This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList

Genre - General Fiction, Family Relationships


This is a very moving and dramatic story of a memoir that makes you realize from a child’s to adult’s perspective, how a simple yet harsh lifestyle can affect adulthood.


Set in around the late 1960s, a family pack their children into their much worn VW a set out to a rugged coastal homestead change. They have their sights set in living off the land and building their own home by hand. In this light, the family attract national media and become icons of the back-to-land farming movement. As the book reads, not the easiest of ways to raise a family and the lay back lifestyle does come with a price for the family.


---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville Bookchat

Wallflower in Bloom by Claire Cook

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at Good Reads

Genre - Family Relationships

A very light read, but quite inspirational for those of us who have a low esteem on life.

Deidre Griffin with two sisters and one very charismatic brother, who is the latest ‘guru’ in New Age motivational talks. Her parents being permanent ‘hippies’ together with her sisters all working full time for her very controlling brother Tag in keeping him in the limelight. Diedre feels like a wallflower with no life of her own, although in herself, is brilliant within the IT designing web sites and organizing of events for her brother.


After a night of drinking heavily she feels sorry for herself, anomisity towards her brother and in a flight of madness puts her name up as a replacement for Dancing With The Stars show stating herself as sister to the famous Tag. She is accepted, cannot dance, rather overweight, low morale and the inevitable happens. She finally accepts herself for what she is, together with her family behind her choice.


---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville Bookchat

ACT with love by Russ Harris

Find this book at your library


Genre - Non-Fiction

Self help book with www support. I found it effective in overcoming negative recurrent thoughts.

---- Reviewed by Adrian, Guest

Noah's compass by Anne Tyler

Find this book at your library


Genre - Fiction


This is a new novel from the prize winning author of “The Accidental tourist” and “Dinner at the homesick restaurant.” This story is also set in Baltimore and examines everyday life for recently retired teacher Liam Pennywell. He is widowed and divorced and has just been retrenched from his teaching position. When he decides to downsize his home and possessions he draws criticism and concern from his three adult daughters and his bossy ex wife. An assault by a stranger causes him to lose his memory of the first night in his new apartment and brings him more unwanted attention from the family. His youngest daughter, Kitty, decides to move in with him just as he begins a new relationship with an unusual woman called Eunice. This is a gentle story with some eccentric characters finding their way through family relationships.

---- Reviewed by Sue, Belgrave

Love and other secrets by Sarah Challis

Find this book at your library



Genre - Family


Nothing can really prepare you for the terrible anxiety and overwhelming fatigue of having a baby. Florence is a first time mother at 35 and her carefully planned life is about to be rudely interrupted in ways she has never imagined. This pregnancy brings also back memories of her own birth for her mother Jane. Florence has never understood the reality of her mother’s life as an unmarried 18 year old struggling to keep her baby in the tumultuous 1960’s. Old resentments are stirred up and secrets are revealed with the birth of this new baby and ultimately the two women are brought closer together.

---- Reviewed by Sue, Knox

The slap by Chris Tsiolkas

Find this book at your library



Genre - Australian Fiction

Tsiolkas has written a uniquely middle class Australian tale that exposes the domestic life of a group of family and friends in everyday suburbia. He explores the consequences when a man slaps a friend’s child at a family barbeque. The story slips seamlessly between opposing viewpoints and reveals the strain this puts on all the people involved. An intriguing look behind the curtains of our lives with an emphasis on the racial differences simmering in our suburbs. It reminded me of the the social realism of the Melbourne novel "Monkey Grip" by Helen Garner.

--- Reviewed by Sue, Knox

The Family Tree by Ilsa Evans

Find this book at your library


Genre - Family


Kate is a writer – well she would be if she could just find the time and space to get started. A busy wife, mother and freelance editor, she seizes the opportunity to have a hiatus from home and spend six months sharing a unit with her cousin, Angie. When threatened with writers block she seeks inspiration for her writing from the unconventional story of her own family background. Evan’s is a local author, well known for her funny stories and light fiction but lately she has written about the more serious topics of domestic violence and euthanasia. Like her last novel, “Broken” this new book is a powerful picture of modern family life and presents us with a well crafted tale filled with familiar people and places.


---- Reviewed by Sue, Knox

The vows of silence by Susan Hill

Find this book at your library



Genre - Mystery


A gunman is killing young women in the cathedral town of Lafferton. There seems to be no connection between the women targeted, and the police have few leads. DCS Simon Serrailler & his team must follow the few leads available & try to anticipate the murderer’s next move. What distinguishes this series from most other series in the genre is the feel & texture of real life which Hill evokes. Serrailler is another in a long line of loner detectives, wary of commitment in his private life. But, he has a family, and for me, this allows us to see his humanity & makes him a believable character. His sister, Cat, has just returned from a sabbatical in Australia with her husband & children. Cat & Chris are both doctors, and this has brought in other characters to the series that reappear in this book. Most significantly, Jane Fitzroy, an Anglican priest, who ran away from the tentative beginnings of a relationship with Simon in an earlier book. Serrailler’s mother has died, & he’s upset by his father’s new relationship. Other characters are briefly introduced, and, in some cases, violently removed, just as the reader has started to get to know them. We also enter the mind of the killer, and understand his motives while the police are still in the dark. There are plenty of red herrings & the solution is satisfying. I read it in an afternoon & can’t wait for the next installment.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Alfred & Emily by Doris Lessing

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList




This is an interesting mix of fiction & non fiction. The first half is a fictional idea of what the lives of Lessing's parents (the Alfred & Emily of the title) could have been like if they hadn't married, and if WWI hadn’t disrupted their lives. They meet, but marry other people and are fulfilled in different ways. Lessing feels that WWI blighted their lives, and had an effect on her own life as well. “That war, the Great War…squatted over my childhood…And here I still am, trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free.” Her father lost his leg & met her mother when she was nursing at the Royal Free Hospital. They emigrated to Rhodesia, but it wasn't a great success. Alfred really wanted to be an English farmer in Surrey & Emily's great love was killed in the war, and her life after that was really only second best & full of regrets. The second half of the book is a memoir of Alfred & Emily’s real lives. Lessing has written about her African childhood before, in her autobiographies & the Martha Quest series of novels. Here, though, she focuses more on her parents’ experiences of struggle & hardship, & the result is a moving account of two people who could have been happier if world events had left them untouched.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Deaf sentence by David Lodge

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList




Desmond Bates has been going deaf for the last 20 years. He took early retirement from his position as Professor of Linguistics because he couldn’t hear what his students were saying. Now, he faces the frustrations & indignities of deafness every day. His wife, Winifred (Fred), is sympathetic but sometimes irritated. When Desmond meets post graduate student, Alex Loom, he agrees - without realizing it - to a meeting about her thesis on the linguistics of suicide notes. He hasn’t heard a word she said at a noisy gallery opening & doesn’t realize he’s agreed to anything at all. This leads him into a confusing relationship with the manipulative Alex, who wants Desmond to supervise her thesis. Desmond is also worried about his elderly father (also going deaf), living alone in London. This is the most poignant and humorous part of the book. Harry lives in the family home, in increasing squalor, hiding money under the floorboards, and refusing to spend any money on making his life more comfortable. David Lodge has written a beautifully observed novel which illuminates the world of people with hearing loss. Desmond’s theory that blindness is tragic while deafness is merely comic is illustrated by the facts of his everyday life – struggles with hearing aid batteries, lip reading classes, & the funny yet frustrating misunderstandings in everyday conversation. Lodge shows the reader the isolation of the deaf in this absorbing novel.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Sisters by Danielle Steel

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList

Genre - Family Relationships


Sisters tells the story of 4 girls and a year in their lives where everything that they had known changes forever and they are left picking up the consequences. Sabrina, the lawyer, Tammy, the TV producer, Annie, the artist and Candy the 21 year old Supermodel all head back to the family home for the regular 4th of July party. Unfortunately an accident occurs which results in the family being torn apart as they all struggle to live with the after effects of the accident. All of the four girls suddenly have to get used to life without their mother, who had been a strong influence in the lives of her daughters and one of the girls is left blind. Their father falls apart emotionally after the accident as his wife had been his cornerstone. The following year that follows brings major life changes that need to be dealt with and sorted out by everyone involved. I found this story to be interesting and at times moving as the characters gradually sort out their lives.


---- Reviewed by Sarah, Croydon

The Mitfords : letters between six sisters ed by Charlotte Mosley

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList



Genre - Non Fiction


The Mitford sisters were notorious for beauty & scandal. Diana married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists & one of the most hated men of the 20th century. Unity had a passion for Hitler, lived in Germany during the 1930s & was so distraught at the outbreak of WWII that she attempted suicide. Jessica was a Communist, running away with a young man to the Spanish Civil War & spent much of her life in America. Nancy was a novelist with a waspish sense of humour who lived in France & was unhappily in love with a man who would never marry her. Pamela loved the country life but became increasingly eccentric in later life. Deborah married the Duke of Devonshire, and turned Chatsworth into one of the most popular stately homes in Britain. The letters between the sisters span almost the whole 20th century & are a fascinating look at life for the upper classes. The relationships between the sisters go through good & bad times. Jessica refused to speak to Diana for decades because of her disgust at her politics. Nancy informed against Diana during WWII which led to her being interned & separated from her children. After the death of their mother in 1963, Deborah became the centre of the correspondence, and she is the most likeable & stable of the sisters. Happy in her marriage & with the great work of transforming Chatsworth, she is the link between the sisters as they grow older.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

The suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList



Genre - True Crime

This absorbing book is an examination of one of the most famous murder cases of the 19th century. Three year old Saville Kent was found horribly murdered in the outdoor privy of Road Hill House in June 1860. Jonathan Whicher, one of the first plain clothes detectives at Scotland Yard, is sent down two weeks after the murder, to help the local police. Whicher becomes convinced that one of the family is responsible for Saville’s death. The case exposed the Kents to intrusive publicity, and the family’s history was laid bare. Samuel Kent’s first wife had died, some said of madness, some said because he was having an affair with the governess. When Samuel then married the governess, and started a second family, the older children were said to feel neglected and jealous. Saville was the favoured child of this second marriage. Had one of his half-siblings murdered him out of spite & jealousy? Had Saville seen his father in bed with the nursemaid and been killed to keep him quiet? Had a jealous neighbour or disgruntled former servant taken their revenge on Samuel by murdering his beloved child? All these theories were canvassed in the press, and Jonathan Whicher’s investigation reached an inconclusive end. His career was damaged by his failure to bring the culprit to trial, although he was confident he knew who the murderer was. Five years later, the murderer was brought to trial after a dramatic confession. But was this the truth? Summerscale’s recreation of the crime is masterly. She shows the influence of the murder on the sensation fiction of Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon which was so popular in the 1860s. The case exposed middle-class society’s secrets and flaws.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Death and the Maidens by Janet Todd

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList



Genre - Non Fiction


Fanny Wollstonecraft was a 22 year old girl who committed suicide in a small hotel in Wales in 1816. Her sad story is one of the sidelights of literary history because her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, a famous feminist, and her half-sister was Mary Godwin, who married the poet Shelley, and wrote Frankenstein. Fanny’s life was lonely and unregarded. She was illegitimate and her father abandoned mother and daughter shortly after Fanny’s birth. Her mother died giving birth to Mary when Fanny was only three, and she then lived in the household of her stepfather, William Godwin, with his second wife and several step-siblings. Fanny was the odd one out, not pretty, not clever, put-upon. When Shelley eloped with Mary Godwin, leaving Fanny behind, she was devastated. Her loneliness increased as she was torn between her stepfather and her siblings. Janet Todd’s book is a fascinating look inside this circle of geniuses. Written with sympathy for Fanny’s short, unhappy life, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the Romantic poets.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

People of the book by Geraldine Brooks

Find this book at your library

Read more reviews at NoveList


Hanna Heath is a book conservator working in Sydney. She receives an urgent phone call asking her to go to war torn Sarajevo to work on a rare and beautiful haggadah, a medieval Jewish prayer book. Hanna’s journey to Sarajevo and her discoveries about the manuscript alternate with chapters about the history of the book. When Hanna finds a butterfly’s wing trapped in the pages, or wine and blood stains, we’re taken back to 1890’s Vienna or 17th century Venice, to discover what happened. Hanna also has to deal with her less than satisfactory personal life, her fraught relationship with her mother, and the tentative relationship she develops with Ozren, the young librarian who is the manuscript’s latest saviour.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Waterlemon: husband in coma and other setbacks

Find this book at your library

Genre - Biography


Sydney journalist, Ruth Ritchie was enjoying a perfect spring day at home with her newborn baby boy when she got a telephone call that would change her life. Her husband Jhonnie had been in a road accident and was being airlifted to hospital with life threatening head injuries.

Waterlemon is the true story of the long, hard road to recovery for Jhonnie and chronicles the huge amount of love and support required for Ruth and the family to cope with this trauma and try to return to normality. Ruth writes with honesty and humour about surviving this experience with lots of courage, cooking and communication.

--- Reviewed by Sue, Knox Library