Deborah Crabtree
Deborah Crabtree is from Readings Carlton
Review — 3 Apr 2022
Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel
It’s perhaps inevitable that a book written by an author in lockdown and grappling with a virtual Zoom book tour during a pandemic would feature a character in that exact…
Review — 28 Mar 2021
My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn
In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London a young and terrified Tracey Thorn was grappling with insecurity and inexperience. With her band on the verge of breaking up, Thorn…
Blog post — 4 Apr 2020
Deb's isolation blues recommendations
Deborah Crabtree is a bookseller at our Carlton shop, as well as the co-host of our crime books focussed podcast, Good Cop Bad Cop. Here, she shares what she’s reading…
Review — 28 May 2019
Crossings by Alex Landragin
In the opening pages of Alex Landragin’s debut novel, Crossings, the reader is immediately made aware that this is no ordinary tale. The first two sentences read: ‘I didn’t…
Review — 22 Oct 2018
Through the Night by Ed Moreno & Caio Fernando Abreu
In 1990 Ed Moreno was given a death sentence: at just 25 years of age he tested HIV positive and doctors gave him five years to live, at best. Almost…
Review — 25 Jun 2017
Wimmera by Mark Brandi
Set in small-town Australia in the 1980s, Wimmera is the story of two boyhood friends, Fab and Ben, presented in three parts. Part one is told in schoolboy Ben’s voice…
Review — 24 Jun 2018
The New Jerusalem by Patti Smith
When Nexus Institute founder Rob Riemen wrote Patti Smith a letter of admiration, he also sent her a book he had written and an invitation to take part in a…
Review — 24 Sep 2017
Dancing Home by Paul Collis
Fresh out of prison and driven by a hunger for drugs, revenge, and a hankering to reconnect with his grandmother’s country, Blackie embarks on a road trip back to Wiradjuri…
Review — 20 Aug 2017
City of Crows by Chris Womersley
It was during the reign of King Louis XIV that the Affair of the Poisons transpired, scandalising seventeenth-century France. Many members of the aristocracy were implicated, hundreds of people were…
Review — 29 Mar 2016
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
From the opening line of The Turner House, Flournoy had me hooked. Something odd, mysterious and mythical happens one night in 1958 to Cha-Cha, the eldest of the thirteen…