The Imitator
Evelyn Varley spends her life blending in. From an only child fleeing modest roots to fit in as a scholarship student at a prestigious boarding…
The social rebellion
Maz Compton has it all. She’s gorgeous and funny, has an amazing career, a fabulous partner, and lives on Sydney’s northern beaches.
Mr Ordinary goes to jail
The popularity of TV series like Wentworth and Orange is the New Black has exposed a huge, somewhat voyeuristic, demand among audiences to discover what…
Murder at dusk
Only once has a foreign court hanged a man on Australian soil. It is May 1942 and Melbourne was torn between fearing Japanese invasion and revelling…
Eggshell Skull
It can be fascinating to see how many lawyers become great writers. Law graduate-turned writer Bri Lee (her bio says she “is qualified to practise…
Rather his own man
Early in the preface to Rather His Own Man, lawyer Geoffrey Robertson maps out the place that this “reliable memoir” should hold among some of…
Lullaby
French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani’s Prix Goncourt prize-winning novel, Chanson Douce, published as Lullaby, lands its biggest punch on the first page.
Freedom to libel?
This collection of essays concerns one of the first cases of libel to rock the colony of NSW. R v Campbell [1817] was brought by…
Zero hour
Harry S. Dent, Jr. is a Harvard-educated demographer and economic forecaster known for his bestselling books The Great Boom Ahead, The Sale of a Lifetime,…
Factfulness
When Microsoft chief Bill Gates says a book is the most important he has ever read, it’s time to take notice. And, fortunately, Factfulness is…
Consent
Leo Benedictus takes the seemingly harmless pastime of people-watching to a new level in Consent. The beguiling first-person narrative begins with a tone of innocence,…