by Rowena Morcom | Jul 26, 2024 |
The witty new novel from this internationally acclaimed Polish author blends horror, folklore and feminist parable.
The Nobel Prize-winner’s latest work is a riveting, humorous tale of mystery that takes misogyny to task. In September 1913, Mieczyslaw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day- will there be war? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?
But disturbing events are happening in the guesthouse and its surroundings. Someone-or something-seems to be infiltrating their world. As our student attempts to decipher the sinister forces at work, little does he realise they have already chosen their next target.
As in her acclaimed novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Tokarczuk blends horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.
by Rowena Morcom | May 30, 2024 |
The first bestselling novel in the compelling Duffy and Macintosh series, depicting our turbulent history as never before.
“The home grown version of Wilbur Smith” The Sunday Age
A stark and vivid novel of Australia’s brutal past.
An epic tale of two families, the Macintoshes and the Duffys, who are locked in a deadly battle from the moment squatter Donald Macintosh commits an act of barbarity on his Queensland property. Their paths cross in love, death and revenge as both families fight to tame the wild frontier of Australia’s north country.
PRAISE FOR THE SERIES
“A rousing and revealing yarn” Weekend Australian
“the historical detail brings the … 19th century to rip-roaring life” The Australian “Watt’s fans love his work for its history, adventure and storytelling” Brisbane News
by Rowena Morcom | May 30, 2024 |
“I return to Delhi as I return to my mistress Bhagmati when I have had my fill of whoring in foreign lands.”
Thus begins Khushwant Singh’s vast, erotic, irrelevant magnum opus on the city of Delhi. The principal narrator of the saga, which extends over six hundred years, is a bawdy, ageing reprobate who loves Delhi as much as he does the hijra whore Bhagmati – half man, half woman with sexual inventiveness and energy of both the sexes.
Travelling through time, space and history to ‘discover’ his beloved city, the narrator meets a myriad of people-poets and princes, saints and sultans, temptresses and traitors, emperors and eunuchs – who have shaped and endowed Delhi with its very special mystique And as we accompany the narrator on his epic journey we find the city of emperors transformed and immortalized in our minds for ever.
by Rowena Morcom | May 30, 2024 |
A rich Chekhovian novel by one of the most gifted of contemporary Indian writers’ New Yorker
To the family living in the shabby, dusty house in Delhi, Tara’s visit brings a sharp reminder of life outside tradition. For Bim, coping endlessly with their problems, there is a renewal of the old jealousies for, unlike her sister, she has failed to escape. Looking at both the cruelty and the beauty of family life and the harshness of India’s modern history, Clear Light of Day brilliantly evokes the painful process of confronting and healing old wounds.
by goodreadingdev | May 25, 2024 |
We are the spaces between the words.
Inspired by a real person, In the Margins is the story of spirited book-collector Frances Wolfreston—the woman who uniquely preserved the earliest part of Shakespeare’s legacy.
England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector’s wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances’ love of books and secretly practised Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn’t report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.
As Frances takes increasingly bold steps to help the women and children of the parish, she attracts the ire of a patron of the church who questions why Frances collects books that she charges are entertainment. When her mother is gaoled for religious crimes, the secrets Frances hides from her husband begin to surface, and she is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the strict dictates of the new laws, or risk everything to free the women she cares for.
In this tender and powerful work of imagination, the life of a remarkable woman who wrote and lived in the margins in a time where women’s voices went unheard is restored to history. Beautifully written and deeply moving, In the Margins is a testament to the way literature can illuminate our inner lives and set us free when the world around us is covered in darkness.
Gail Holmes grew up in Scotland, the youngest of seven children and the only girl. She graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a BSc (Hons) in Civil Engineering and a Master of Business Administration. She moved to London to join an international energy company and had an international career there for twenty-three years as a project manager and commercial manager. During this time Gail also married and had five children. She moved to Australia in 2013. Her creative writing journey began when she was a working mum with very young children in Shanghai, China. Unable to get back to sleep one night, Gail started writing short stories about living in Shanghai. As this writing habit continued to grow, she attended short courses at the City College of Literature in London and then later studied the Melbourne University’s Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing programme, graduating in 2021. In the Margins is her first novel.
