Forbidden fruit by Kerry Greenwood

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Genre - Mystery


The latest Corinna Chapman mystery is set at the beginning of a hot summer in Melbourne. Corinna hates summer, hates Christmas & just wants December to be over so she can close her bakery & have a month’s holiday. Her lover, Daniel, has been hired to find two runaway teenagers, Manny & Brigid. Brigid’s parents, members of a strange religious group, locked her away when they discovered she was pregnant. Manny helps her escape & they’re now on the run, with the baby due any day. There are lots of echoes of the Christmas story in this fast-paced book – the race to the hospital with Brigid riding on a donkey called Serena is especially funny - & Greenwood uses traditional carols & Christmas music to great effect. As always in this series, the luscious descriptions of food & drink & the lives of the people & cats living in the Insula building are almost more important than the plot. This series is a treat for the senses, full of humour & a real feeling of life lived to the full.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

The last office by Geoffrey Moorhouse

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Genre - Non Fiction


This is the story of the monks of Durham Priory & their fate when Henry VIII split with Rome over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon & created the Church of England. The Dissolution of the Monasteries was a complete break with religious life as it had been lived for hundreds of years. Henry & his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, were eager to get their hands on the riches of the Church & to have complete control on the religious life of the nation. Small monasteries & nunneries were broken up & the monks & nuns pensioned off or sent to other houses. Gradually it was time for the larger priories such as Durham to be transformed from Catholic communities into Anglican cathedrals with priests rather than monks. Moorhouse describes the life of the Priory before the Dissolution & how the Bishop of Durham & the Prior guided the monks in their care towards an accommodation with the new order.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Jane Austen ruined my life by Beth Pattillo

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Genre - Fiction


I’m not a fan of the many Austen sequels, prequels & other novels cashing in on the popularity of one of my favourite authors. This novel is an exception as it uses Austen’s life & work in an intriguing way. Emma Grant is an American academic. Her life is falling apart. Her husband has been unfaithful & she’s lost her job due to an unfounded allegation of plagiarism. Emma has been contacted by Mrs Parrot, a mysterious woman who hints that she has access to over a thousand unpublished letters by Jane Austen. Emma sees publishing the letters as a way of regaining her academic reputation. So, she goes to England to meet Mrs Parrot. Emma is sent on a series of journeys to places associated with Jane – Bath, Lyme, Winchester - & must pass tests at each place to be allowed to read more of the letters & discover more about the secret at the heart of Austen’s life. Emma also meets up with Adam, an old friend who is also in London doing research. Is his interest in Emma altruistic or is he chasing the same prize? The plot has a few holes in it, but Emma is an engaging character & a tour of Jane Austen’s England is always a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Sherlock Holmes was wrong by Pierre Bayard

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Genre - Non Fiction


What if Sherlock Holmes missed some vital clues in his investigation of the mystery of the Hound of the Baskervilles? Bayard reimagines the classic crime story from a new angle. He takes the story as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, & interprets the clues differently to come up with a different ending - & a different murderer. This is a lighthearted look at a classic story & an iconic figure of crime fiction. Bayard has previously written about Agatha Christie in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? & does a great job of breathing new life into the Holmes legend.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Mud, muck & dead things by Ann Granger

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Genre - Mystery


This is the first in a new series of mysteries by Granger, set in the Cotswolds. Lucas Burton, a shady businessman, is lured to a deserted farmhouse for a meeting. Instead of his business partner, he finds a dead girl in the barn. In his panic, he scrapes his silver Mercedes against a fencepost & is seen leaving the farm by Penny, who owns the livery stables nearby. Inspector Jess Campbell is called in to investigate the murder, &, as well as identifying the victim & coping with the eccentric old man who owns the farm, she has to deal with the expectations of her new boss, Superintendent Carter. No sooner has Jess & her team identified Lucas’ car & tracked him down, than he is found murdered in his garage. Granger sets up her characters nicely in this first novel, & the Cotswolds setting is a bit less attractive than usual – all that mud & muck. Great for fans of Midsomer Murders.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

What Alice forgot by Liane Moriarty

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Genre - Family

When Alice Love hits her head at the gym and loses her memory of the past 10 years, she wakes up knowing that something is wrong. She believes she is a happily married expectant mother and soon finds out otherwise. She meets 3 children she can’t remember having and discovers she is in the process of divorcing her beloved hubby. She is estranged from her best friend and has no knowledge of her sister’s struggles with fertility. It is interesting to follow her story with input from her grandmother’s blog and her sister’s journal and see her put the pieces of her life back together. This is a tender and true account of modern family life.

---- Reviewed by Sue, Knox

Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

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Genre - Science Fiction


Lou Arrendale is a high-functioning autistic man working for a pharmaceutical company doing patterns analysis. A new manager, who disagrees with the supportive environment given to Lou and the other autistic people in his section, threatens their jobs unless they sign up for an experimental treatment designed to cure their autism.

Speed of Dark challenges the ideas of what it is to be "normal" and societies attitudes to individuals who are different. The reader struggles with the difficult decision facing Lou and his colleagues. Mostly told from Lou's POV, it is an interesting insight into the autistic mind.

This won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2003 and I highly recommend it.

---- Reviewed by webgurl, Admin

The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry

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"This then is how I come to stave off death, with nothing but my will for weaponry. And it is how, paradoxically, I find myself housed in a sepulchre of death.
My voice might be weaker but still it cries, ‘I am not ready yet. Not yet.’
Then one day the children come. Among them is Alice."

Anne Berry has written an accomplished tale of two beings entwined: one a ghost, one living a ghostlike existence. The Hungry Ghosts covers lives and time, from war ravished Hong Kong to modern day England and Paris. There are many weavings of individual stories, the impact each entity has on the whole, the complexities and levels every member of any group brings to the mix.

There is always a level of dysfunction in a family, but sometimes that dysfunction is more extreme than ‘average’. Such it is in Alice’s family and she, the youngest daughter and second youngest child, is the scapegoat, not only for her family but for her ghosts. She is haunted, but it comes to be her norm, her family, her true reality, one in which there is no place for her real family.

The writing and language in The Hungry Ghosts is almost ethereal at times, adding its own layering to the complex story being told. The descriptions are textured and highly defined, coloured with lyrical language that hypnotises and draws the reader on, deeper and deeper into the haunting and haunted world of Alice and Lin Shui.

Tragedy and pathos are ever present; darkness, despair and familial injustice; but there is humour and beauty, love and questing, and a final knowing of self that is as poignant as it is satisfying.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book for the lover of ghost stories and the lover of good, well told stories alike. I look forward to Anne Berry’s future books with wonder and expectation.

--- Reviewed by Hannah, Guest