AustLit

'This follow-up novel is as much about the protagonist’s personal growth in facing his demons as it is about crime in a small town, writes Robyn Walton' 

'Crime and mystery fans were impressed last year by The Ruin, the first novel by Irish-Australian lawyer Dervla McTiernan. Now we have a sequel, The Scholar, and it is just as engrossing.'  (Introduction)

'The storyline of Hitch, the deserving winner of the inaugural Penguin Literary Prize, is a hitchhiker’s progress. Kathryn Hind’s hurting protagonist, Amelia, hitches with her dog through outback South Australia, randomly encountering strangers who ­respond variously to her vulnerability, some with concern, others with indifference or opportunism.' (Introduction)

'It’s not often a successful author of genre titles permits themself the liberty and pleasure of creating a book that speaks freely from their heart or soul. Sydney writer Gabrielle Lord has done this with her new novel, Sisters.'  (Introduction)

'This is a piece of creative non-fiction merging art commentary, literary analysis, and a personal account of the writer’s research. Changes across time in the writer’s understanding of an Australian painting – Breakfast Piece (1936) by Herbert Badham – are examined, with the writer’s slowness to comprehend the painting’s overt allusion to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) highlighted. The writer’s discovery that Breakfast Piece was reproduced on the covers of a 1985 edition of Eleanor Dark’s 1945 novel The Little Company and a 1991 edition of Elizabeth Harrower’s 1966 novel The Watch Tower provokes an analysis of these authors’ treatment of international geopolitical affairs and local gender relations.'  (Publication abstract)

'Venero Armanno writes with empathy about boys growing up, youths in love, adult men in extended families and lone male sojourners.' (Introduction)

Crossing the Lines is a book that smiles and offers cake while it thinks. Sulari Gentill delivers ideas and narrative entertainment, and it’s a bonus that her novel is also sub-acidly satirical.

'When a friend irritated by protagonist Madeleine’s unavailability laughs in response to her apologetic explanation that she is completely herself only when writing, 'scorn was cut into the mirth like some bitter essence folded into whipped cream.'' (Introduction)