Textile Art Display
Sutherland Library currently has a display
of textile artworks titled Whispered Threads. Techniques used include patchwork appliqué,
felting, embroidery, painting and machine quilting.
It all starts with a photo that a textile artist looks at and then makes a quilt from. That quilt, when finished, is then passed on to another artist, who creates a work based on their interpretation of the quilt they just received. This reinterpreted piece is then sent to the next artist in the chain who creates yet another quilt, and so the cycle continues. Each artist has five weeks to complete their quilt.
The final quilt is very unlike the original and the process is quite reminiscent of the children’s game of Chinese Whispers, hence the name, Whispered Threads.
This display will be at Sutherland until 14 February, 2016.
It all starts with a photo that a textile artist looks at and then makes a quilt from. That quilt, when finished, is then passed on to another artist, who creates a work based on their interpretation of the quilt they just received. This reinterpreted piece is then sent to the next artist in the chain who creates yet another quilt, and so the cycle continues. Each artist has five weeks to complete their quilt.
The final quilt is very unlike the original and the process is quite reminiscent of the children’s game of Chinese Whispers, hence the name, Whispered Threads.
This display will be at Sutherland until 14 February, 2016.
What did you do on Australia Day?
Australia Day
,
building
,
CSIRO
,
ebooks
These are a few of the over 100 CSIRO eBooks available online via the library catalogue.
Look for
Click here to view book
You will be asked for your membership and pin number.
Read them online or download to dip into them, time and again.
Nature lovers are well catered for in this collection, with many titles covering our unique natural areas and how to enjoy them, our wildlife, their habits and where to look for them. A Natural History of Australian Bats uncovers the unique biology and ecology of these wonderful creatures. It features a description of each bat species found in Australia, as well as a section on bat myths. The book is enhanced by stunning colour photographs from Steve Parish, most of which have never been seen before.
Walks, Tracks and Trails of New South Wales highlights the best the state has to offer. 140 of the best walks, tracks or trails in New South Wales, which can be walked by the moderately fit individual. They are located in national parks, coastal parks, state forests, conservation reserves, historic parks and local government and public easements. Other routes follow state highways, minor roads, coastal cliffs, old gold routes, or pass bushranger haunts and back roads linking towns and historical features. Easy-to-interpret maps are included to help you navigate.Most routes do not require specialist navigation or bushcraft skills, and vary in length from a 45-minute stroll to a 4-day, 65-kilometre camping trip.
Australasian Nature Photography: ANZANG Tenth Collection presents the finest photographs submitted to the 2013 Australian Geographic ANZANG Nature Photographer of the Year competition.Each photograph is accompanied by technical information as well as anecdotes about how the picture was taken. The collection includes photos from Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea.
It offers clear descriptions and full colour images to aid in identifying insects or other organisms, and provides useful advice on how to recognise and treat problems. The book also covers feeding habits, life cycles and insect biology.
Sun, Skin and Health begins with an explanation of what skin cancer is and how it forms, then discusses ultraviolet radiation and how to protect yourself, the effects of tanning, myths and truths about sunscreen, getting enough Vitamin D, the impact of the sun on your eyes, early detection and treatment of skin cancer, and life after skin cancer.
It is a must-read for anyone living under the Australian and New Zealand sun.
Sprinter and Sprummer challenges the traditional four seasons, and encourages us to think about how we view changes in our natural world.
Since 1788, Australia has operated on the premise of four European seasons that make no sense in most parts of the country. This title suggests it's time to reject those seasons and to adopt a system that brings us more in tune with our plants and animals – a system that helps us to notice and respond to climate change. Sprinter and Sprummer illustrates how our natural world really responds to seasonal changes in temperature, rainfall and daylight, and why it would be better to divide up the year based on what Australian plants do rather than ancient rites of the Northern Hemisphere.
Perhaps your Australia Day celebrations suggested some improvements to your home?
To help ensure your home improvements enhance the dream and don't become the nightmare, come in to your library and use these Building and Renovating tools to put you on the right path.
Photos above courtesy of Britannica Image Quest
Books to movies... Oscar nominees 2016
The Revenant
Rocky Mountains, 1823-The trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is one of the most respected men in the company, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker.But when a scouting mission puts Glass face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two men from the company are ordered to remain with him until his inevitable death. But, fearing an imminent attack, they abandon Glass, stripping him of his prized rifle and hatchet.As Glass watches the men flee, he is driven to survive by one all-consuming desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, he sets out on a three-thousand-mile journey across the harsh American frontier, to seek revenge on the men who betrayed him.The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.
Room by Emma Donoghue
Jack is five and, like any little boy, excited at the prospect of presents and cake. He's looking forward to telling his friends it's his birthday, too. But although Jack is a normal child in many ways, loving, funny, bright, full of energy and questions. His upbringing is far from ordinary : Jack's entire life has been spent in a single room that measures just 12 feet by 12 feet ; as far as he's concerned, Room is the entire world.
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.
The Martian by Andy WeirSix days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.
But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
The Danish Girl by David EbershoffSet against the glitz and decadence of 1920s Copenhagen, Paris and Dresden, and inspired by a true story, The Danish Girl is about one of the most passionate and unusual marriages of the twentieth century.
Einar Wegener and his American wife Greta Waud have been married for six years, but are yet to have a child. Both painters, they live a life of bohemian languor in Copenhagen until one day their lives are irreversibly altered. The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the intimacy that defines a marriage and the nearly forgotten story of the love between a man who discovers that he is, in fact, a woman, and his wife who would sacrifice anything for him.
This elegantly written, sensual and engrossing novel is a wonderful celebration of love. With great sensitivity and intelligence, David Ebershoff tells the story of this extraordinary marriage, which survives the hardest test any couple could face.
Trumbo by Bruce CookDalton Trumbo was the central figure in the "Hollywood Ten," the blacklisted and jailed screenwriters. One of several hundred writers, directors, producers, and actors who were deprived of the opportunity to work in the motion picture industry from 1947 to 1960, he was the first to see his name on the screen again. When that happened, it was Exodus, one of the year's biggest movies.
This intriguing biography shows that all his life Trumbo was a radical of the homegrown, independent variety. From his early days in Colorado, where his grandfather was a county sheriff, to Los Angeles, where he organized a bakery strike, to bootlegging, to Hollywood, where he was the highest-paid screenwriter when he was blacklisted (and a man with constant money problems), his life rivaled anything he had written.
Steve Jobs by Walter IsaacsonBased on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Isaacson’s portrait touched millions of readers.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Although Jobs cooperated with the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. He himself spoke candidly about the people he worked with and competed against.
His friends, foes, and colleagues offer an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
We fed the monster until it blew up . . . '
While Wall Street was busy creating the biggest credit bubble of all time, a few renegade investors saw it was about to burst, bet against the banking system - and made a fortune.
From the jungles of the trading floor to the casinos of Las Vegas, this is the outrageous story of the misfits, mavericks and geniuses who, against all odds, made the greatest financial killing in history.
Bridge of spies : a true story of the Cold War / Giles Whittell
Bridge of Spies is a gripping, entertaining, hair-raising and comical story, which moves effortlessly from the hardware of high-flying planes and new missiles to the geopolitics of the nuclear stand-off and through the poignant personal stories of its central protagonists: Powers, the all-American hero, blacklisted for not having killed himself on his descent to earth; a KGB spy who has spent aimless and lonely years achieving nothing in the US; and the opposing leaders Khrushchev and Eisenhower, both trapped in a spiral of confrontation neither wants.
Telling the true story that inspired Le Carré's famous scene, Bridge of Spies is a brilliant take on the absurdity and heroism of the Cold War days that will appeal to a new generation of readers unfamiliar with the history but drawn in by the compelling and vividly recreated narrative.
If you liked...January suggestions
If you like this:
All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr …
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Set in North Africa and Sicily at the end of World War II, In the Wolf's Mouth follows the Allies' botched "liberation" attempts as they chased the Nazis north toward the Italian mainland. Focusing on the experiences of two young soldiers—Will Walker, an English field security officer, ambitious to master and shape events; and Ray Marfione, a wide-eyed Italian American infantryman—the novel contains some of the best battle writing of the past fifty years. Eloquent on the brutish, blundering inaccuracy of war, the immediacy of Adam Foulds's prose is uncanny and unforgettable.
The book also explores the continuity of organized crime in Sicily through the eyes of two men—Angilù, a young shepherd; and Cirò Albanese, a local Mafioso. These men appear in the prologue and in the book's terrifying final chapters, making it evident that the Mafia were there before and are there still, the slaughter of war only a temporary distraction.
If you like this:
The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah …
Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. Younger, bolder sister Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann lives a quiet and content life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. When World War II strikes and Antoine is sent off to fight, Viann and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope. As the war progresses, it's not only the sisters' relationship that is tested, but also their strength and their individual senses of right and wrong. With life as they know it changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.
1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. But when two soldiers—a German and an Italian—arrive at their doorstep asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis’ bucolic tranquility is shattered.
1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence Police Department, has successfully hidden her tragic scars from WWII, at least until she’s assigned to a gruesome new case—a serial killer who is targeting the remaining members of the Rosati family one by one. Soon, she will find herself digging into past secrets that will reveal a breathtaking story of moral paradox, human frailty, and the mysterious ways of the heart.
If you like this:
A little life by Hanya Yanagihara
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition... Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is [their center of gravity] Jude, ... by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome--but that will define his life forever.
Two men meet by accident on a bridge early one morning. Once they were best friends but Tommy and Jim haven't seen each other for 35 years. Back then, Tommy and his sister were abandoned by their mother and later by their abusive father, and Jim, who lived alone with his religious mother, went to high school and became a socialist. Then one winter, Jim started to doubt whether he was deserving of the friendship. Now Jim is standing on the bridge, fishing, when Tommy drives by in his expensive new Mercedes. I Refuse follows both men during the course of the fateful day that follows. Per Petterson's outstanding new novel is broader in scope than many of his previous novels, but as powerful and moving as anything he has ever written.
If you like this: A Man called Ove… You’ll like this: This is your life Harriet Chance!
If you like this:
The Red Queen by Victoria Ayeyard …
Mare Barrow's world is divided by blood—those with common, Red blood serve the Silver- blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own.
To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard—a growing Red rebellion—even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.
All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr …
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
You’ll like this:
Set in North Africa and Sicily at the end of World War II, In the Wolf's Mouth follows the Allies' botched "liberation" attempts as they chased the Nazis north toward the Italian mainland. Focusing on the experiences of two young soldiers—Will Walker, an English field security officer, ambitious to master and shape events; and Ray Marfione, a wide-eyed Italian American infantryman—the novel contains some of the best battle writing of the past fifty years. Eloquent on the brutish, blundering inaccuracy of war, the immediacy of Adam Foulds's prose is uncanny and unforgettable.
The book also explores the continuity of organized crime in Sicily through the eyes of two men—Angilù, a young shepherd; and Cirò Albanese, a local Mafioso. These men appear in the prologue and in the book's terrifying final chapters, making it evident that the Mafia were there before and are there still, the slaughter of war only a temporary distraction.
If you like this:
The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah …
Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. Younger, bolder sister Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann lives a quiet and content life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. When World War II strikes and Antoine is sent off to fight, Viann and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope. As the war progresses, it's not only the sisters' relationship that is tested, but also their strength and their individual senses of right and wrong. With life as they know it changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.
You’ll like this:
The light in the ruins by Chris Bohjalian
1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. But when two soldiers—a German and an Italian—arrive at their doorstep asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis’ bucolic tranquility is shattered.
1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence Police Department, has successfully hidden her tragic scars from WWII, at least until she’s assigned to a gruesome new case—a serial killer who is targeting the remaining members of the Rosati family one by one. Soon, she will find herself digging into past secrets that will reveal a breathtaking story of moral paradox, human frailty, and the mysterious ways of the heart.
If you like this:
A little life by Hanya Yanagihara
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition... Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is [their center of gravity] Jude, ... by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome--but that will define his life forever.
You’ll like this:
I refuse by Per Petterson ; translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
Two men meet by accident on a bridge early one morning. Once they were best friends but Tommy and Jim haven't seen each other for 35 years. Back then, Tommy and his sister were abandoned by their mother and later by their abusive father, and Jim, who lived alone with his religious mother, went to high school and became a socialist. Then one winter, Jim started to doubt whether he was deserving of the friendship. Now Jim is standing on the bridge, fishing, when Tommy drives by in his expensive new Mercedes. I Refuse follows both men during the course of the fateful day that follows. Per Petterson's outstanding new novel is broader in scope than many of his previous novels, but as powerful and moving as anything he has ever written.If you like this: A Man called Ove… You’ll like this: This is your life Harriet Chance!
If you like this:
The Red Queen by Victoria Ayeyard …
Mare Barrow's world is divided by blood—those with common, Red blood serve the Silver- blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own.To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard—a growing Red rebellion—even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.
You’ll like this:
Snow like Ashes by Sarah Raasch
Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. The Winterians" only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been searching for the opportunity to steal back Winter"s magic and rebuild their kingdom ever since.
Orphaned as an infant during Winter"s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee. Training to be a warrior-and desperately in love with her best friend, Winter"s future king-she would do anything to help Winter rise to power again. So when scouts discover the location of half of the ancient locket that can restore their magic, Meira decides to go after it herself-only to find herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics, and to realize that her destiny is not, never has been, her own.
Local History, Local stories...Harold Cecil Durant
To find more historical photographs of the Sutherland Shire visit
sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/history
We love reading... Staff picks January 2016
Girl At War is a highly readable debut novel about war, coming of age and dealing with a tormented past.
~Kat
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
A sprawling coming-of-age odyssey which chronicles the life Calliope Stephaniedes, or Cal who “was born twice: first, as a baby girl...in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy...in August of 1974".
The story tells us of Cal’s origins in war torn Turkey in 1922 when her grandparents consummated their forbidden love, of her average childhood growing up as a Greek-American in suburban America, and then as she becomes he in the 1970’s as he lives through a more difficult than most coming- of-age experience as he struggles to find understanding and acceptance on his path to adulthood.
This is a beautifully written and atmospheric tale that gracefully navigates the awkwardness of the coming-of-age experience as well as the rarely written about topics of Hermaphroditism and gender identity, and is an utterly engaging roller coaster of emotions. It's a definite commitment but well worth the time.
~ Steph D.
The story tells us of Cal’s origins in war torn Turkey in 1922 when her grandparents consummated their forbidden love, of her average childhood growing up as a Greek-American in suburban America, and then as she becomes he in the 1970’s as he lives through a more difficult than most coming- of-age experience as he struggles to find understanding and acceptance on his path to adulthood.
This is a beautifully written and atmospheric tale that gracefully navigates the awkwardness of the coming-of-age experience as well as the rarely written about topics of Hermaphroditism and gender identity, and is an utterly engaging roller coaster of emotions. It's a definite commitment but well worth the time.
~ Steph D.
In the skin of a monster/ Kathryn Barker
‘In the skin of a monster’ is the first novel by Kathryn Barker. It is classified as a Young Adult read and crosses genres of Real life, Fantasy and Mystery. A truly original piece of work, which although at times a little confusing, leaves the reader eager to discover what happens next.
The story is set in outback Australia, and begins with the reality and tragedy of a school shooting, but then takes the reader into a surreal landscape of dreams and nightmares.
Quite an amazing book, unlike anything I have read before and an experience I greatly enjoyed.
~Cathy
‘In the skin of a monster’ is the first novel by Kathryn Barker. It is classified as a Young Adult read and crosses genres of Real life, Fantasy and Mystery. A truly original piece of work, which although at times a little confusing, leaves the reader eager to discover what happens next.The story is set in outback Australia, and begins with the reality and tragedy of a school shooting, but then takes the reader into a surreal landscape of dreams and nightmares.
Quite an amazing book, unlike anything I have read before and an experience I greatly enjoyed.
~Cathy
Lost boys of Anzac / Peter Stanley.
When I met the author of this book a few months ago I almost hugged him I was so moved by this wonderful book. In it Peter Stanley draws attention to the fact that although we all dutifully get up before dawn every Anzac Day to remember the dead, so few of us can name a single soldier who died on 25 April 1915. Stanley looks in detail at the 101 men who were the first to die on that first Anzac Day.
~Steph B
Island Home : a landscape memoir / by Tim Winton
Tim Winton's non-fiction is as beautifully crafted as the prose of his much-loved novels. Island Home's blend of memoir and passionate commentary on the environment make for a compelling argument that the Australian culture and character is deeply connected to the vastness and diversity of the Australian landscape. Winton has the writer's gift of paying attention to all around him, absorbing it's meaning and then brilliantly recreating the experience in the reader's mind. His memories of growing up along the coastal fringe of Western Australia, the secret caves and coves, the reefs, the discovery of the addictive power of surfing, and the adventure to be found in the bush at the fringes of new settlements all make for the perfect read for the Aussie summer holidays.
~Brian
When I met the author of this book a few months ago I almost hugged him I was so moved by this wonderful book. In it Peter Stanley draws attention to the fact that although we all dutifully get up before dawn every Anzac Day to remember the dead, so few of us can name a single soldier who died on 25 April 1915. Stanley looks in detail at the 101 men who were the first to die on that first Anzac Day.~Steph B
Island Home : a landscape memoir / by Tim Winton
Tim Winton's non-fiction is as beautifully crafted as the prose of his much-loved novels. Island Home's blend of memoir and passionate commentary on the environment make for a compelling argument that the Australian culture and character is deeply connected to the vastness and diversity of the Australian landscape. Winton has the writer's gift of paying attention to all around him, absorbing it's meaning and then brilliantly recreating the experience in the reader's mind. His memories of growing up along the coastal fringe of Western Australia, the secret caves and coves, the reefs, the discovery of the addictive power of surfing, and the adventure to be found in the bush at the fringes of new settlements all make for the perfect read for the Aussie summer holidays.~Brian
Criminally good reads...January
Pretty girls by Karen Slaughter
Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.
More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that’s cruelly ripped open when Claire’s husband is killed.
The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.
The killing lessons by Saul Black
Palace of treason by Jason Matthews
Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow. She despises the men she serves, the oligarchs, and crooks, and thugs of Putin’s Russia. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington’s most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin.
As she expertly dodges exposure, Dominika deals with a murderously psychotic boss; survives an Iranian assassination attempt; escapes a counterintelligence ambush; rescues an arrested agent and exfiltrates him out of Russia; and has a chilling midnight conversation in her nightgown with President Putin. Complicating these risks is the fact that Dominika is in love with her CIA handler, Nate Nash, and their lust is as dangerous as committing espionage in Moscow. And when a mole in the SVR finds Dominika’s name on a restricted list of sources, it is a virtual death sentence…
I am death by Chris Carter
Seven days after being abducted, the body of a 20-year-old woman is found on a green patch of grass by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star. The autopsy reveals that she has been tortured and murdered in a most bizarre way. But the surprises don't end there. This killer likes to play, and he left a note lodged inside his victim's throat. Detective Robert Hunter, who leads LAPD's Special Section, Ultra Violent Unit, is assigned the case. But almost immediately a second body turns up. Hunter knows he has to be quick...
Try not to breathe by Holly Seddon
Alex is sinking. Slowly but surely, she's cut herself off from everything but her one true love drink. Until she's forced to write a piece about a coma ward, where she meets Amy. Amy is lost. When she was fifteen, she was attacked and left for dead in a park not far from her house. Her attacker was never found. Since then, she has drifted in a lonely, timeless place. She's as good as dead, but not even her doctors are sure how much she understands. Alex and Amy grew up in the same suburbs, played the same music, flirted with the same boys. And as Alex begins to investigate the attack, she opens the door to the same danger that has left Amy in a coma...
Fall by Candice Fox
If Detective Frank Bennett tries hard enough, he can sometimes forget that Eden Archer, his partner in the Homicide Department, is also a moonlighting serial killer . . .Thankfully their latest case is proving a good distraction. Someone is angry at Sydney's beautiful people – and the results are anything but pretty. On the rain-soaked running tracks of Sydney's parks, a predator is lurking, and it's not long before night-time jogs become a race to stay alive. While Frank and Eden chase shadows, a different kind of danger grows closer to home. Frank's new girlfriend Imogen Stone is fascinated by cold cases, and her latest project – the disappearance of the two Tanner children more than twenty years ago – is leading her straight to Eden's door. And, as Frank knows all too well, asking too many questions about Eden Archer can get you buried as deep as her past …
Bat out of hell by Alan Gold
From the jungles of Indonesia to the very heart of New York City comes a plague that kills 100 percent of its victims. Medicine’s greatest nightmare, this modern black death is caused by the most virulent and uncontrollable mutant virus humanity has ever witnessed. And medicine can do nothing to stop its merciless spread.
Scientist Debra Hart and her team of experts are tasked by the United Nations to stop the disease. Racing against time, they must find the cause and the cure and figure out why this deadly disease—spread by bats—is killing thousands in cities across the globe. Debra and her team will struggle to stop the disease from spreading to millions more, even if it means killing off every bat alive. But fighting to prevent her are manic animal rights’ activists who rail against species genocide, even if it means risking the deaths of human beings. And hidden behind a cloak of secrecy is a crazed academic who’ll even kill top American government officials to save one living creature.
This is the nightmare scenario that Debra faces as the public becomes so terrified of bats that entire communities become vigilantes.
No free man by Graham Potts
Stepan Volkov forfeited his future when he was paid to forget his past.
Forced to adapt, he ultimately became the world's most wanted killer... feared, vicious and brutal.
A tool of the Organizatsiya, a Russian crime syndicate that forged him into 'The Wolf', he's pursued by American spies and Australian agents, torn between his need to survive and his desire to be free.
When a shock encounter in Australia uncovers forgotten secrets and threatens uneasy allegiances, Volkov suddenly sees a choice... one he thought would never be his to make.
With a billion-dollar international oil deal threatening to shift the global balance of power, will Volkov return to Moscow to wage war for the Organizatsiya, or will he find the courage to escape with a vengeful thief whose life he destroyed?
The truth and other lies / Sascha Arango ; translated by Imogen Taylor
Famous bestselling author, loving husband, generous friend—Henry Hayden is a pleasant person to have around. Or so it seems. And when his mistress, who is also his editor, becomes pregnant, his carefully constructed life threatens to fall apart.
So Henry works out an ingenious plan. Craftily and cold-bloodedly, he intertwines lies and truths and all the shades of grey in-between.
But when he tries to get rid of his mistress, Henry makes a terrible mistake. Not only are the police soon after him, but his past, which he has painstakingly kept under the carpet, also threatens to catch up with him with deadly consequences.
What she left by T.R Richmond
When Alice Salmon died last year, the ripples were felt in the news, on the internet, and in the hearts of those who knew her best. But the person who knows her most intimately isn't family or a friend. Dr Jeremy Cook is an academic whose life has become about piecing together Alice's existence in all its flawed and truthful reality. For Cooke, faithfully recreating Alice's life - through her diaries, emails and anything using her voice - is all-consuming. He does not know how deep his search will take him, or the shocking nature of what he will uncover.
Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that’s cruelly ripped open when Claire’s husband is killed.
The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.
When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done.
For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of corpses - women abducted, tortured and left with a seemingly random series of objects inside them - has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological destruction. And she's losing hope of making a breakthrough before that happens.
But the slaughter at the Cooper farmhouse didn't quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's 10-year-old daughter Nell, who now holds the key to the killings. Injured, half-frozen, terrified, Nell has only one place to go. And that place could be even more terrifying than what she's running from.
Palace of treason by Jason MatthewsCaptain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow. She despises the men she serves, the oligarchs, and crooks, and thugs of Putin’s Russia. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington’s most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin.
As she expertly dodges exposure, Dominika deals with a murderously psychotic boss; survives an Iranian assassination attempt; escapes a counterintelligence ambush; rescues an arrested agent and exfiltrates him out of Russia; and has a chilling midnight conversation in her nightgown with President Putin. Complicating these risks is the fact that Dominika is in love with her CIA handler, Nate Nash, and their lust is as dangerous as committing espionage in Moscow. And when a mole in the SVR finds Dominika’s name on a restricted list of sources, it is a virtual death sentence…
I am death by Chris CarterSeven days after being abducted, the body of a 20-year-old woman is found on a green patch of grass by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star. The autopsy reveals that she has been tortured and murdered in a most bizarre way. But the surprises don't end there. This killer likes to play, and he left a note lodged inside his victim's throat. Detective Robert Hunter, who leads LAPD's Special Section, Ultra Violent Unit, is assigned the case. But almost immediately a second body turns up. Hunter knows he has to be quick...
Try not to breathe by Holly Seddon
Fall by Candice Fox
If Detective Frank Bennett tries hard enough, he can sometimes forget that Eden Archer, his partner in the Homicide Department, is also a moonlighting serial killer . . .Thankfully their latest case is proving a good distraction. Someone is angry at Sydney's beautiful people – and the results are anything but pretty. On the rain-soaked running tracks of Sydney's parks, a predator is lurking, and it's not long before night-time jogs become a race to stay alive. While Frank and Eden chase shadows, a different kind of danger grows closer to home. Frank's new girlfriend Imogen Stone is fascinated by cold cases, and her latest project – the disappearance of the two Tanner children more than twenty years ago – is leading her straight to Eden's door. And, as Frank knows all too well, asking too many questions about Eden Archer can get you buried as deep as her past …Bat out of hell by Alan Gold
From the jungles of Indonesia to the very heart of New York City comes a plague that kills 100 percent of its victims. Medicine’s greatest nightmare, this modern black death is caused by the most virulent and uncontrollable mutant virus humanity has ever witnessed. And medicine can do nothing to stop its merciless spread.Scientist Debra Hart and her team of experts are tasked by the United Nations to stop the disease. Racing against time, they must find the cause and the cure and figure out why this deadly disease—spread by bats—is killing thousands in cities across the globe. Debra and her team will struggle to stop the disease from spreading to millions more, even if it means killing off every bat alive. But fighting to prevent her are manic animal rights’ activists who rail against species genocide, even if it means risking the deaths of human beings. And hidden behind a cloak of secrecy is a crazed academic who’ll even kill top American government officials to save one living creature.
This is the nightmare scenario that Debra faces as the public becomes so terrified of bats that entire communities become vigilantes.
No free man by Graham Potts
Stepan Volkov forfeited his future when he was paid to forget his past.Forced to adapt, he ultimately became the world's most wanted killer... feared, vicious and brutal.
A tool of the Organizatsiya, a Russian crime syndicate that forged him into 'The Wolf', he's pursued by American spies and Australian agents, torn between his need to survive and his desire to be free.
When a shock encounter in Australia uncovers forgotten secrets and threatens uneasy allegiances, Volkov suddenly sees a choice... one he thought would never be his to make.
With a billion-dollar international oil deal threatening to shift the global balance of power, will Volkov return to Moscow to wage war for the Organizatsiya, or will he find the courage to escape with a vengeful thief whose life he destroyed?
The truth and other lies / Sascha Arango ; translated by Imogen Taylor
Famous bestselling author, loving husband, generous friend—Henry Hayden is a pleasant person to have around. Or so it seems. And when his mistress, who is also his editor, becomes pregnant, his carefully constructed life threatens to fall apart.So Henry works out an ingenious plan. Craftily and cold-bloodedly, he intertwines lies and truths and all the shades of grey in-between.
But when he tries to get rid of his mistress, Henry makes a terrible mistake. Not only are the police soon after him, but his past, which he has painstakingly kept under the carpet, also threatens to catch up with him with deadly consequences.
What she left by T.R Richmond
When Alice Salmon died last year, the ripples were felt in the news, on the internet, and in the hearts of those who knew her best. But the person who knows her most intimately isn't family or a friend. Dr Jeremy Cook is an academic whose life has become about piecing together Alice's existence in all its flawed and truthful reality. For Cooke, faithfully recreating Alice's life - through her diaries, emails and anything using her voice - is all-consuming. He does not know how deep his search will take him, or the shocking nature of what he will uncover.
Not just for teens...YA books grownups should read too!
All fall down
Grace is best be described as a daredevil, an Army brat, and a rebel. She is also the only granddaughter of perhaps the most powerful ambassador in the world, and Grace has spent every summer of her childhood running across the roofs of Embassy Row.
Now, at age sixteen, she's come back to stay, in order to solve the mystery of her mother's death. In the process, she uncovers an international conspiracy of unsettling proportions, and must choose her friends and watch her foes carefully if she and the world are to be saved.
Carry on
Simon Snow just wants to relax and savour his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he'll be safe. Simon can't even enjoy the fact that his room-mate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can't stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you're the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savour anything. Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama.
Hold me closer
Larger-than-life character Tiny Cooper, from John Green and David Levithan's bestselling novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson, finally tells his own story the only way he knows how—as a stupendous musical.
In this novel-in-musical-form, readers will experience all of Hold Me Closer, the autobiographical musical written by and staring Tiny Cooper. Filled with humour, pain, and 'big, lively, belty' musical numbers, readers will finally learn Tiny's full story, from his birth and childhood to his quest for love and his infamous eighteen ex-boyfriends.
I was here by Gayle Forman
From the bestselling author of If I Stay - this summer's YA blockbuster film. This characteristically powerful novel follows eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds in the months following her best friend's shocking suicide. As Cody numbly searches for answers as to why Meg took her own life, she begins a journey of self-discovery which takes her to a terrifying precipice, and forces her to question not only her relationship with the Meg she thought she knew, but her own understanding of life, love, death and forgiveness.
Mosquitoland by
After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the “wastelands” of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
Saint Anything
Sydney's charismatic older brother, Peyton, has always been the center of attention in the family but when he is sent to jail, Sydney struggles to find her place at home and the world until she meets the Chathams, including gentle, protective Mac, who makes her feel seen for the first time.
The disreputable history of Frankie Landau Banks
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father's 'bunny rabbit'. A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
Frankie Landau-Banks: No longer the kind of girl to take 'no' for an answer. Especially when 'no' means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 16: Possibly a criminal mastermind.
This is the story of how she got that way.
Vanishing girls by Lauren Oliver
Dara and Nicola used to be inseparable, but that was before - before Dara kissed Parker, before Nicola lost him as her best friend, before the accident that left Dara's beautiful face scarred. Now the two sisters, who used to be so close, aren't speaking. In an instant, Nick lost everything and is determined to use the summer to get it all back. But Dara has other plans. When she vanishes on her birthday, Nicola thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl has vanished, too - nine-year-old Elizabeth Snow - and as Nicola pursues her sister, she becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances may be linked.
The mime order by Samantha Shannon
Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal prison camp of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the survivors are missing and she is the most wanted person in London...As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.
Now, at age sixteen, she's come back to stay, in order to solve the mystery of her mother's death. In the process, she uncovers an international conspiracy of unsettling proportions, and must choose her friends and watch her foes carefully if she and the world are to be saved.
Carry on
Simon Snow just wants to relax and savour his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he'll be safe. Simon can't even enjoy the fact that his room-mate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can't stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you're the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savour anything. Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama.Hold me closer
Larger-than-life character Tiny Cooper, from John Green and David Levithan's bestselling novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson, finally tells his own story the only way he knows how—as a stupendous musical.In this novel-in-musical-form, readers will experience all of Hold Me Closer, the autobiographical musical written by and staring Tiny Cooper. Filled with humour, pain, and 'big, lively, belty' musical numbers, readers will finally learn Tiny's full story, from his birth and childhood to his quest for love and his infamous eighteen ex-boyfriends.
I was here by Gayle FormanFrom the bestselling author of If I Stay - this summer's YA blockbuster film. This characteristically powerful novel follows eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds in the months following her best friend's shocking suicide. As Cody numbly searches for answers as to why Meg took her own life, she begins a journey of self-discovery which takes her to a terrifying precipice, and forces her to question not only her relationship with the Meg she thought she knew, but her own understanding of life, love, death and forgiveness.
Mosquitoland by
After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the “wastelands” of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
Saint Anything
Sydney's charismatic older brother, Peyton, has always been the center of attention in the family but when he is sent to jail, Sydney struggles to find her place at home and the world until she meets the Chathams, including gentle, protective Mac, who makes her feel seen for the first time.
The disreputable history of Frankie Landau Banks
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father's 'bunny rabbit'. A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
Frankie Landau-Banks: No longer the kind of girl to take 'no' for an answer. Especially when 'no' means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 16: Possibly a criminal mastermind.
This is the story of how she got that way.
Dara and Nicola used to be inseparable, but that was before - before Dara kissed Parker, before Nicola lost him as her best friend, before the accident that left Dara's beautiful face scarred. Now the two sisters, who used to be so close, aren't speaking. In an instant, Nick lost everything and is determined to use the summer to get it all back. But Dara has other plans. When she vanishes on her birthday, Nicola thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl has vanished, too - nine-year-old Elizabeth Snow - and as Nicola pursues her sister, she becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances may be linked.
The mime order by Samantha Shannon
Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal prison camp of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the survivors are missing and she is the most wanted person in London...As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.
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