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What another great year of reading! The great books didn’t seem to stop this year. My favourite read of the year was nearly tipped out by a trilogy and my big discovery of the year was Ben Aaronovitch and the Peter Grant series. So here it is my top 5 reads of 2015 (plus 5 […]

This is an incredible read. Mesmerizing, hypnotic, addictive it captures you from its opening lines and doesn’t let go long after you have put the book down. http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/Life-and-Death-of-Sophie-Stark/Anna-North/book_9781474603072.htm FREE Shipping. Save $6.95 when you use the promo code bookbites at checkout

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August announced the arrival of a very special talent. Claire North maybe the pseudonym for Catherine Webb (and Kate Griffin), who has already published a number of books, but Harry August was something else entirely. It was bold, intelligent, gripping and mind-blowing. Before the real identity of the pseudonym […]

What a bonus it is to have a new David Mitchell book only a year after the incredible The Bone Clocks. David Mitchell started this story on twitter but became obsessed with the story he had started and needed to see it through. The result is a ghost story in the hands and imagination of […]

There is something about stories set in the American south, particularly those in and around the Mississippi. Whether they are classic American Southern Gothic, contemporary fiction, crime mystery or a combination the confluence of history, atmosphere and long-held beliefs makes for rich, dark, fertile storytelling. Jamie Kornegay digs into this tapestry with a debut about […]

Rachel Caine is an expert on wolves. For the past ten years she has been working in Idaho studying wolf populations on the reservations. Keeping as far from home and her upbringing as she can manage. She is also distant from her colleagues, forging as little close relationships as possible. However she is drawn home […]

On the surface this appears to be a cyber-thriller about hacking. But in the hands of Chuck Wendig it goes somewhere quite different. The book opens and we are introduced to five different hackers; an activist, a professional troller, an old-school hacker, a money skimmer and an amateur hacker completely out of his depth. They […]

Sebastian Faulks’ new novel is quite simply superb. Tackling themes he has explored before Faulks delivers an original novel that is haunting, beautiful and profound that will resonate all the way through you. http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/Where-My-Heart-Used-to-Beat/Sebastian-Faulks/book_9780091936846.htm FREE Shipping. Save $6.95 when you use the promo code bookbites at checkout

Jane Smiley’s writing is fantastic. She eases you into the family she has created and before you know it you are completely sucked into the story. You will fall in love with each character in a different way and share in the highs and lows of their lives. The big historical events, that are so […]

Patrick deWitt’s follow up to the brilliant The Sisters Brothers is just as described by the publisher on my advanced reading copy, “incredible”. Continuing on with the subversiveness that made The Sisters Brothers such a magnificent and unique take on The Western, deWitt turns his hand to another genre to create a darkly comic romp […]

Following on from the phenomenally brilliant The Day The Crayons Quit comes the sequel. The crayons are back…and they are still not happy. This time around Duncan has to deal with the lost and forgotten crayons. The broken, chewed and melted crayons. And they are all, quite rightly, even more upset! http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/Day-the-Crayons-Came-Home/Drew-Daywalt/book_9780008124434.htm FREE Shipping. Save […]

I have been meaning to read Joe Lansdale for ages. Ever since The Bottoms came out in 2000, which my Dad begged me to read. Having finally gotten around to reading his latest book I am of course kicking myself for waiting so long. I am a sucker for a good Western and a massive […]

Two years after the events of You Will Never Find Me Charlie Boxer’s life is nearing some normalcy. Normal for a kidnap consultant whose services offer a little bit extra revenge on the side. His relationships with his ex-wife Mercy and daughter Amy are back on track and his relationship with Isabel is blossoming. However […]

I fell instantly in love with this book though. Having done a re-read of To Kill A Mockingbird in preparation I instantly fell into step with the voice of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch. At 26 years old the character we already know is all there, which makes sense because this is the same character, at […]

This novel is everything Laura Lippman has been doing so well in her standalone novels but this time with Tess Monaghan. Lippman takes a confronting but tragically all too familiar crime and explores the fallout, years later, for all those involved. Combined with the ups and downs of parenthood this is not only a page-turning […]

This is one of those books that immediately after you start reading you know you are in the hands of a wonderful writer. Atticus Lish has delivered a delicately savage critique on post-9/11 America and the so-called American Dream in a beautiful love story of an illegal immigrant and an American soldier recently returned from […]

Sara Novic’s writing is incredible and she completely shattered me a quarter of the way into the book. She also structures her story perfectly jumping backward and forward from the war in 1991 to ten years later and its lasting aftereffects. This is a coming-of-age story which happens far too early. It is about how […]

Welcome to Boomerang Book Bites. A weekly review of books we think are awesome. One of the major differences between a physical bookshop and an online bookshop is that online you don’t have a person to tell you about the fantastic books available. But with Boomerang Books we are backed by one of Australia’s leading independent […]

Ever wondered how those sensational little nutty chunks in your macadamia crunch ice-cream got there? Well maybe not. But let me tell you it’s a long and exacting process from orchard to waffle cone, and one I’m most definitely grateful for.

Our nutty friends from Macadamia House on the Sunshine Coast give us another tantalising taste of the harvesting process through the eyes of Nosh the Nutmobile with their second release in the series, The Harvest Race.

Likeable new picture-book team, Em Horsfield and Glen Singleton along with their colourful cast of characters describe a timely notion to us all; that winning and coming first is not everything. Hard to swallow I know with the Grand Final season upon us, and apparently, advice easily overlooked amidst the excitement and build-up to Nosh’s and Max’s first harvest race.

Farmer B is anxious to collect as many nuts as possible from his bulging orchard. So are the racing teams who include; Arnold and Maureen, Gus and Borris and new comer to the scene, Pistol Pete, the fearless, green nut harvesting machine.

No nuts means no race, unfilled market orders and no winner to crown. What could possibly get in our competitors’ way this season? Hungry hogs? Marauding cockatoos? Bad weather? It’s a disaster of a more bovine nature that threatens the crop and race this time.

An entire herd of Holstein Friesians (that’s the black and white version of a Milka cow), believing the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence, escape their paddock and invade the orchard, breaking boughs, trampling nuts into the mud and most upsetting of all, leaving cow-sized land-mines all over the racetrack.

Our dauntless hero, Nosh the Nutmobile, once again hits upon the solution to a rather nutty dilemma and eventually calm is restored. However, cow-removal has prevented Nosh from collecting one single nut. Fearing they have completely flopped in their first-ever race, Nosh and Max are heartened to hear from Farmer B that they too have earned a ‘Hip Harvest Hooray!’ for saving the day.

Image by Chris McCormack Bayside Bulletin

Em Horsfield has chosen to use rhyming verse to call this harvest season’s race and manages to keep the pace blipping along as smartly as nuts popping into a harvest hopper.

Glen Singleton’s characteristic illustrations sing silliness and convincingly cement the bolder than life personalities of Nosh and his farm friends in this very pleasing continuation of what is fast becoming a quintessentially idiosyncratic Aussie picture book series.

Charming, charismatic and cheeky for 4 year olds onwards.

Harvest your copy of The Harvest Race online here.

Want a look behind the scenes? Watch this video by Macadamia House of Glen Singleton as he takes us through the process of bringing Gus, one of the characters in The Harvest Race to life. It’s almost as involved as growing macadamias! Brilliant. This whole experience has made me hungry for more. And there will be…Stay tuned for the release of Santa’s Magic Beard due out next month.

Little Steps Publishing August 2013

AMBER ROAD

http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/boyd-anderson/amber-road-9781742759395.aspx

With intrigue, romance and suspense to rival Gone With the Wind, AMBER ROAD tells an epic story of one woman’s indomitable spirit against the backdrop of World War Two.

As an empire is swept away, a young woman’s world is ripped apart…

It’s 1941 and seventeen-year-old Victoria Khoo lives in luxury in colonial Singapore. Her carefree days are spent fantasising about marrying Sebastian Boustead, scion of a great British merchant family, and becoming mistress of his imposing mansion on Amber Road.

Not even Sebastian’s arrival from London with his new fiancée, Elizabeth Nightingale, can dampen her dreams…

Then the war reaches Asia and ‘Fortress Singapore’ abruptly surrenders to the Japanese. As the inhabitants are deserted by Britain, Victoria is forced to protect both her family and her rival, Elizabeth, from the cruelty of the occupation.

Victoria’s old life has vanished in a heartbeat – but nothing will stand in the way of her destiny. Not the war. Not Elizabeth. And certainly not Joe Spencer, the charismatic Australian who both charms and infuriates her at every turn…

Available now.

Also available as an ebook.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM TRANSCRIPT:
Brett: You make no allusions about the parallels between AMBER ROAD and Gone with the Wind. In fact it kind of percolates right through the book. Interestingly Gone with the Wind brought to the screen in 1939, just as the Second World War was starting. How did that classic inspire you and the characters in AMBER ROAD?
Boyd: Well that’s actually where the whole thing started. I was riding my bike one day and I had just seen the Gone with the Wind film—which I have to say I think is better than the book—probably for the twentieth or thirtieth time and it was just, as you say, percolating around in my brain. That story about the end of the civilisation of the South because of the Civil War is really not a big story when you think about what happened as a result of the Second World War. That was the end of the British Empire. An entire empire finished. Not only did that empire finish over those five or six years, it finished on one day: the fall of Singapore was the end of the British Empire. You can date it to one day. That’s the store I wanted to write. Then I, as you say, percolated around for a bit and I’ve also found that I like the characters of Gone with the Wind: that strangely strong woman and the resourceful heroic man and how their relationship brings out what it does in the two of those people against the backdrop of a completely changing world is what excited me. So I sat down and started writing it and just couldn’t stop.
Brett: I can’t imagine how much effort goes into researching a book like AMBER ROAD. Where do you begin?
Boyd: You begin by loving research. If you don’t like research, if you don’t like delving into why things happen, you can’t do it. Fortunately, I love doing that, so it’s not a task, it’s a pleasurable pastime. The sources I had were impeccable because apart from all the sources that are available in Google, the libraries, archives and so on, I had sources in my own family. My wife is from that part of the world and she has relatives who lived through the time and I was able to interview them and get specific information and was directed into specific sources that were rather exclusive and certainly sources I hadn’t seen delved into in fiction before.
Brett: The detail of the history is remarkable and it feels, at times, personal. I believe that Ang Sana lodge, Sebastian… one of the main characters’ family home has a link with your own family, or inspired by a home in your own family?
Boyd: Part of my wife’s family actually lived in Amber Road right until the sixties but not in a house like that. A house like that comes from another branch of the family not in Singapore, but in Malaysia. They had houses of that type in other parts of the Malay Peninsula. So essentially putting all those things together. There were houses like that in AMBER ROAD—Amber Road is a real street by the way—and there were houses like that in those days, I mean they still exist. It’s a quite different road now; it used to be right on the waterfront, now it’s about a mile front the waterfront. There’s so much landfill in Singapore so it’s got a completely different feel to it.

Out 30 January 2013. www.therosieproject.com.au

The book trailer for the feel-good novel of the year, The Rosie Project, in high definition.

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. Then a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionnaire—a sixteen-page, scientifically researched document—to find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver.

Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is strangely beguiling, fiery and intelligent. And she is also on a quest of her own. She’s looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might just be able to help her with—even if he does wear quick-dry clothes and eat lobster every single Tuesday night.

Love this “Reading Is…” video from Teach Mentor Texts, and many writers, readers, and book lovers.

I love it when book people–writers, editors, publishers, librarians, readers–get involved in doing something good. Random House has just done that, creating an Its Get Better video. Kudos to Random House!

I love funny videos about the library and books, and Sesame St has made some great ones. Enjoy this one with Cookie Monster at the library.

Know another video you’d like me to feature? Let me know.

I love these humorous video takes on banned books.

This one by Girls In the Stacks is so funny! I really enjoyed it.

And this video with puppets misunderstanding the meaning of Banned Book Week is fun! (smiling)

Thanks to the wonderful Paul W. Hankins for the links to these great videos.

Know a great video about books or banned/challenged books? Let me know, and if it works for me, too, I’ll share it.

And don’t forget to enter my contest to win 1 of 3 signed copies of Scars (1st edition, hardcover) for Banned Book Week.