Take a break with a great Victorian Book.
We have something to suit everyone with the summer read program this year. There are crime novels and chicklit, biographies and family epics, and psychological thrillers. We will be featuring one of the novels every week and look for your feedback on the selections. You can even enter a competition to win fabulous prizes.
Will be hosting and author talk with Gideon Haigh on 24 February at 6.30pm in the John Taylor Room at the Kilmore library.
About the books
Fiction
Crime
The
Unbroken Line – Alex
Hammond
The violence of the past casts a long shadow – a
dark legacy with lethal consequences. When defence lawyer Will Harris is
attacked by masked men with a clear message to back off, he has no choice but
to listen. If only he knew what they were talking about.
Under siege as his fledgling law firm struggles
to get off the ground, Will agrees to defend the troubled son of a family
friend. But the case is far from clear-cut, and the ethical boundaries murky.
Instead of clawing his way out of trouble, Will finds he's sinking ever deeper.
At the same time, his search for his attackers
unearths an unexpected source that points him towards Melbourne's corridors of
power. But motives, let alone proofs, are hard to find. It is only when those
close to him are threatened that Will realises how near he is to the deadly
truth.
Gripping, sophisticated and strikingly
atmospheric, The Unbroken Line creates a remarkable portrait of power, revenge
and corruption, rooted in a vivid and unmistakably Australian setting.
'A
slick, fast-paced legal thriller set in Melbourne but with a genuine
international flavour and with enough twists to surprise even the most avid
fans of the genre.' West
Australian
'Fast-paced
and gripping.' Courier-Mail
Psychological Thriller
Please
Don’t Leave Me Here – Tania
Chandler
A riveting psychological thriller.
Kurt
Cobain stands at the top of the stairs, wearing the brown sweater. 'Please
don't leave me,' she yells up at him. But it's too late; he's turning away as
the tram slows for the stop out on the street.
Is Brigitte a loving wife and mother, or a
cold-blooded killer?
Nobody knows why she was in the east of the city
so early on the morning she was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver. It was
the Friday before Christmas 1994 -- the same day police discovered the body of
a man beaten to death in her apartment.
Fourteen years later, Brigitte is married to the
detective who investigated the murder, which she claims to have lost her memory
of in the car accident. They have young twins, and seem to be a happy family.
Until the reopening of the cold case.
Please Don't Leave Me Here is about loss, love
and lies. It is about pain, fear, and memory. And, above all, it is about
letting go.
‘A
remarkable debut. Stylish, assured writing and a compelling, totally believable
protagonist. Ms Chandler makes us believe in Brigitte even as we wonder whether
to believe her.’ Graeme Simsion
Family Saga
The
Secret Son – Jenny
Ackland
An Australian historian determined to find the
truth, a stolen inheritance, a wishing tree, a long-lost grandmother, and an
unlikely sweetheart come together in a dazzlingly original, audacious and
exhilarating novel about love, honour and belonging, and what it means to be a
good person.
I know that two men are coming up the mountain,
at this moment, including the boy from far away. I wonder what my grandson's
face will look like.This is a boy in the skin of a man.I know the boy is
innocent, that it's his family soul which is guilty.
An old woman sits waiting in a village that
clings to a Turkish mountainside, where the women weave rugs, make tea and keep
blood secrets that span generations. Berna can see what others cannot, so her
secrets are deeper and darker than most. It is time for her to tell her story,
even though the man for whom her words are meant won't hear them. It is time
for the truth to be told.
Nearly a hundred years before, her father James
had come to the village on the back of a donkey, gravely ill, rescued from the
abandoned trenches of Gallipoli by a Turkish boy whose life he had earlier
spared. James made his life there, never returning to Australia and never
realising that his own father was indeed the near-mythical bushranger that the
gossips had hinted at when he'd been a boy growing up in Beechworth.
Now, as Berna waits, a young man from Melbourne
approaches to visit his parents' village, against the vehement opposition of his
cursed, tight-lipped grandfather. What is the astonishing story behind the dark
deeds that connect the two men, unknown to each other and living almost a
century apart?
The Secret Son is a remarkable debut, a
dazzlingly original, audacious and exhilarating novel. At once joyous and
haunting, it is a moving meditation on love, honour and belonging, as well as a
story about the strength of women and what it means to be a good man.
Love Stories
Leap
– Myfanwy Jones
A heart-breaking, heart-lifting, effortlessly
enjoyable story about love and grief and everything in between.
Joe lives-despite himself. Driven by the need to
atone for the neglect of a single tragic summer's night, he works at nothing
jobs and, in his spare time, trains his body and mind to conquer the hostile
environment that took his love and smashed up his future. So when a breathless
girl turns up on the doorstep, why does he let her in? Isn't he done with love
and hope?
On the other side of the city, graphic designer
Elise is watching her marriage bleed out. She retreats to the only place that
holds any meaning for her-the tiger enclosure at the zoo-where, for reasons she
barely understands, she starts to sketch the beautiful killers.
Leap is a beautiful urban fairytale about human
and animal nature, and the transformative power of grief. While at its heart is
a searing absence, this haunting and addictive novel is propelled by an
exhilarating life force, and the eternally hopeful promise of redemptive love.
'Engaging
and luminous' Rosalie Ham
'…a
writer who knows how to draw us in by portraying what it is to love and lose in
a real sense.' Georgia
Blain
Chicklit
Tumbledown Manor - Helen Brown
A witty, entertaining novel about a woman who leaves the rat race for a quiet life restoring an old mansion from the bestselling author of Cleo.
Life's going down the gurgler for romance writer Lisa Trumperton. The deadline for her next novel is looming, her daughter won't eat but has a new tattoo each week, and now her Wall Street trader husband has run off with a woman at work.
Lisa makes a quick escape, home to Australia, where at least her girl-magnet son seems to be making hay. Determined to grow older disgracefully, she turns her back on a trim and tidy townhouse that is close to shops, aged-care providers and her bossy older sister, instead buying a grand old house in the country that once belonged to her great-grandfather.
But like its new owner, Trumperton Manor has seen better days. Crumbling, filthy and possibly haunted, the old house defies Lisa's attempts to restore it. Add flood, fire and family secrets, plus a stray cat with attitude and an overly familiar handyman, and the cracks begin to show. . .
Richly observed and laugh-out-loud funny, Tumbledown Manor is for anyone who believes it's never too late for a makeover.
Non-Fiction
History and Sport
Dangerous
Games – Larry
Writer
A team of 33 Australian athletes competed in the
1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Poorly prepared and with limited support, they
bravely faced formidable competition. Larry Writer recreates their experience
so vividly we can imagine ourselves in the famous stadium surrounded by
swastikas.
This is a tale of innocents abroad. Thirty-three
athletes left Australia in May 1936 to compete in the Hitler Olympics in
Berlin. Believing sporting competition was the best antidote to tyranny, they
put their qualms on hold. Anything to be part of the greatest show on earth.
Dangerous Games drops us into a front row seat
at the 100,000-capacity Olympic stadium to witness some of the finest sporting
performances of all time - most famously the African American runner Jesse
Owens, who eclipsed the best athletes the Nazis could pit against him in every
event he entered. The Australians, with their antiquated training regimes and
amateur ethos, valiantly confronted the intensely focused athletes of Germany,
the United States and Japan. Behind the scenes was cut- throat wheeling and
dealing, defiance of Hitler, and warm friendships among athletes.
What they did and saw in Berlin that hot, rainy
summer influenced all that came after until their dying days.
'Larry
Writer has delivered a gem in Dangerous Games.'
Roland Perry
'Writer
has faithfully recreated the 1936 Olympics - the most controversial in
history.' Harry
Gordon
Please
Don’t Leave Me Here – Tania
Chandler
A riveting psychological thriller.
Kurt
Cobain stands at the top of the stairs, wearing the brown sweater. 'Please
don't leave me,' she yells up at him. But it's too late; he's turning away as
the tram slows for the stop out on the street.
Then
she's lying on the road. Car tyres are going past, slowly. Somebody is
screaming. A siren howls.
Sweet
voices of little children are singing 'Morningtown Ride'.
Is Brigitte a loving wife and mother, or a
cold-blooded killer?
Nobody knows why she was in the east of the city
so early on the morning she was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver. It was
the Friday before Christmas 1994 -- the same day police discovered the body of
a man beaten to death in her apartment.
Fourteen years later, Brigitte is married to the
detective who investigated the murder, which she claims to have lost her memory
of in the car accident. They have young twins, and seem to be a happy family.
Until the reopening of the cold case.
Please Don't Leave Me Here is about loss, love
and lies. It is about pain, fear, and memory. And, above all, it is about
letting go.
‘A
remarkable debut. Stylish, assured writing and a compelling, totally believable
protagonist. Ms Chandler makes us believe in Brigitte even as we wonder whether
to believe her.’ Graeme Simsion
Family Saga
The
Secret Son – Jenny
Ackland
An Australian historian determined to find the
truth, a stolen inheritance, a wishing tree, a long-lost grandmother, and an
unlikely sweetheart come together in a dazzlingly original, audacious and
exhilarating novel about love, honour and belonging, and what it means to be a
good person.
I know that two men are coming up the mountain,
at this moment, including the boy from far away. I wonder what my grandson's
face will look like.This is a boy in the skin of a man.I know the boy is
innocent, that it's his family soul which is guilty.
An old woman sits waiting in a village that
clings to a Turkish mountainside, where the women weave rugs, make tea and keep
blood secrets that span generations. Berna can see what others cannot, so her
secrets are deeper and darker than most. It is time for her to tell her story,
even though the man for whom her words are meant won't hear them. It is time
for the truth to be told.
Nearly a hundred years before, her father James
had come to the village on the back of a donkey, gravely ill, rescued from the
abandoned trenches of Gallipoli by a Turkish boy whose life he had earlier
spared. James made his life there, never returning to Australia and never
realising that his own father was indeed the near-mythical bushranger that the
gossips had hinted at when he'd been a boy growing up in Beechworth.
Now, as Berna waits, a young man from Melbourne
approaches to visit his parents' village, against the vehement opposition of his
cursed, tight-lipped grandfather. What is the astonishing story behind the dark
deeds that connect the two men, unknown to each other and living almost a
century apart?
The Secret Son is a remarkable debut, a
dazzlingly original, audacious and exhilarating novel. At once joyous and
haunting, it is a moving meditation on love, honour and belonging, as well as a
story about the strength of women and what it means to be a good man.
Love Stories
Leap
– Myfanwy Jones
A heart-breaking, heart-lifting, effortlessly
enjoyable story about love and grief and everything in between.
Joe lives-despite himself. Driven by the need to
atone for the neglect of a single tragic summer's night, he works at nothing
jobs and, in his spare time, trains his body and mind to conquer the hostile
environment that took his love and smashed up his future. So when a breathless
girl turns up on the doorstep, why does he let her in? Isn't he done with love
and hope?
On the other side of the city, graphic designer
Elise is watching her marriage bleed out. She retreats to the only place that
holds any meaning for her-the tiger enclosure at the zoo-where, for reasons she
barely understands, she starts to sketch the beautiful killers.
Leap is a beautiful urban fairytale about human
and animal nature, and the transformative power of grief. While at its heart is
a searing absence, this haunting and addictive novel is propelled by an
exhilarating life force, and the eternally hopeful promise of redemptive love.
'Engaging
and luminous' Rosalie Ham
'…a
writer who knows how to draw us in by portraying what it is to love and lose in
a real sense.' Georgia
Blain
Chicklit
Tumbledown Manor - Helen Brown
A witty, entertaining novel about a woman who leaves the rat race for a quiet life restoring an old mansion from the bestselling author of Cleo.
Life's going down the gurgler for romance writer Lisa Trumperton. The deadline for her next novel is looming, her daughter won't eat but has a new tattoo each week, and now her Wall Street trader husband has run off with a woman at work.
Lisa makes a quick escape, home to Australia, where at least her girl-magnet son seems to be making hay. Determined to grow older disgracefully, she turns her back on a trim and tidy townhouse that is close to shops, aged-care providers and her bossy older sister, instead buying a grand old house in the country that once belonged to her great-grandfather.
But like its new owner, Trumperton Manor has seen better days. Crumbling, filthy and possibly haunted, the old house defies Lisa's attempts to restore it. Add flood, fire and family secrets, plus a stray cat with attitude and an overly familiar handyman, and the cracks begin to show. . .
Richly observed and laugh-out-loud funny, Tumbledown Manor is for anyone who believes it's never too late for a makeover.
Non-Fiction
History and Sport
Dangerous
Games – Larry
Writer
A team of 33 Australian athletes competed in the
1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Poorly prepared and with limited support, they
bravely faced formidable competition. Larry Writer recreates their experience
so vividly we can imagine ourselves in the famous stadium surrounded by
swastikas.
This is a tale of innocents abroad. Thirty-three
athletes left Australia in May 1936 to compete in the Hitler Olympics in
Berlin. Believing sporting competition was the best antidote to tyranny, they
put their qualms on hold. Anything to be part of the greatest show on earth.
Dangerous Games drops us into a front row seat
at the 100,000-capacity Olympic stadium to witness some of the finest sporting
performances of all time - most famously the African American runner Jesse
Owens, who eclipsed the best athletes the Nazis could pit against him in every
event he entered. The Australians, with their antiquated training regimes and
amateur ethos, valiantly confronted the intensely focused athletes of Germany,
the United States and Japan. Behind the scenes was cut- throat wheeling and
dealing, defiance of Hitler, and warm friendships among athletes.
What they did and saw in Berlin that hot, rainy
summer influenced all that came after until their dying days.
'Larry
Writer has delivered a gem in Dangerous Games.'
Roland Perry
'Writer
has faithfully recreated the 1936 Olympics - the most controversial in
history.' Harry
Gordon
True Crime
Certain Admissions: A Beach, a Body and a Lifetime of Secrets – Gideon Haigh
Certain Admissions is Australian true crime at its best, and stranger than any crime fiction. It is real-life police procedural, courtroom drama, family saga, investigative journalism, social history, archival treasure hunt - a meditation, too, on how the past shapes the present, and the present the past.
On a warm evening in December 1949, two young people met by chance under the clocks at Flinders Street railway station. They decided to have a night on the town. The next morning, one of them, twenty-year-old typist Beth Williams, was found dead on Albert Park Beach. When police arrested the other, Australia was transfixed: twenty-four-year-old John Bryan Kerr was a son of the establishment, a suave and handsome commercial radio star educated at Scotch College, and Harold Holt's next-door neighbour in Toorak.
Police said he had confessed. Kerr denied it steadfastly. There were three dramatic trials attended by enormous crowds, a relentless public campaign proclaiming his innocence involving the first editorials against capital punishment in Australia. For more than a decade Kerr was a Pentridge celebrity, a poster boy for rehabilitation – a fame that burdened him the rest of his life. Then, shortly after his death, another man confessed to having murdered Williams. But could he be believed?
'Haigh's work is a mesmerising detective story itself . . . [it] finds a new twist in the archives.' The Saturday Paper
'A beautifully written, tirelessly researched and ultimately very compelling and true story . . . Fascinating and tragic.' Herald Sun
'The trial of John Bryan Kerr was the first murder trial that I read about in detail, as a boy of eleven. I longed, even then, to know the whole story. Gideon Haigh's book has made the wait worthwhile.' Gerald Murnane
'Gideon Haigh understands the real tragedy of murder - it is never really solved.' P. M. Newton
Essays
Between
Us: Women of Letters – (curated
by) Michaela McGuire & Marieke Hardy
Writing a letter can be an act of confession or
celebration, while receiving one can bring joy, insight and vivid memories.
Ambassadors for correspondence Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire have lured
some of our best and brightest to the literary afternoons of Women of Letters
to write and read missives of all kinds.
Bestselling novelist Hannah Kent exchanges
letters about books, editing and synchronicity with her publisher Alex Craig.
Intimate and outrageous declarations of love and
friendship are shared between actor Rhys Muldoon and musician Kram.
And award-winning cartoonist First Dog on the
Moon expresses his affection for his editor Sophie Black through drawings
(while she sticks to the written word).
Between Us is an inspiring and engaging
collection of all-new letters from some of Australia's best-loved people.
'Entertaining
and heartfelt.' Herald
Sun
'A
collection of rib-tickling and soul-baring letters.' Sun-Herald
'The
individual voices of the authors shine through, sometimes lighthearted and
whimsical, sometimes poignant and nostalgic.' Courier-Mail
Biographies
Hello,
Beautiful! Scenes of a Life – Hannie
Rayson
I
realise that, despite all the references to my longing to be a writer, two
things are apparent. The first is that I don’t actually do much writing; the
second is that my teenage reflections display absolutely no talent for it. My
Diary is prima facie evidence of self-delusion on a grand scale.
A memoir in parts, from one of Australia’s
best-loved playwrights.
In her new book, she shines the spotlight on
herself. This collection of stories from a dramatic life radiate with the great
warmth and humour that has made Hannie one of the best-known playwrights in the
country. From a childhood in Brighton to a urinary tract infection in Spain,
from a body buried under the house to a play on a tram, Hello, Beautiful!
captures a life behind the scenes—a life of tender moments, hilarious
encounters and, inevitably, drama.
‘A
book of beautifully crafted, free-flowing vignettes that illuminates with
warmth and humour.‘ Australian
‘It
was a pleasure to read such a refreshing take on the genre of memoir, written
with skill, warmth and optimism. Like every good theatrical experience, you are
left wanting more.’ Good
Reading
Bad
Behaviour – Rebecca
Starford
It should have been a time of acquiring
confidence, building self respect and independence, of fostering a connection
with the natural world through long hikes. A gripping, compulsively readable
memoir of bullying at an elite country boarding school.
It was supposed to be a place where teenagers
would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs
in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the
natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the
students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to
have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.
Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year
at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left
largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of
the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their
feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks
with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant--and later a victim-- of
various forms of bullying and aggression.
Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a
time of friendship and joy, but also of shame and fear. It explores how those
crucial experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future
relationships, and asks courageous questions about the nature of female
friendship.
Moving, wise and painfully honest, this
extraordinary memoir shows how bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms,
can be so often and so easily repeated throughout our adult lives.
Between
Us: Women of Letters – (curated
by) Michaela McGuire & Marieke Hardy
Writing a letter can be an act of confession or
celebration, while receiving one can bring joy, insight and vivid memories.
Ambassadors for correspondence Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire have lured
some of our best and brightest to the literary afternoons of Women of Letters
to write and read missives of all kinds.
Bestselling novelist Hannah Kent exchanges
letters about books, editing and synchronicity with her publisher Alex Craig.
Intimate and outrageous declarations of love and
friendship are shared between actor Rhys Muldoon and musician Kram.
And award-winning cartoonist First Dog on the
Moon expresses his affection for his editor Sophie Black through drawings
(while she sticks to the written word).
Between Us is an inspiring and engaging
collection of all-new letters from some of Australia's best-loved people.
'Entertaining
and heartfelt.' Herald
Sun
'A
collection of rib-tickling and soul-baring letters.' Sun-Herald
'The
individual voices of the authors shine through, sometimes lighthearted and
whimsical, sometimes poignant and nostalgic.' Courier-Mail
Biographies
Hello,
Beautiful! Scenes of a Life – Hannie
Rayson
I
realise that, despite all the references to my longing to be a writer, two
things are apparent. The first is that I don’t actually do much writing; the
second is that my teenage reflections display absolutely no talent for it. My
Diary is prima facie evidence of self-delusion on a grand scale.
A memoir in parts, from one of Australia’s
best-loved playwrights.
Hannie Rayson—writer, mother, daughter, sister,
wife, romantic, adventuress, parking-spot optimist—has spent a lifetime giving
voice to others in the many roles she has written for stage and television.
In her new book, she shines the spotlight on
herself. This collection of stories from a dramatic life radiate with the great
warmth and humour that has made Hannie one of the best-known playwrights in the
country. From a childhood in Brighton to a urinary tract infection in Spain,
from a body buried under the house to a play on a tram, Hello, Beautiful!
captures a life behind the scenes—a life of tender moments, hilarious
encounters and, inevitably, drama.
‘A
book of beautifully crafted, free-flowing vignettes that illuminates with
warmth and humour.‘ Australian
‘It
was a pleasure to read such a refreshing take on the genre of memoir, written
with skill, warmth and optimism. Like every good theatrical experience, you are
left wanting more.’ Good
Reading
Bad
Behaviour – Rebecca
Starford
It should have been a time of acquiring
confidence, building self respect and independence, of fostering a connection
with the natural world through long hikes. A gripping, compulsively readable
memoir of bullying at an elite country boarding school.
It was supposed to be a place where teenagers
would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs
in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the
natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the
students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to
have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.
Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year
at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left
largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of
the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their
feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks
with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant--and later a victim-- of
various forms of bullying and aggression.
Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a
time of friendship and joy, but also of shame and fear. It explores how those
crucial experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future
relationships, and asks courageous questions about the nature of female
friendship.
Moving, wise and painfully honest, this
extraordinary memoir shows how bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms,
can be so often and so easily repeated throughout our adult lives.
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