The Thursday Murder Club (and the next three in the series)

/in , /by

reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Richard Osman

In 2020 forty publishers bid for the rights to this first novel by television presenter and producer, Richard Osman. It has become the biggest selling adult crime novel since records began and Spielberg immediately purchased the film rights. Osman has since written three more novels in the series with equal success: The man who died twice in 2021, The bullet that missed in 2022 and The last devil to die in 2023. He is … Read more »

Read more»

Women & Children

/in , /by

Reviewed by Wendy Tucker

by Tony Birch

Tony Birch is an author, activist and academic. This is his fourth novel. He is best known for his award-winning novel The White Girl and his short story collection Dark as Last Night.

Women & Children has just won the 2024 Age Book of the Year for Fiction and will probably win more awards. It is set in 1965 in a poor inner-city suburb of Melbourne. Our protagonist is Joe Cluny, ‘a wide-eyed, … Read more »

Read more»

Unfinished Woman

/in , /by

reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Robyn Davidson
I eagerly read this memoir that has been 25 years in the writing. The name of Robyn Davidson was first heard in 1977 when a young woman was reported to be crossing the Simpson Desert from Alice Springs to the coast of WA. The photos that appeared in the National Geographic in 1978 were of a beautiful young blonde woman travelling across the desert with four camels and … Read more »

Read more»

All the words we know

/in , /by

reviewed by Wendy Tucker
written by Bruce Nash
This is the third novel from local author, Bruce Nash, and it has, deservedly, found a respected commercial publisher with all the advantages of overseas publishing and audio books.
Rose, who is our unreliable narrator throughout, is in her 80s, in a nursing home and has dementia. When Rose finds that her Scrabble partner has died by apparently falling from her window, she remembers other strange deaths and … Read more »

Read more»

The Bee Sting

/in , /by

Reviewed by Wendy Tucker
by Paul Murray

This is the fourth novel by Irish writer Paul Murray. It was short listed for the Booker Prize 2023 and won The Irish Post Book of the Year 2023. 

It is essentially a tragicomic family saga set in a dull town in Ireland and told in four voices. Murray slips back though time, moving from each section though the mind of each family member as much is revealed and … Read more »

Read more»

The In-Between

/in , /by

Reviewed by Wendy Tucker

by Christos Tsiolkas

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of eight novels, he is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the international best seller The Slap and for his historical novel Damascus. 

Christos and his partner holiday at Narooma and love the area. They especially love Cobargo and Well Thumbed Books, ‘… one of his two favourite bookshops in the world’. 

Well Thumbed Books was … Read more »

Read more»