Dear Reader, August 2018
Some time last year, it seemed like everyone I know was talking about a true crime podcast called ‘Trace’. The crime – a terrible unsolved murder with scandalous connections to a major institution – happened in 1980, not far from where I live. The victim, Maria James, was killed in her home, a residence behind the bookshop she owned. While I wanted to know more, I find no space in my leisure time for podcasts. Fortunately the story eventually found me – in the form of a bound manuscript. Trace is a fascinating account of Rachael Brown’s research into the evidence, but in book form is also about the making of the podcast, its impact on the cold case, and the way that the obsession that became Trace affected Brown herself. It’s gripping stuff, brilliantly told, and is our Non-fiction Book of the Month. Read an extract here.
August also brings us two fantastic memoirs about identity and belonging from two new but already essential voices: Zoya Patel’s No Country Woman and Sisonke Msimang’s Always Another Country. Imprisoned refugee and writer Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains: writing from Manus Prison gives voice to the desperate situation caused by successive governments’ policies made in our name. Sam Twyford-Moore’s The Rapids takes readers into the experience of mania; Jill Stark follows her acclaimed memoir High Sobriety with Happily Never After.
I admit my lack of AFL comprehension, but still get the excitement around the publication of Bob Murphy’s Leather Soul. Rejoice too for Family, the new cookbook from Readings favourite, Hetty McKinnon. You’ll also find new books from Edmund White, Mark Kurlansky, Parker Posey, Adam Hills, George Megalogenis, Stephen Orr, Bernard Keane, Matt Haig, Jamie Oliver, Rachel Khoo, and James Halliday, and a timely revised edition of Henry Reynolds’ classic, This Whispering in Our Hearts Revisited.
My verbosity has left me with little room to discuss adequately the array of August’s fiction. In short, you must read our Fiction Book of the Month, Too Much Lip, the excellent new novel from multi-award-winning author Melissa Lucashenko. Look out for two dazzling local debuts – Angela Meyer’s A Superior Spectre and Lexi Freeman’s Inappropriation – and new work from Laura Elizabeth Woollett (Beautiful Revolutionary) and Ruby J. Murray (The Biographer’s Lover). Another rural Australian crime blockbuster is coming our way: Chris Hammer’s Scrublands.
In international fiction, you’ll see new books from Megan Abbott, Yan Lianke, Jasper Fforde, Marie Darrieussecq, Sabri Louatah, Sofka Zinovieff, Jonas Jonasson, Simon Mawer, Sjón, Cixin Liu, and Becky Chambers, plus a buzzworthy debut from Ontario-based Sarah Selecky, Radiant Shimmering Light.
And finally, dear reader, congratulations to the winner of 2018’s Readings Young Adult Book Prize, Erin Gough. Amelia Westlake is celebrated by our judges as ‘part queer rom-com, part feminist heist and a joy to read’. The competition was so fierce this year, our judges wished they could award multiple prizes!
NB: By the time you read this, you’ll be able to visit Carlton’s old/new digs again at 309 Lygon Street. We can’t wait to see you there.
