Black Glass by Meg Mundell

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Genre - Science fiction

This was an interesting book. Set in Australia in the not too distant future where climate change has caused major social change, two young sisters are left homeless when their father blows up their house and himself while cooking drugs. They are separated and make their way to the city where they each try to exist on the streets while attempting to find one another.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

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Genre - Historical fiction

This is a beautiful series of stories told by several generations of women from Sierra Leone. The first stories tell about a time when the Chief was still the leader, the Gods were of the landscape, and the country and its people were thriving. The subsequent stories tell of the coming of a new God and the changes in their society brought on by the influx of foreigners. The final stories provide a gruelling insight into Civil War.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard

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Genre - General Fiction

A 16 year old girl disappears one night from a small tight-knit community. She leaves behind a group of boys who are all friends and who spend the next 30 years or so imagining Nora's life after her disappearance. A beautifully written story.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Bereft by Chris Womersley

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Genre - General Fiction

Just after WW2 and during the Spanish flu epidemic, Quinn Walker returns, battle scarred and shell shocked, to the small country town where he grew up. He left the town as a young teenager, accused of the death of his younger sister, and had not been back since. A story of revenge, but so much more as well.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Autumn Laing by Alex Miller

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Genre - General Fiction

During the 1930’s Autumn Laing meets artist Pat Donlon when her husband Arthur brings him home for dinner. Pat and his wife Edith come to stay for a weekend at Arthur and Autumn’s house in Ocean Grove. Autumn is bored with her marriage and enjoys playing the temptress and seduces Pat whilst he and his wife are visiting. In doing this not only does she compromise her own marriage but destroys the marriage of Pat and Edith and their unborn child. Fifty-three years later in old age Autumn regrets her actions of long ago and sets about writing her story to right the wrongs of the past.

The novel  Autumn Laing is loosely based on he life of Sunday Reed and her relationship with Sidney Nolan. The book is a good read and the correlation between Miller’s character Autumn Laing and Sunday Reed adds an interesting twist to the story .

At the end of the book Miller acknowledges Janine Burke’s biography of Sunday Reed, The Heart Garden (Vintage 2004) as being a useful source for the writing of his book.

---- Reviewed by Sharon, Healesville

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

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Genre- Historical Fiction

Jacob de Zoet is a clerk for the Dutch East Indies Company stationed on an island formed off Nagasaki by the Japanese to keep the foreigners separate. Set in late 18th and early 19th centuries, this was a fascinating story about the early years of Japan's contact with the rest of the world. Well worth reading.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson

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Genre - General Fiction, Romance

What a wonderful book! Grace Williams, born in the 1940s with cerebral palsy lives in London with her parents, her brother and sister. At age 12 she is placed in The Briars which will be her new home for many years. It is here that she meets Daniel - a boy with no arms who also suffers from epilepsy - and who tells the most wonderful stories. This is a love story, but not like any other I have read before. Just wonderful!!

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Lovesong by Alex Miller

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Genre - Romance

This is a truly lovely story. Set mainly in Paris, but not the part of Paris we read about most often. This is set in the part of Paris where immigrants live and work. An Australian man meets a Tunisian woman in her aunt's cafe. When the aunt dies, they take over the running of the cafe. As deeply in love as they are, they are both deeply disappointed. He misses his home, she longs for the baby she seems fated to never have. Their story is told to an almost retired popular author who then must decide what he is going to do with it.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich

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Genre - Humour

Bodies are being mysteriously deposited at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds temporary location and Stephanie's been cursed by Morelli's Grandmother. Not an ordinary curse, mind you...it's a sex curse...leading to some humourous situations with Ranger. Add to the mix a vampire and a bear and you've got a pretty good read, although I must admit I haven't stayed up for hours reading these last few like I used to.

I'm not sure how much longer Evanovich can keep spinning out these stories but I truly love the characters.

---- Reviewed by webgurl, Admin

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

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Genre - Non-Fiction

The author inherited a fascinating collection of tiny (and valuable) Japanese figures called netsuke. He traces the history of his family through generations of art collecting and European luxury, rise and fall, through the fate of the little netuske. 

The Ephrussi family were fabulously wealthy Jewish merchants, and Charles Ephrussi acquired the figures in Paris during the rage for Japonisme (Charles was a model for Proust's Swann). They were then sent to the Vienna branch of the family as a wedding present, and the magnificent way of life that prevailed under the Austro-Hungarian Empire is vividly described. Yet the same family came to grief in a matter of days when the Nazis took over in Austria, and the collections, furniture, and works of art were all shipped off: the netsuke were thought to be lost.  The story, however, ends in Japan, where a surviving member of the family was able to take them at the end of WW II, and from him the author, a famous potter who had studied with Japanese masters, inherited the netsuke and now tells their story.  This is history at its most engaging, a story of glamour, loss, and redemption.

---- Reviewed by Susan, Montrose

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

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Genre - Fantasy

This is the beginning of a wonderful science fiction fantasy novel. It takes place in a medieval time with swords, knights and gallantry. Yet its also very very dark at times, totally character driven each chapter flows from one to the other you love them or hate them and sometimes they die. You could say its like the Sapronos during the dark ages where the winters are very long and the summers short, it starts with an ancient darkness rising beyond the wall that will threaten the very civilization whilst they fight amongst themselves for kingship this involves murder, betrayal, incest!!

Be warned you will not be able to put this book down, especially if you wanting to be transported on these cold winter nights.

I recommend it to teenagers as well.

---- Reviewed by Leonie, Ringwood

Me and Mr Booker by Cory Taylor

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Genre - Teenage

Teenage genre but I think this is one of those books that crosses to the Adult boundaries.

Well written, its a modern story set in an Australian town of a young sixteen year old girl desperately waiting for her life to begin when there isn't really anything happening. Anyone with a small town upbringing can relate as you really empathise with the character as she battles within a very dysfunctional family environment that drives her into the arms of a middle age man...maybe a sexual predator that seduces her into thinking he is the love of her life thus experiencing some kind of life experience and meaning.

---- Reviewed by Leonie, Ringwood

Kaitlyn by Kevin Lewis

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Genre - Family

Kaitlyn is about a boy who is removed from an abusive home and not his sister and how it affects everyones lives.

---- Reviewed by Tracey, Boronia

When I found you by Catherine Ryan Hyde

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Genre - General

I could not put this book down. It is about a guy who finds a baby in the woods, he wants to keep him but the grandmother comes forward and takes him. Then years later he turns up on his door step. A great read.

---- Reviewed by Tracey, Boronia

Ed note - written by the author of Pay it Forward --webgurl

The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

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Genre - General

I thought this was her last novel but its actually her first, very different from Jane Eyre but its seen now as a prequel to Villette.

The story describes a man's journey who is without place or wealth in society, and how to make a living and find work that will encompass his whole soul and mind yet not comprise his moral principles. The narration is very descriptive yet the clashes with society and personal conflicts is still a very relevant piece of story telling for today.

---- Reviewed by Leonie, Ringwood

A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates

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Genre - Non-fiction

A very raw and honest portrayal of grief written after the sudden death of her husband of 30 years they rarely spent a night apart.

A prolific writer of novels yet this is a true account warts and all of her emotional and physical journey through the dark landscape of grief that keeps you turning the pages.

Highly recommended.

---- Reviewed by Leonie, Ringwood

The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay

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Genre - General Fiction

A rather lovely story featuring the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Three men see a man falling from the bridge and miraculously he survives. But each man sees this event from different times - the beginning of colonization, the building of the bridge, and in 2010 - and in vastly different ways. This is a story about stories and how those stories play such an important part in your own identity and sense of home.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

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Genre - Science Fiction

This was a fascinating story. I loved the oh so very believable future world that Bacigalupi imagined. Set in Thailand in a future world where the sea has risen, genehackers and manmade plagues abound, people are hanging by their fingernails to their very existence. But what impressed me was that this was not an idealist's world. People in this future are competitive, destructive and selfish. They do not seem to have learned from how they have almost destroyed the earth. They fight amongst themselves, scheme and plot to make money at the expense of the general population and the earth itself. From that point of view, this wasn't an uplifting story, but I enjoyed it nevertheless!

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

Trespass by Rose Tremain

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Genre - General fiction

A dark tale of revenge and lies set in a beautifully wrought landscape.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

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Genre - General fiction

Baba Segi is a very happy man. He has three wives and seven children and all is good at home. Then he invites Bolanle to be wife number four. She unwittingly becomes the catalyst for major change in the family. What began as a bit of a lighthearted romp, soon changed into a much more substantial story.

---- Reviewed by Judy, Rowville