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With the End in Mind & Letting Go review: Ways to have a good death
Two new books give some clues as to how to have the best possible death.
- by Gail Bell
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Hinch vs Canberra review: Derryn Hinch's confessions from year one in the Senate
If you can stomach the constant self-promotion, Hinch vs Canberra provides an entertaining, behind the scenes peek into life for a new Senator in Parliament.
- by Fiona Capp
The Ballad of Banjo Crossing review: Tess Evans' romance with a message
This novel has been packaged as literary fiction but it is really a commercial rural romance full of uncomplicated ideas and written in simple language.
- by Kerryn Goldsworthy
The Baker's Alchemy review: John Stephenson's curious, comic magic realism
This curious novel is a kind of magic realism, set in a 19th-century Polish village and featuring that stock character of farce, a mature man who has married a much younger wife.
- by Kerryn Goldsworthy
Sugar Money review: Jane Harris' uneasy slavery novel about slavery
Does it really work these days for a white adult female writer to use as her narrator the Creole-inflected voice of a 14-year-old Afro-Caribbean boy?
- by Kerryn Goldsworthy
Immune review: Catherine Carver on how we keep germs out of our bodies
Catherine Carver's jaunty style and way with metaphors transforms the grim business of self-defence into an informative tale of derring-do.
- by Fiona Capp
Fallow review: Daniel Shand's very Scottish chiller
Halfway through Daniel Shand's unsettling novel you can see how well he knows the Scottish literary tradition, with echoes of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to the fore.
- by Kerryn Goldsworthy
Sad Topographies review: Damien Rudd's destinations of gloom
It is no coincidence that most of these sad places with sad names are found in post-colonial countries where the indigenous peoples were devastated.
- by Fiona Capp
American literary science fiction novelist Ursula K. Le Guin has died
The popular and influential science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin has died.
- by Gerald Jonas
Wordplay: What word is that? A modern field guide
There was a storm of amazement when The Macquarie chose milkshake duck as the dictionary's world of 2017.
- by David Astle
Interview: Emma Glass on her debut novel Peach
Despite what teachers, parents and bosses might preach, Emma Glass is proof that leaving things to the last minute doesn't always end in tears.
- by Melanie Kembrey