Wyatt by Garry Disher

Wyatt by Garry Disher is a new book, featuring one of Garry Disher’s older characters who has been ‘rested’ for a few years.   It’s a great thing that Wyatt is back because this is a terrific read.  It’s a crime/thriller set in Melbourne so a lot of the locations will be familiar to Melbournian’s.   Southbank, Abbotsford and Glen Iris are a few of the places where the action takes place.  Wyatt is an enigmatic, career criminal who is back in town and needs money.  His old methods of burglary and ‘stick ups’ are a bit more difficult these days, as he hasn’t kept up with technology.   Smart alarm systems and computers are beyond him, so he has to rely on other people a bit more than he really wants to.   I read this book in three sittings, and thoroughly recommend it.   Penguin will be re publishing two earlier Wyatt books in one volume soon, and I look forward to that.

Paperback $32.95  Heather

About a Girl

After dropping out of uni, Anna moves away from home to start out on her own. Following her parent’s divorce, Anna is determined to hate her father’s new girlfriend, Morgan, and doesn’t expect to fall a little bit in love with her. Slightly embarrassed and sick of feeling out of place, except with her best friend Michael, Anna wants to leave her ‘dark phase’, her gorgeous but troubled little sister and her sad mum behind. Working in a local bookshop, Anna’s new life in Lismore is unremarkable until she meets Flynn, a girl with a teapot named Lavinia and a white electric guitar named Louise. As the two girls slowly open up their lives to each other, they realise how loving someone can be both perfect and impossible.

Both honest and moving, About a Girl (PB $18) by Joanne Horniman is a beautiful story about finding yourself.

Recommended for girls 14+

Jess

SALE SALE SALE SALE

Today is Saturday the 13th of Feb and this sale is in its LAST DAYS so you better get in quickly to get 20% off everything in store, todays special is BEANIE KIDS with 30% off all sizes of the cutest bears in town. See you soon.

Melina Marchetta Teaser

Penguin Books Australia isn’t exactly someone I expected to become friends with whilst social networking on Facebook, but I’m glad I did. Today thanks to this “friendship” I followed a link to this tantilising taste of the new Melina Marchetta book called The Piper’s Son. Her previous titles include the best selling Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca as well as one of my favourite young adult titles On the Jellicoe Road which made it onto our Top Ten Books for Teen Girls list. This prologue has a lot of potential and unusually for Marchetta, the protagonist is male, a university aged boy named Tom. Out next month, I am really looking forward to this one. Paperback, $24.95.

SALE SALE SALE SALE

The daily special for today, Friday the 12th, is Travel and Biography. With 30% of these sections and 20% off the rest of the store this sale is not to be missed. See you soon.

The Other Family by Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope’s novels are hugely popular, and it’s easy to see why.They are about ordinary people, set on a small scale, and are engaging and accessible without being too fluffy. In other words, you can relax and enjoy the experience, knowing you are in safe hands!

Her latest, The Other Family, is no exception. It tells the story of the fallout after the death of Richie, a charismatic musician. His partner Chrissie and their three grown daughters Tamsin, Dilly and Amy, are devastated. His death also affects his “other family” – Margaret and Scott, who live in the North of England, where Richie grew up, and who he had left 23 years earlier to move to London with Chrissie.

The two families had lived without contact while Richie was alive, even though he had never divorced Margaret and married Chrissie, as Chrissie would have liked. But, after his death, Margaret and Scott’s mention in Richie’s will causes the families to finally acknowledge and try to come to terms with each other. Each family member deals with the situation in a different way, through a veil of grief, and with varying degrees of success. In the end it is a growing friendship between Scott and Amy which forces the families to connect and find a way to move on with their lives.

The story is an intimate portrait of a family moving through a very personal experience. Trollope’s characters are always believable, and react to their situations in a truthful way. I found myself wondering how they had fared, even after the book had ended! $32.95. Fiona

SALE SALE SALE SALE SALE SALE

The daily special for Thursday 11/2/2010 will be children’s books.   So that is 20% off everything else in the store, and 30% off all those books for the youngsters!!!   See you there.

The gang at Fairfieldbooks

SALE SALE SALE SALE

Wednesday’s special is Beanie Kids. All sizes will be 30% off the normal price.

Anamalz

These delightful wooden toy Anamalz ($11.95) are just made for little hands. Australian designed and hand made from sturdy wood, rope & felt from sustainable sources, they make a perfect gift. With both farm and jungle animals available, it’s time to start collecting!

Lustrum by Robert Harris

Lustrum, in Ancient Rome was originally a sacrifice for expiation and purification offered by one of the Censors of Rome in the name of the Roman people at the close of the taking of the census, which took place every five years. The name came to mean a period of five years.

Lustrum is Robert Harris’s 2nd installment of a trilogy about ancient Rome and follows on from Imperium as Cicero is appointed Consul of Rome.  As in Imperium, the story is told from the perspective of Cicero’s perceptive slave secretary, Tiro.  The year is 63 BC and the Roman Senate is as full of intrigue, corruption, nepotism and double dealing as ever.  It is set in the five years after 63BC, when the dying Roman Republic was “a vortex of humour, rumour and anxiety”, the streets full of homeless beggars, gap-toothed soothsayers and painted prostitutes, its politics a deadly mixture of patrician nest-feathering and demagogic populism. And its hero is Cicero, lawyer and orator, self-made man and statesman, here at the peak of his career.

Cicero has to deal with an upcoming Julius Caesar and an old adversary whom he manages to defeat only to be subsequently exiled himself.  The plots unfold as Rome and Cicero himself fade.  Harris once again gives us a gripping tale with exhaustive research that takes us to the heart of ancient Rome.  Paperback, $32.95  Dick