[youtube=https://youtu.be/Ss-BVEWuJo0] Writing a follow up to The Slap was never going to be easy for Christos Tsiolkas. John Purcell casts an eye over his latest, Barracuda. This is a difficult book to write about. It has a personality rather than a plot. It is built upon emotion rather than reason. It is all shouts and whispers and nothing in between. As a boy Danny Kelly wants only one thing ... Read more

Alain de Botton’s early successes How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy attempted to teach us that literature and philosophy are not rarefied artefacts to be shut between leather binding, studied and venerated but are instead practical, useful guides to living well. In his new book, Art as Therapy, de Botton joins forces with philosopher John Armstrong to remake our... Read more

Bestselling author Matthew Reilly is one of Australia’s most reliable writers. Every couple of years he delivers his fans quality popular fiction and every couple of years he can be counted on to break Australian sales records.  But till now, all of his successes, Ice Station, Seven Ancient Wonders, Temple, The Five Greatest Warriors, Scarecrow, to name just a few, have one thing in common, the... Read more

Writing a follow up to The Slap was never going to be easy for Christos Tsiolkas. John Purcell casts an eye over his latest, Barracuda. This is a difficult book to write about. It has a personality rather than a plot. It is built upon emotion rather than reason. It is all shouts and whispers and nothing in between. As a boy Danny Kelly wants only one thing – to be the greatest swimmer of ... Read more

John Purcell reviews Shame and the Captives by Tom Keneally One of the drawbacks of living in a society obsessed with the new is that we fail to recognise the simple fact that many things get better with time. There is just no story in ‘Author Gains Wisdom by Living a Long Interesting Life:  Talking, Travelling, Reading and Writing’. But there should be. Someone gaining wisdom shoul... Read more

When a teenage Jackie Collins was seduced by Marlon Brando at a party, little did she know the experience would come in handy years later while writing her first YA novel… New York Times bestselling author Jackie Collins was recently in Australia promoting her new novel, Confessions of a Wild Child, which tells the story of the teen years of her much loved character Lucky Santangelo. Jack... Read more

In these months, the busiest  of the bookselling year, thousands of books will compete for your attention.  Some will have huge marketing budgets to ensure they are not missed. Some will just be placed spine out on the shelf of your local bookshop. Some won’t even have that luxury. A Meal in Winter will probably suffer the fate of the latter. But that is no great indicator of its worth... Read more

How do you review a Shaun Tan book? Each time I open Rules of Summer I find a different book. I remember my excitement on being offered a sneak peek a few months ago. I was left feeling a little bewildered. Did I like it? I don’t think I did on that first look. Then a few months later I was given an advance copy. I flicked through the pages and found a completely new book. Or so I thought. But ... Read more

While reading Tim Winton’s latest novel, Eyrie, I couldn’t help thinking about Charlotte Wood’s Animal People, Zadie Smith’s NW and to a lesser extent, Julian Barnes’ Sense of an Ending. All four books have been published in the last five years. Each chronicles the lives of people making do within a society they have inherited. Each book is despairing of the turn the western world has taken. Ea... Read more

Bones of the Lost by Kathy Reichs The gripping new Temperance Brennan novel from the world-class forensic anthropologist and Number 1 bestselling author The body of a teenage girl is discovered along a desolate highway on the outskirts of Charlotte. Inside her purse is the ID card of a local businessman who died in a fire months earlier. This is no ordinary hit-and-run. Who was the girl? And wa... Read more