BOOK AND EXHIBITION REVIEWS
Mark Dunn, The Convict Valley: the bloody struggle on Australia’s early frontier
Mark Dunn, The Convict Valley: the bloody struggle on Australia’s early frontier Allen & Unwin, 294 pp., ISBN: 9781760528645, p/bk, AUS$32.99 Mark Dunn opens his history of the Hunter Valley, The Convict Valley, with an observation from Lieutenant John Shortland....
Julian Leatherdale, Death in the Ladies’ Goddess Club
Julian Leatherdale, Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club Allen & Unwin, March 2020, p/bk, ISBN: 9781 76052 963 5, RRP AUD$29.99 Death in the Ladies’ Goddess Club by Julian Leatherdale is set in Sydney in the 1930s and follows Joan Linderman, budding crime writer and...
Peter Grose: Ten Rogues: the unlikely story of convict schemers, a stolen brig and an escape from Van Diemen’s Land to Chile.
Peter Grose, Ten Rogues: the unlikely story of convict schemers, a stolen brig and an escape from Van Diemen’s Land to Chile Allen & Unwin, February 2020, p/bk, 248pp, ISBN: 978 1 76063 261 8, RRP: AUD$29.99 Any visitor to Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour on...
Anne McKendry, Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview
Anne McKendry, Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview McFarland & Company, 267 pp., ISBN: 9781476666716, p/bk, US$39.95 Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview by Anne McKendry is this year’s must-have text for all crime fiction enthusiasts and scholars....
Bettina Bradbury, Caroline’s Dilemma: A colonial inheritance saga
Bettina Bradbury, Caroline’s Dilemma: A colonial inheritance saga NewSouth, November 2019, 352pp, p/bk, ISBN: 9781742236605, RRP: AUD$34.99 If you hold a romanticised appreciation of living a middle-class life on the land in the Victorian era, then this non-fiction...
Antonia Pesenti & Hilary Bell, Summer Time
Antonia Pesenti & Hilary Bell, Summer Time NewSouth, October 2019, 44pp, h/bk, ISBN: 9781742236070, RRP: AUD$24.99 Summertime is a tale of reminiscence, of the best summer activities that prompt happy thoughts. and hint at possibilities for any family looking for...
Cathy Perkins, The Shelf Life of Zora Cross
Cathy Perkins, The Shelf Life of Zora Cross Monash University Publishing, November 2019, 285pp (inc Index), ISBN (pb): 978-1-925835-53-3, RRP: $29.95 ‘£20 and you shall have her’ (p.60). This financial exchange in 1917 between Sydney bookseller James Tyrell and...
Siobhán McHugh, The Snowy: A History
Siobhán McHugh, The Snowy: A History (Anniversary edition) Paperback, May 2019, NewSouth, ISBN: 9781742236223, 368pp., AUD$34.99 This month marks the 70th anniversary of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme, the largest engineering project in Australia. This...
David Hill, Convict Colony
David Hill, Convict Colony Allen & Unwin, 2019, 356 pp., ISBN: 9781760528669, p/bk, AUS$32.99 David Hill's new book Convict Colony is positioned as a story of a settlement that survived against all the odds, covering the first thirty years of the colonisation of...
William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company Bloomsbury, 2019, 522 pp., ISBN: 9781408864388, p/bk, AUS$26.99 Highly-regarded historian William Dalrymple's The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company is a fabulous...
