HarperCollins
The Engraver’s Secret by Lisa Medved & Chloé by Katrina Kell
Sad Girl Novel by Pip Finkemeyer & Crushing by Genevieve Novak
Lives of the Wives: Five literary marriages by Carmela Ciuraru
More than thirty years after the last helicopters left the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, the flow of new books on the Vietnam war shows no sign of abating. Among them are some intended for a limited, scholarly market, some for a wider general readership; some for Americans, some for Australians. These three books exemplify some of the trends in both the substance and the style of Vietnam war histories, and illustrate both the virtues and the faults of differing approaches to the most controversial conflict of the twentieth century.
... (read more)Victory: The inside story of Labor's return to power by Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington
The Hot Seat: Reflections on diplomacy from Stalin’s death to the Bali bombings by Richard Woolcott
Is it tautological to describe a work of fiction as ‘family Gothic’? After all, there’s nothing more inherently Gothic than the family politic: a hierarchical structure ruled by a patriarch, as intolerant of transgression as it is fascinated by it, sustaining itself through a clear us/them divide, all the while proclaiming, ‘The blood is the life.’ Yet three new Australian novels Gothicise the family politic by exaggerating, each to the point of melodrama, just how dangerous a family can become when its constituents turn against one another.
... (read more)