation into an accidental detective. Johansson navigates the changing moods of the story with ease–balancing beachside flirtation, quiet introspection, and rising suspense without losing the relaxed rhythm that suits the setting. Mia’s plan to maximize her vacation, complete with a fling, is interrupted when she suspects a previous guest has gone missing. The clues come through notes in the margins of her current read. Johansson’s narration supports the novel’s tone–a mix of cozy vacation ambiance and escalating intrigue. Johansson’s performance lets the listener settle into the story while staying alert to hidden tensions. An immersive experience. AudioFile Magazine, 2025

Ghost Cities by Siang Lu

Recently fired from his translating job at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney for lying about his translation skills and using Google Translate to do his job, Xiang Lu is a #BadChinese. However, all hope is not lost, as film director Baby Bao invites him to work in the infamous Chinese ghost city of Port Man Tou. This one narrative transforms into a labyrinth of narratives as author Siang Lu draws on Chinese myth, history and the uninhabited megacities of China to produce a humorous and satirical commentary on geopolitics, contemporary life, art and work. In Ghost Cities, everything is connected. Xiang’s move to Port Man Tou is paralleled with tales from an imagined Imperial City and its paranoid Emperor, and the reader is taken on an absurd journey between the past and present, reality and simulation. Lu’s debut, The Whitewash, won the 2021 Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer and the 2023 ABIAs Audiobook of the Year, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 Multicultural NSW Award. Ghost Cities once again showcases Lu’s talent for imagination, comedy and cultural criticism. Strange and inventive, Ghost Cities is an ambitious novel of epic proportions and firmly places Lu as one of Australia’s most exciting new writers. Fans of The Whitewash will delight in this new novel, as will readers of Haruki Murakami, Italo Calvino and Yan Ge. Publisher’s Weekly, March 2024

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