Events

Author Spotlight:

Mick Heron

Mick Herron is the #1 bestselling and award-winning novelist and short story writer, best known for his Slough House thrillers. The series has been adapted into an Apple TV series, Slow Horses, starring Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.

Raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, Herron studied English Literature at Oxford, where he continues to live. After some years writing poetry, he turned to fiction, and – despite a daily commute into London, where he worked as a sub editor – found time to write about 350 words a day. His first novel, Down Cemetery Road, was published in 2003. This was the start of Herron’s Zoë Boehm series, set in Oxford and featuring detective Zoë Boehm and civilian Sarah Tucker. The other books in the series are The Last Voice You Hear, Why We Die, and Smoke and Whispers, set in his native Newcastle. During the same period he wrote a number of short stories, many of which appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

In 2008, inspired by world events, Mick began writing the Slough House series, featuring MI5 agents who have been exiled from the mainstream for various offences. The first novel, Slow Horses, was published in 2010. Some years later, it was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as one of “the twenty greatest spy novels of all time”.

The Slough House thrillers have won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, two CWA Daggers, been published in twenty-five languages. He is also the author of the Zoë Boehm Oxford series, soon to be adapted into a major TV series starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson. Mick is also the author of the highly acclaimed standalone novels Nobody Walks, This is What Happened and The Secret Hours.

Available September 9

Clown Town

Spies lie. They betray. It’s what they do.

Slow horse River Cartwright is waiting to be passed fit for work. With time to kill, and with his grandfather – a legendary former spy – long dead, River investigates the secrets of the old man’s library, and a mysteriously missing book. Regent’s Park’s First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn’t appreciate threats. So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner turns blackmail into opportunity.

Over at Slough House, the repository for failed spies, Catherine Standish just wants everyone to play nice. But as far as Jackson Lamb is concerned, the slow horses should all be at their desks. Because when Taverner starts plotting mischief people get hurt, and Lamb has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions and fool around, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all come home, there’ll be a reckoning.

Books of the Month

FICTION

Orpheus Nine by Chris Flynn ISBN:9780733652271

Reviewed by Jacq

Moving from the city to small town America in the mid 1930’s, newlyweds Margaret & Felix are trying to find their feet in marriage – who am I, who are we, how do we make this love thing work.

Cal & Becky are born & bred small towners & trying to navigate the same but with a dose of one overbearing & another slightly crazed father in the mix. Becky has always had a special talent & according to her parents needs a special someone who believes in her unique abilities.

Patrick Ryan tenderly expresses the nuances of love & family; of trying to reinvent yourself in the face of a less than perfect upbringing or the traumas of war, to be a good parent, a good husband, a good wife – of honesty & denial, of turning up & of retreating, of introspection, friendship & pain. Spanning pre Second World War to post Vietnam America. This story is a knockout, it has it all & I devoured it.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

May, 1945. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever.

While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie – and nothing can remain hidden in a small town. The consequences of that long-ago encounter will intertwine the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.

Full of compassion, humour and charm, Buckeye is a dazzling portrait of the human spirit by way of one unforgettable community; the twisted roads we take to achieve forgiveness and redemption; and above all a universal longing for love and connection.

Propelled by an irresistible cast of characters, Buckeye is a warm, funny and emotionally affecting novel about two families living in one small town, bound together by secrets that will not stay buried

NON FICTION

Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place by Kate Grenville ISBN:9781760645649

Reviewed by Suzie

Arundhati Roy is an author I have admired for years with both her award winning fiction and her political and activist writings. With her new book, we see Arundhati grow from a young girl into the powerhouse woman she is today. The book centres on the somewhat unusual relationship she had growing up with her mother and its everlasting influence on who she is today.

Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

The incredible first memoir from the Booker-winning radical icon Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother Mary, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.

Distraught and even a “little ashamed” at the intensity of her response to the death of the mother she ran from at age eighteen, Arundhati began to write Mother Mary Comes to Me. The result is this astonishing, disconcerting, surprisingly funny chronicle-unique and simultaneously universal, of the author’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.

With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace-a memoir like no other.

KIDS & YA

How to Sail to Somewhere by Ashleigh Barton ISBN:9780734423627

Reviewed by Belinda

I loved the super cute, bold and self-righteous voice of this little kid who DEFINITELY doesn’t like broccoli. He writes to his most hated vegetable with a myriad of reasons about why broccoli doesn’t belong on his plate. The to and fro of the letter format in this book makes for a fun, pacey read perfect for kids and adults alike who are fighting the age-old vegetable battle.

Dear Broccoli by Jo Dabrowski

Dear Broccoli,
Last night at dinner you were on my plate. AGAIN. Please don’t come back.
From,
Frank.

Dear Frank,
I am afraid I cannot grant your request. The matter is out of my florets.
Most respectful regards,
Broccoli

A deliciously funny picture book that is sure to make even the pickiest of eaters look at their dinner in a new light.

Christmas Pre-orders

Get ahead on your festive shopping with our upcoming releases for September, October, and November — including some of the biggest names in Australian literature.

Look out for titles by Christian White, Jane Harper, Peter FitzSimons, Grantlee Kieza and more. Don’t miss out!