This book is a must read for fans of the film, My Brilliant Career starring Sam Neill and Judy Davis. Meet the woman behind Sybylla's story. And other Aussie literary greats such as Banjo Patterson. Alexandra Lapierre's research is impressive and her writing style has captured my undivided attention. I will be looking for more of her books to read.
I first read Golden over a decade ago and have loved it ever since. Unfortunately, I was never able to find it in stores until I found Book Hero would try their best to source books for you.
It took days for them to find a supplier and after endlessly searching I finally have Golden on my bookshelf to reread whenever I want.
I loved these books so much. The delivery was nice and quick and I was able to have them on my bookshelf in no time thanks to book hero.
I have visited the Hamilton Gardens several times and seen the movie but this book is at another level. The research the author and designer of the gardens has put into this project over decades is inspirational. He writes in a very accessible style and provides insight into the lives of people who used these sorts of gardens in historical times. And the gardens still to come will take me back to the gardens for years. The gardens in person and in the book are not just about the plants but also about the structures and artefacts that furnish them and their meanings. This book is for gardeners and non gardeners alike.
All I really have to say is that the amount of times this book made me laugh out loud is ridiculous! Wren and Rose are so fun to read about, and their character development is really amazing. Katherine Webber and Catherine Doyle write so well together! I totally recommend for 13+!
I really loved this! It's perfect for anybody who loves KotLC (Keeper of the Lost Cities). Seeing the character's complex backstories was so cool, and thankfully Shannon Messenger wasn't too harsh with the cliffhangers! Audra and Vane are super interesting, with the whole Vane-had-his-memories-taken-and-is-dreaming-about-Audra situation. Amazing read perfect for 12/13+!
This book was really good. The right amount of adventure mixed with a slightly forbidden love story, this book was really entertaining! I loved the setting (mars) and reading about the backstory that led to mars being inhabited by humans. Hunter and Cleo are such interesting characters, and watching them become friends (and closer) was so fun. I would definitely recommend for anybody 12/13+!
this is a real can't put down book. It keeps you guessing until the end. Highly reccommend this book.
This book had a lot of twists, I could not put it down. Loved would highly reccommend it. Barbara . R.
In the ten years since Kae Tempest published their first novel, The Bricks That Built The Houses, much has changed, including the famed UK poet’s gender transition. Tempest’s latest centres on Rothko Taylor. In his mid-thirties, released from prison after twenty years, Rothko lives in a van, shared with a stray dog, in the aptly named fictional English seaside town of Edgecliff. Working any job that comes along to afford his dream of testosterone treatment, we follow Rothko in flashbacks from teenager to present day.
Tempest’s writing is as sharp, poetic and poignant as ever in a tale of trauma and inner turmoil. Tough, grim, hard-going at times, the narrative shifts from darkly poignant to utterly despondent. Those new to Tempest may find the prose style too big, too melodramatic, too stylized - which is too bad, because Having Spent Life Seeking is ultimately a bold, brutal and brave novel told with poetic verve, powerful insight, and raw intensity.
Book Hero Community Review by Adam Fresco
I bought this item for my 2-year-old great-niece, who loves books and reading.
It's a most engaging story of a buffalo who likes to think he is superior to his animal friends and puffs himself up to prove the point.
A sudden rain shower reduces him to a drenched and skinny buffalo, but his animal friends comfort and reassure him.
This is a lovely story about encouraging self-acceptance, written in catchy rhyme.
I believe this is the start of a new series for Sarah Hilary, and it's an eerie one set in the Derbyshire Peak District. Our two main detectives seem mismatched, but they work together really well. DS Joseph Ashe is a lifelong resident of Edenscar, who at age 11 was involved in a school bus accident where he was the only survivor. This has made the locals have mixed feelings towards him, and he joined the Police as a way to try and cope with his guilt. Joe sees the ghosts of those who died too, and his best friend Sammi is always with him (but as a fully grown man ghost) giving him advice. DI Laurie Bower has accepted a 6 month stint in Edenscar as her husband has moved in with his father who is deteriorating quickly from dementia. When the murder of a local family shocks the town, the two are determined to hold the culprit accountable.
I liked this, but I did find it took me a little while to get into it (which isn't always unusual when it's the first book in a new series and everyone is being introduced). I think readers will either love or hate the supernatural element (i loved it) but it adds something original to your classic police procedural which i thought was great. If you like atmospheric police procedurals with small town quirks i would highly suggest you give this a go!
Mark of the lion and the sas great train raid r great reads will be looking for more of the same at some point
This is a wonderful book, and follows on beautifully from the previous book in the series, The Tainted Cup. That book introduces us to Investigator Ana Dolabra, and her assistant Din, and even more wonderfully, to the strange yet somewhat familiar world they strive to bring justice to.
The second book in the series, A Drop of Corruption offers another fantastic story and great character development along with further world building.
I am looking forward to reading the third book, A Trade of Blood, and stand ready to be amazed, awed and gripped once again by this absolutely fantastic series. Thoroughly recommended.
I’ve read all C.L. Taylor’s books and her latest ‘It’s always the husband’ kept me as enthralled and spellbound as the others! I felt in a mix of adult Mean Girls - mixed with an Agatha Christie whodunnit - mixed with Desperate Housewives.
I love C.L. Taylor’s unique way of making the characters completely relatable, whilst keeping the adrenaline high with unseen plot twists. Taylor’s latest read makes this another high paced and easy to read thriller. You won’t be able to put this down!!
What would you do if you found out the man you were dating has not one, but two ex-wives who have both mysteriously died or disappeared?… Jude has to quickly find the answer while trying to settle into the new community she’s moved to, while navigating school mums’, and running the gauntlet of being a newly single Mum and dating… Now time is running out for Jude to find out who she can trust and whether it’s always this husband or is someone else wanting their deadly secrets kept safe…
I really hate the cold, I would hibernate if I could. So I was very surprised by how much I loved this book, once I got past the temperature. This book is part memoir, part love-letter and part natural history and science paper, intense, engaging, funny, sad and breathtaking.
Louise K Blight’s love for Antarctica and penguins filters through her words. She is an engaging storyteller, weaving emotion, wonder, breathtaking descriptions of Antarctica with science and history. I found myself re-reading section so I could absorb all the details. The book starts very innocuously in Christchurch, on board a military transport flight to Antarctica. Three pages in and we plunge head first into an immersive experience of life as a scientist in Antarctica, first at McMurdo Station then at the camp at the Cape Royds penguin colony, where she spent three months studying the behaviour and breeding patterns of the Adélie Penguins with David Ainley.
Louise blends ethereal descriptions of the landscape with some interesting and slightly gross realities of life out in the field, using snow for a water supply and packing all the waste at the campsite for transportation off the continent. Some parts are hard to read and I can only imagine how difficult it would have been to actually be there in that moment. She describes injured penguins and predators snatching chicks, but she’s there to observe not intervene. She’s in awe of the resilience of these birds, their refusal to give up and ability to compensate for injured limbs.
I laughed when she described being bludgeoned by an irate male Adélie who decided she walked too close to him and the time she was followed and courted by an emperor penguin. She developed quite the fondness for Bumper Bars and Raro, and found the Kiwis at Scott Base were more than happy to feed her addiction.
But beyond all that, there is the effect this vast, silent, isolated space has on her, she faces and comes to terms with the grief of losing her dad and sister.
I felt the vastness of Antarctica, the silence, the blinding whiteness, the isolation, the intensity of emotion it evokes- in her words. I will read this book again, there is so much left to learn and experience in here.
I wouldn’t call it a travelogue necessarily but it transports you to a beautiful, almost alien landscape and buries you deep within its soul.
I won’t ever go to Antarctica (I refuse to freeze) but I will dream of it often thanks to this book.
Gutsy and spirited female characters who refuse to give up in a male dominated world, and will stop at nothing to find the answers they seek.
I enjoyed the fast-pace of this novel. This pace worked perfectly with the personalities of the main female characters Billie and Dulcie out in the high country of Australia, whose paths cross when they are both trying to find the answer to the same question of what happened to Anna, Billie’s mum.
This is a 5 star book for me. Give it a go, you won’t be disappointed!
The Sisters of Serendib tells the story of 3 sisters, Janu, Huda, and Samar and is equally as heartbreaking as it is beautiful.
The sisters are separated as children when seeking asylum in Australia and the story takes you on a journey through their very different childhoods. The sisters are brought back together by the eldest sister Janu. This reunion brings healing for all three and a renewed sense of hope for what the future holds for them all individually but also as a family.
This is definitely worth a read. I give it 4 stars.
Just a bit… dull. Not sure how that’s possible given the subject matter but here we are.
