Alice Bishop’s debut collection is A Constant Hum. Across nearly fifty stories Bishop explores responses from communities and individuals in times of bushfire. The collection is in many ways a response to the Black Saturday bushfires that devastated Victoria in February 2009. The collection in A Constant Hum is not simply a retelling though, or even a linear account of the events of those fires. Within the stories Bishop explores the myriad lives that were impacted and gives the reader an opportunity to sit beside and perhaps feel and understand some of the terrible and incredible events.

Young Adult is consistently one of the hottest shelves in any bookstore. With new blockbuster movies capturing our favourite YA novels it seems almost limitless in scope...

But what is YA and where did it come from?

In today's book club Andrew and Julia explore the origins of YA and trace its history from America in the 1950's. Discover whether all books about young protagonists make the YA cut and how YA needs to be on the shelves of more than just the young adults...

Mark Smith’s Winter trilogy kicked off in 2016. The Road to Winter introduced us to Finn and transported us to Australia’s not too distant future; a world barren of all but a few survivors. Finn is surviving in the coastal town of Angourie; surfing and trapping food to live. His world is overturned when a lone girl appears pursued by ‘Wilders’; savage survivors who maintain control through fear and violence.

The Winter Trilogy continues in Wilder Country and concludes with the recent release of Land of Fences. Finn is becoming aware that the larger world he had thought lost has been surviving and rebuilding. This has implications for the people Finn calls friends as well as those he calls enemies.

Daniel is being transported through a regional Australian landscape to an unknown destination. Daniel’s a teenage drug dealer who has been diverted from a hefty jail sentence at the last minute by a strange intervention.

Dr J runs a clandestine facility in an undisclosed location. Daniel will come to know the facility as both a home and a school. There Daniel joins a group of unorthodox teenagers; unique in their crimes but all serving out punishments separate from the justice system. He's offered a contract and required to attend classes and sessions with Dr J; but who is behind the facility and what do they want from their teenaged inmates?

On the surface Alex Landragin’s Crossings is a collection of three short stories;

The first, a final tale from the French poet Charles Baudelaire. The second is a dark romance set in Paris on the eve of German invasion. While the final tells the tale of a mysterious being travelling through generations witnessing history unfold. These stories are brought together by the Parisian bookbinder Alex Landragin at the behest of a noted bibliophile.

Hidden within the manuscript however is an alternate tale that tempts the reader to explore the stories not as three disparate units but as a unique and unified whole. Within these pages is a tale of love and treachery throughout the history of the modern world.

Nancy Drew is nearly 100 years old!

The girl detective has lived hundred's of mysteries and was the inspiration for our last episodes novel The Nancy's.

But who is the girl detective and where did she come from?

Andrew and Tess get to the bottom of the Nancy mystery!

The Nancy’s is the story of Tippy Chan. Tippy is eleven, she lives in the small South Otago town of Riverstone. It’s been a shit year for Tippy. Her Dad died nine months ago and her mum is dealing with it by hiding all trace of his existence. But Tippy’s uncle Pike is coming to stay and look after Tippy while her mum takes a holiday. Tippy and Pike share a love of Nancy Drew. Tippy has all Pike’s old copies and reads them voraciously wishing she had a mystery to solve.

Pike arrives with his new boyfriend Devon and Tippy’s mum leaves for her cruise.

And then Tippy’s teacher’s teacher’s horribly mutilated body is discovered by the only traffic lights on the way out of town!

The Nancy’s is the story of Tippy Chan. Tippy is eleven, she lives in the small South Otago town of Riverstone. It’s been a shit year for Tippy. Her Dad died nine months ago and her mum is dealing with it by hiding all trace of his existence. But Tippy’s uncle Pike is coming to stay and look after Tippy while her mum takes a holiday. Tippy and Pike share a love of Nancy Drew. Tippy has all Pike’s old copies and reads them voraciously wishing she had a mystery to solve.

Pike arrives with his new boyfriend Devon and Tippy’s mum leaves for her cruise.

And then Tippy’s teacher’s teacher’s horribly mutilated body is discovered by the only traffic lights on the way out of town!

Book nine of the Rowland Sinclair mysteries sees Rowland and his Scooby gang of crime fighting artist friends travelling to Shanghai. When the series began almost ten years years ago with ‘A Few Right Thinking Men’ the reader was transported back to Australia at the turn of the 1930’s. Rowland Sinclair is the playboy youngest son of a grazier with little more care in the world than painting and hanging out with his rebellious friends (think artists and communists). Skip forward over the years and eight books and we are in 1935 and Rowland is a world weary but still dapper playboy who has had to solve numerous crimes to hold back the forces of fascism from invading Australia’s shores.

When a young woman is murdered in Rowland's Shanghai penthouse he is the prime suspect. It becomes a race against time to clear Rowland’s good name before he is thrown into a Shanghai prison, but Rowland is surrounded by an eclectic selection of friends and foes with no way of knowing who to trust.

Book nine of the Rowland Sinclair mysteries sees Rowland and his Scooby gang of crime fighting artist friends travelling to Shanghai. When the series began almost ten years years ago with ‘A Few Right Thinking Men’ the reader was transported back to Australia at the turn of the 1930’s. Rowland Sinclair is the playboy youngest son of a grazier with little more care in the world than painting and hanging out with his rebellious friends (think artists and communists). Skip forward over the years and eight books and we are in 1935 and Rowland is a world weary but still dapper playboy who has had to solve numerous crimes to hold back the forces of fascism from invading Australia’s shores.

When a young woman is murdered in Rowland's Shanghai penthouse he is the prime suspect. It becomes a race against time to clear Rowland’s good name before he is thrown into a Shanghai prison, but Rowland is surrounded by an eclectic selection of friends and foes with no way of knowing who to trust.