It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #SundayPost #SundaySalon

The It’s Monday! What Are You Reading meme is hosted at BookDate

I’m also linking to The Sunday Post @ Caffeinated Reviewer

And the Sunday Salon @ ReaderBuzz

Life…

After some very tense days earlier this week due to advancing bushfires, I was hugely relieved when the immediate threat to my town finally passed. The fires that surrounded us are actually still burning/smouldering but are now considered controlled after a superhuman effort from our firefighters. There are a further 56 fires still active in the state.

The remaining landscape looks apocalyptic. Over fifty homes have been lost in my immediate area, still more have seen their pastures, crops, stock and sheds razed. Tragically, three people were killed. The numbers state wide are even higher.

Schools remained closed for the entire week, so too did the roads, so my husband couldn’t get to work, and I couldn’t visit with my parents to celebrate my mother’s birthday, or my wedding anniversary. My husband was upset to learn that his Archery Club, including all the buildings and equipment, was completely destroyed, but we personally were very lucky, and grateful for it.

Below is a short 2min video which shows a small part of the devastation in my area. I live in Taree, the places also shown here are within 20km (12miles), several much closer.

When the risk of escalation was at its worst between Sunday and Wednesday I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. We were glued to the emergency services broadcast tracking the path of the fires so I didn’t get much reading done. I’m expecting that things will essentially get back to normal this week for us, much of the choking smoke has dissipated, the main roads have reopened, and school resumes on Monday.

That’s not true for everybody though, and if you would like to help, your donation to this GoFundMe appeal will be appreciated by those in need.

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

House of Wishes by Jenn J. McLeod

The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective by Susannah Stapleton

Resurrection Bay (Caleb Zelic #1) by Emma Viskic

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New Posts

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #SundayPost #SundaySalon

Blog Tour Review: The Island On the Edge of the World by Deborah Rodriguez

Review: Up On Horseshoe Hill by Penelope Janu

Guest Post: Jenn J. McLeod and House of Wishes

Review: House of Wishes by Jenn J. McLeod

#NonficNov Become the Expert: Australian True Crime featuring female perpetrators

#NonFicNov: Killer Instinct: Having a Mind for Murder by Donald Grant

Bookshop Bounty

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What I’m Reading This Week

Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls by Carrie Goldberg

Nobody’s Victim is an unflinching look at a hidden world most people don’t know exists—one of stalking, blackmail, and sexual violence, online and off—and the incredible story of how one lawyer, determined to fight back, turned her own hell into a revolution.

“We are all a moment away from having our life overtaken by somebody hell-bent on our destruction.” That grim reality—gleaned from personal experience and twenty years of trauma work —is a fundamental principle of Carrie Goldberg’s cutting-edge victims’ rights law firm.

Riveting and an essential timely conversation-starter, Nobody’s Victim invites readers to join Carrie on the front lines of the war against sexual violence and privacy violations as she fights for revenge porn and sextortion laws, uncovers major Title IX violations, and sues the hell out of tech companies, schools, and powerful sexual predators. Her battleground is the courtroom; her crusade is to transform clients from victims into warriors.

In gripping detail, Carrie shares the diabolical ways her clients are attacked and how she, through her unique combination of advocacy, badass relentlessness, risk-taking, and client-empowerment, pursues justice for them all.

Deeply personal yet achingly universal, Nobody’s Victim is a bold and much-needed analysis of victim protection in the era of the Internet. This book is an urgent warning of a coming crisis, a predictor of imminent danger, and a weapon to take back control and protect ourselves—both online and off.

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Cry of the Firebird by T.M. Clark

In the badlands of Africa, a resourceful doctor fights to save her patients’ lives. Australian thriller writer T.M. Clark returns with a vivid, action-packed adventure in the tradition of Wilbur Smith.

South African-born Doctor Lily Winters, a consultant with the World Health Organization, has been in the thick of some of the worst humanitarian disasters across the globe. But when she’s posted back to South Africa following the suspicious death of an ex-colleague, she faces the biggest medical mystery she’s ever seen.

The resettled Platfontein San People population is exhibiting a higher than average HIV epidemic, and their people are dying. The cases Lily takes over are baffling and despite her best efforts the medicine doesn’t seem to be helping.

To save this unique community, Lily and a policeman from the Kalahari, Piet Kleinman, join forces to trace the origins of the epidemic and uncover the truth. Their search drags them into the dangerous world of a corrupt industry driven by profit while the authorities meant to protect their community turn a blind eye. In a race against time Lily and Piet will put not only their careers but their lives on the line…

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And Fire Came Down (Caleb Zelic #2) by Emma Viskic

Deaf since early childhood, Caleb Zelic is used to meeting life head-on. Now, he’s struggling just to get through the day. His best mate is dead, his ex-wife, Kat, is avoiding him, and nightmares haunt his waking hours.

But when a young woman is killed, after pleading for his help in sign language, Caleb is determined to find out who she was. The trail leads Caleb back to his hometown, Resurrection Bay. The town is on bushfire alert, and simmering with racial tensions. As Caleb delves deeper, he uncovers secrets that could ruin any chance of reuniting with Kat, and even threaten his life. Driven by his own demons, he pushes on. But who is he willing to sacrifice along the way?

The second Caleb Zelic thriller from the author of Resurrection Bay – Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, and Davitt Awards for Best Novel, Best Debut and Reader’s Choice.

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Life Moves Pretty Fast by Hadley Freeman

Hadley Freeman brings us her personalised guide to American movies from the 1980s – why they are brilliant, what they meant to her, and how they influenced movie-making forever.

For Hadley Freeman, American moves of the 1980s have simply got it all. Comedy in Three Men and a Baby, Hannah and Her Sisters, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future and Trading Places; all a teenager needs to know – in Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club and Mystic Pizza; the ultimate in action – Top Gun, Die Hard, Young Sherlock Holmes, Beverly Hills Cop and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; love and sex – in 9 ½ Weeks, Splash, About Last Night, The Big Chill, Bull Durham; and family fun – in The Little Mermaid, ET, Big, Parenthood and Lean On Me.

Born in the late 1970s, Hadley grew up on a well-rounded diet of these movies, her entire view of the world, adult relations and expectations of what her life might hold was forged by these cult classics.

In this personalised guide, she puts her obsessive movie geekery to good use, detailing the decades key players, genres and tropes, and how exactly the friendship between Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi influenced the evolution of comedy. She looks back to a cinematic world in which bankers are invariably evil, despite this being the decade of Wall Street, where children are always wiser than adults, and science is embraced with an intense enthusiasm, and the future viewed with excitement. She considers how the changes between movies then and movies today say so much about pop culture’s and society’s changing expectations of women, young people and art, and explains why Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles should be put on school syllabuses immediately

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The Diamond Hunter by Fiona McIntosh

‘It won’t matter how many diamonds you find if you lose the love of your child.’

When six-year-old Clementine Knight loses her mother to malaria during the 1870s diamond rush in southern Africa, she is left to be raised by her destitute, alcoholic father, James. Much of Clementine’s care falls to their trusty Zulu companion, Joseph One-Shoe, and the unlikely pair form an unbreakable bond.

When the two men uncover a large, flawless diamond, James believes he has finally secured their future, but the discovery of the priceless gem comes at a huge cost. A dark bargain is struck to do whatever it takes to return Clementine to a respectable life at the Grant family’s sprawling estate in northern England – while the diamond disappears.

Years on, long-buried memories of Clementine’s childhood in Africa and her beloved Joseph One-Shoe are triggered, as she questions who she can trust. To solve the mystery of what happened to her loved ones all those years ago, she must confront a painful history and finally bring justice to bear.

From the harsh desert of Africa’s Kimberley diamond mine to the misty, green plains of northern England, The Diamond Hunter is a breathtaking adventure story about trust and betrayal, the ultimate quest for truth, and a love that is truly priceless

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Thanks for stopping by!