A hilarious, fully illustrated tale about an unlikely friendship between a girl and an octopus that is perfect for newly independent readers, from one of Australia’s most respected writers for children and an award-winning illustrator.
FOUND!
One octopus!
Likes to eat tuna sandwiches.
Goes by the name of ‘Oswald’.
It all began when Etta decided to take a bath . . . And realised she wasn’t alone. In the bath sat Oswald. Etta had never had an octopus in her bath before.
At first, Etta thinks it might be fun to have Oswald around. But she soon learns that octopuses are not very good at being tidy . . . or cooking . . . or sharing . . . or even playing nicely.
Just as Etta has almost had enough, someone comes to claim Oswald. Oswald isn’t perfect, but does Etta really want to send him away?
My View:
A delightful, smelly, fishy, read for you to share with your new reader – and don’t all 5 year + enjoy a bit of smelly, fishy, type jokes? A narrative about friendship, kindness and fishy odours:) I think this is the prefect story, characters and design for animation.
You’re a politician, a public figure. What on earth were you thinking?’
Up-and-coming junior minister Gregory Buchanan has had a portrait painted of himself by the acclaimed artist Sophie White — a painting she intends to enter in this year’s Archibald Prize. Until then, Gregory has hung it in pride of place on his dining-room wall. It’s a life-sized standing portrait, practically photographic in nature. And it’s a nude.
His wife will be home soon and he thinks the painting will be a pleasant surprise. Even more surprising will be an unexpected accumulation of guests: his sardonic mother, his fundamentalist mother-in-law, his lycra-clad cycling-enthusiast sister, and the state premier, Louisa Wetherly — a senior minister has just resigned in scandalous circumstances, and she needs Gregory to step into the spotlight ahead of the coming election.
It’s going to be a wild afternoon, and an even wilder campaign — to do something about Gregory’s naked ambition.
My View:
Clever, wicked, intelligent and so funny. A great read.
As the third wave of the virus hits, all inhabitants of Melbourne are given until 8 pm to get to their homes. Wherever they are when the curfew begins, they must live for four weeks and stay within five kilometres of. When Lou’s son, Samuel, doesn’t arrive home by nightfall, she begins to panic.
He doesn’t answer his phone. He doesn’t message. His social media channels are inactive. Lou is out of her mind with worry, but she can’t go to the police, because she has secrets of her own. Secrets that Samuel just can’t find out about. Lou must find her son herself and bring him home.
My View:
I felt this was a book of two parts- the first – I just could not work out what was going on…the unreliable narrator worked exceptionally well but I was confused as to the point. The suddenly the pointy bits struck me! The later part of the book was masterful and made sense of everything else…A quick read…See if you can work it out before the end.
Promising Young Womanmeets High Fidelity in the dark and twisty new thriller from the bestselling author of The Sunday Girl, The Strangers We Know and The Paris Affair.
A bad day at work. A drunken night. A rogue Instagram follow. That’s all it takes to ruin a life …
The question is, whose life will be ruined? When Billie wakes up in a strange guy’s bed, her first thought is: what happened last night? She can’t even remember meeting him. And how the hell did she get to Coney Island?
Then reality bites and the memories flood in – the reason she was in that bar, drinking to start with: today she’s going to get fired. Because yesterday her law firm lost a big case: Samuel Grange v Jane Delaney. And it looked like it was her fault.
It wasn’t. Yet now Samuel Grange is free to drive off into the sunset in his stupid Porsche and do it all again to another woman. And all Billie can think is: What about the next girl? And the one after that? But there is nothing she can do to stop him.
Unless … She could expose the truth about him on her own. Then everyone would see what he was really like. And he wouldn’t be able to do it again.
The problem is, the only way to protect the next girl is to become the next girl. And, well, that could be a little risky … even deadly.
Praise for The Next Girl
‘Original. Breathtaking. Dangerous. The Next Girl is compulsory reading from an author at the top of her game.’ Loraine Peck, author of The Second Son
‘It hooked me in and left me breathless. Set aside your weekend because you won’t be able to put it down.’ Petronella McGovern, author of The Liars
‘Fierce, smart and packed with tension, The Next Girl grabbed me from the first page.’ Ashley Kalagian Blunt, author of Dark Mode
‘Pip Drysdale is one of the brightest new stars in the realm of first-person psychological suspense … Romantic suspense for the Netflix generation.’ Canberra Times
‘A twisty, suspenseful thriller with a heroine who makes doing bad things seem right.’ Tim Ayliffe, author of The Enemy Within
368 pages, Paperback
Published November 30, 2022
Dear Pip
Yesterday I had a massage – I had kinks and knots and aches and pains. The remedial massage was an hour of bliss (mostly ) Last night I continued to read your book, The Next Girl. I was reading curled up on the lounge, I could feel the tension in my neck budling…being “posture aware” I moved my reading to the kitchen table, I sat straight for all of 2 minutes and then the tension, almost like panic, fear, anticipation…came back. I was “in that room” with your protagonist. I tore through the final chapters, finished the book and exhaled. My muscles relaxed.
A moving novel about storytelling, about truths, and love, from twice Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller.
From the bustling streets of China, to the ominous Cell 16 in an old asylum building, to the familiar sounds and sight of galahs flying over a Victorian farm, A Brief Affair is a tender love story.
On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all – a loving family and a fine career – until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own.
Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals.
Written with humour, sensitivity and the wisdom for which Miller’s work is famous, this exquisitely compassionate novel explores the interior life and the dangerous navigation of love in all its forms.
My View:
This author has such a powerful yet subtle touch – his words to be savoured, his books to be treasured.
A collection of funny, brilliant, boundary-pushing stories from the bestselling author of Mammoth. A grizzly bear goes on the run after eating a teenager. A hotel room participates in an unlikely conception. A genetically altered platypus colony puts on an art show. A sabretooth tiger falls for the new addition to his theme park. An airline seat laments its last useful day. A Shakespearean monkey test pilot launches into space. The stories in Here Be Leviathans take us from the storm drains under Las Vegas to the Alaskan wilderness; the rainforests of Queensland to the Chilean coastline. Narrated in Chris Flynn’s unique and hilarious style by animals, places, objects and even the (very) odd human, these short fictions push the boundaries of the form by examining human behaviour from the perspective of the outsider.
My View:
What an impressive range of styles, voices and ideas this collection showcases, I could read more. There is something here for everyone to enjoy but a couple of these stories are standouts for me; the first, which gives a brilliant, witty insight into the thinking of a grizzly bear – hilarious. But my very favourite was the last, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, set in the underground sewers and the sky scrapers of Las Vegas. A story that illustrates how hope, joy and love can be found anywhere. Loved this one.
PS I was really fortunate to be gifted a set of “chapter cards” with brilliant artworks on the front and extracts of each chapters on the back. What a fabulous idea!
Can we promise future generations a life free of sexual violence, in which their sexual wellbeing will be protected? Is this a promise we can keep?
As a sexual offences prosecutor, Katrina Marson works for an institution that can only respond, one case at a time, to sexual violence once the damage is already done. During a decade of looking back, she kept returning to a single question: what could have been done to prevent this?
In 2019 she stepped out of the justice system to travel abroad on a Churchill Fellowship, where she witnessed first-hand the power of comprehensive relationships and sexuality education to safeguard sexual wellbeing and act as a protective factor against sexual violence. Combining her coalface experience in the criminal law with her international research on sex education, Marson’s perspective is unique, looking in two directions at once.
Legitimate Sexpectations exposes the limits of the criminal justice system and the fault lines in our society when it comes to sex, sexuality, and relationships. Through storytelling that moves between heartbreak and hope, Marson makes the case for a cultural shift towards valuing sexual wellbeing and preventing sexual violence in the first place. In doing so, she calls on us all to play our part to ensure that young people’s sexual experiences are not just free from violence, but far from violent.
My View:
A life changing book! A book I wish was around and being talked about when I was a child. Child you ask? YES! You are never to young to be empowered about your own safety and to be given permission and the language to talk about sexual abuse at whatever age, child/teenager/adult.
A well balanced, clear and rational discussion regarding “consent”.
Be warned there are triggers in this book – and yes it triggered so many things for me that even now as a 63 year I am still trying to deal with.
This book should be in the hands of every educator, politician, parent, library, resource centre, school…that’s right YOU SHOULD READ THIS
Description: A returned criminal, a cult-like family and cybercrime all clash against the backdrop of the Flinders Ranges in this thrilling new rural suspense novel from the best-selling Voice of the Outback.
Emma Cameron, a recently divorced farmer and a local in Barker, runs Deception Creek, the farm that three generations of her family have owned before her. Every day Emma pushes herself hard on the land, hoping to make ten-year-old memories of a terrible car accident disappear. And now there are more recent nightmares of an ex-husband who refuses to understand how much the farm means to Emma.
When criminal Joel Hammond is released from jail and heads home to Barker, Detective Dave Burrows and his officer Senior Sergeant Jack Higgins are on high alert. Joel has a long and sorry history with many of the townsfolk and they are not keen to see him home to stay.
Not all of the Barker locals want to see Joel run out of town though. Some even harbour doubts about Joel’s conviction. The town finds itself split down the middle, families pitted against each other with devastating outcomes.
Brenda’sView: When Joel Hammond returned to Barker, to his hometown and the home his parents had left him when they died, he’d known it wouldn’t be easy. But he hadn’t expected the anger and hate directed at him by a prominent family in town. Joel had been convicted of fraud at his job in Adelaide and went to jail for five years, before adding another four years for assault while inside. He was a changed man, but he just wanted the past behind him.
Emma Cameron owned and ran Deception Creek, the property which had been in her family for generations, and she loved her work. She had farm hand Matt working for her and he’d been reliable and a great support with all his farming knowledge over the six years he’d been working on Deception Creek. Emma had been first on scene to a fatal accident nine years prior and still had nightmares from the memories; now with her recent divorce, she wanted to bury herself in her work on the farm and try to forget her worries.
Detective Dave Burrows and Senior Sergeant Jack Higgins both felt there was something dangerous hovering over their town. With Joel back, unhappy residents, strangers in town, Jack and Dave were both on high alert. What would be the outcome of the uneasy atmosphere in Barker? Would Dave and Jack be able to keep the peace?
Deception Creek is another outstanding, tense suspense novel from Aussie author Fleur McDonald which I absolutely loved. The author is up there on my favourites list – I always look forward to her next book! Well crafted characters, and of course my favourites – Dave Burrows and Jack Higgins – lead the way in this phenomenal read which I highly recommend.
With thanks to Allen & Unwin AU for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
Set in a beach-shack town an hour from Melbourne, The Way It Is Now tells the story of a burnt-out cop named Charlie Deravin.
Charlie is living in his family’s holiday house, on forced leave since he made a mess of things at work.
Things have never been easy for Charlie. Twenty years earlier his mother went missing in the area, believed murdered. His father has always been the main suspect, though her body was never found.
Until now: the foundations are being dug for a new house on a vacant block. The skeletal remains of a child and an adult are found—and Charlie’s past comes crashing in on him.
The Way It Is Now is the enthralling new novel by Garry Disher, one of Australia’s most loved and celebrated crime writers.
Brenda’s View:
Twenty years prior, Charlie Deravin’s mother, Rose, went missing. She and his father were in the middle of a divorce and Charlie and his brother Liam had just evicted a tenant from their mother’s home. But when Rose disappeared, the police blamed Rhys, Charlie’s father. Rhys was an ex-cop and Charlie was a cop on suspension – Charlie had moved back to the little seaside town and was living in the shack his parents had called home before it all went pear-shaped. Charlie had spent a lot of the last twenty years interviewing people and trying to find his mother, ruining his own marriage in the process…
When the news hit the town of the skeletal remains of a child being found on a vacant block, and then underneath the child, the remains of an adult, Charlie was sure it would be his mother. He was positive he knew the identity of the child as well. The police homicide department was soon on the scene, opening the case once again and interviewing all those who were interviewed twenty years prior. Rhys and his second wife, Fay, were overseas cruising and wouldn’t be home any time soon. But still Rhys was a suspect. What would be the outcome for Charlie and his family as this cold case once again came to life?
The Way it is Now is a standalone novel by Australia’s master crime writer Garry Disher, and it was outstanding. A relaxed but twisty, tension filled story of a family and their ongoing grief, the divisions throughout the family and the grievances which were the result of what happened, made for an excellent crime novel which I highly recommend.
With thanks to Text Publishing for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
The Wattle Island Book Club Sandie Docker Penguin Random House
My View:
Outstanding!!!
Add this author to your must read list. Do it.
Written with finesse, with gentle words, with kindness, gratitude and positivity, this book brought a few tears to my eye – and that was a good thing.
From the outset I knew this was going to be a read that would take me to uncomfortable places, I was expecting some of the scenarios presented here – but not all of them. Although tinged with sadness, a bitter sweet ending, I am so pleased the author wasn’t tempted to make this a (unrealistic) happy ever after.
It was indeed sad. It was indeed thought provoking. I did shed a (few) tears. But it was a stronger read for the realistic, poignant, ending. Bravo!!
Reading, Writing and Riesling 