It always intrigues me when an author takes facts – in this case, that Elizabeth Macarthur was the wife of John Macarthur and they both emigrated to New South Wales in the early days of the colony – and applies the ‘what if’ question. In this case, Kate Grenville asks: what if Elizabeth had written […]

What a satisfactory week! It’s been sunny every day and that’s helped my dahlia flowers unfurl their petals. I’ll write more on that later and show you some photos. I’m so glad I planted these glorious blooms. The sunshine cheered my spirits this week. The leaves on the deciduous trees in my garden are changing […]

It’s a stunning Southern Highlands day today – sunny, with light winds to dry out the ground after yesterday’s tumultuous storm. I’m gazing out the window of my office and watching the washing flapping in the breeze. I love that. The smell of freshly-washed and air-dried clothes and sheets – it’s one of the small […]

What a fun story! Queen Elizabeth II as a sleuth (discreetly, of course) is a wonderful premise. The Queen is at Windsor Castle ahead of her 90th birthday celebrations and she is not happy. A guest has died in one of the castle bedrooms and the Queen wants to get to the bottom of the […]

Our genes are the basic unit of heredity. They hold the key to many of our characteristics: the shape of our nose, the colour of our eyes, and whether we have curly or straight hair. But do they carry more than physical characteristics – traits such as creativity? This is a question that Kate Forsyth […]

There are plenty of writers of Australian rural romance these days – the genre has boomed in recent years. I remember writing a blog post about it in 2014, after observing in my library that the numbers of authors writing in this genre were increasing. Since I wrote that, there are many new authors now […]

I do enjoy the ‘Vera’ series of stories by Ann Cleeves. The TV adaptations, not so much. I think it’s because the books leave so much room for me to interpret the characters and savour the prose, while the TV series has it all laid out for me. I always like to feel I’m a […]

For some inexplicable reason, I haven’t been able to read books at my normal rate. Whether it’s distractions from the outside world, anxiety about things I can’t control, or just because I’m doing more sewing and gardening, I haven’t been able to focus on many novels in the past few months. How’s your reading progressing? […]

I don’t know how Louise Penny consistently writes fabulous stories in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series that keep on developing a core group of characters. All the Devils are Here is the latest in the series and it shows a completely different aspect of Gamache’s family dynamics than in earlier books. Set in Paris […]