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…

I know I was rather cryptic in my update last week but thankfully all went well. It‘s not quite resolved as we wait for results, but it looks promising. The situation sort of consumed my whole week, but there was some good news. My youngest son (14) started his first part time job for a local newsagency. The hours are brutal, 4am to 6am three mornings a week, sorting and rolling newspapers for delivery. He is really looking forward to having money of his own though, and it will be character building.

It’s the Queens Birthday long weekend here, but we have no plans. We are still practicing social distancing, or at least that’s the excuse we are using.

 

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

 

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside

Bottlebrush Creek by Maya Linnell

 

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New Posts…

 

Review: Heatstroke by Hazel Barkworth

Review: The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

Review: The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside by Jessica Ryn

2020 Nonfiction Reader Challenge: Monthly Spotlight #5

Six Degrees of Separation: Normal People to The Colorado Kid

 

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What I’m Reading This Week…

 

‘He didn’t have to be normal, the boy realised. He just had to pretend.’

It’s winter in Melbourne and Detective Emmett Corban is starting to regret his promotion to head of the Missing Persons Unit, as the routine reports pile up on his desk.

So when Natale Gibson goes missing, he’s convinced this is the big case he’s been waiting for – the woman’s husband and parents insist the devoted mother would never abandon her children, and her personal accounts remain untouched.

But things aren’t all they seem. The close-knit Italian family is keeping secrets – none bigger than the one Natale has been hiding.

Just as the net seems to be tightening, the investigation is turned on its head. The body of a woman is found . . . then another.

What had seemed like a standard missing person’s case has turned into a frightening hunt for a serial killer, and time is running out.

But to really understand these shocking crimes, Emmett and his team will need to delve back through decades of neglect – back to a squalid inner-city flat, where a young boy is left huddling over his mother’s body . . .

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In 1790, five convicts escaped Sydney by boat and were swept ashore near present day Newcastle. They were taken into the local Aboriginal clan, marrying and starting families. Thus began a long and often dramatic series of encounters between Aboriginals and convicts in the Hunter Valley, the second European settlement after Sydney. This book tells the story of the Hunter’s first 50 years—a rich account of relations between the convicts, land owners (many former convicts), and Aboriginal clans. Not a simple recounting of frontier conflict, it also shows how some Aboriginal families found ways to survive the loss of their land by subtle forms of resistance, or by working for the European settlers. Based on meticulous and extensive primary research which has uncovered many new stories,The Convict Valley is a new Australian history classic.

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On a Barbarous Coast is an alternative retelling of Captain James Cook’s story co-written by Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick in the tradition of imagined histories.

We were becoming the wild things we most feared, but could not see it at the time.

On a night of raging winds and rain, Captain Cook’s Endeavour lies splintered on a coral reef off the coast of far north Australia. A small disparate band of survivors, fracturing already, huddle on the shore of this strange land – their pitiful salvage scant protection from the dangers of the unknown creatures and natives that live here.

Watching these mysterious white beings, the Guugu Yimidhirr people cannot decide if they are ancestor spirits to be welcomed – or hostile spirits to be speared. One headstrong young boy, Garrgiil, determines to do more than watch and to be the one to find out what exactly they are.

Fierce, intriguing and thoughtful, On a Barbarous Coast is the story of a past and future that might have been.

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Thanks for stopping by!