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​When Ashes Fall

22/3/2019

 
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Marni Mann: published independently $14.99
 
AS A frontline paramedic turned telephone dispatcher for the Boston police department Alix Rayne is accustomed to remaining cool under pressure. Managing life-threatening situations is second nature for this attractive, vibrant, 30-something woman.
On her way out to meet a blind date one evening Alix stumbles onto a stranger on the brink of death in an alleyway, having mixed too much alcohol with an overdose of drugs. Using her professional training to assess and then respond to the emergency she calls for an ambulance and is relieved to learn later that the patient, Joe, has survived his transfer to hospital.
Alix recognises something special in the friend accompanying Joe, Smith Reid, and hesitates for only a split second before accepting an invitation from him to dinner as his way of thanking her for her help. After a pleasant meal they agree to meet again for a full day out in the city.
The pair’s budding relationship is complicated, however, by the constant dropping in and equally rapid vanishing of Alix’s partner, entrepreneurial airline owner Dylan Cole. Alix and Dylan’s romance had exploded three years earlier after they met by chance in a favourite restaurant.
Now, Alix is never entirely sure when Dylan will let himself into their apartment, appearing without notice and then departing just as quickly, leaving her alone again in the bed they share part time. Moving forward with Smith is impossible while Dylan remains in her life, yet Alix is certainly far from ready to have him leave.
Told in chapters from the perspectives of the three central players – Alix, Dylan and Smith – Marni Mann’s novel unfolds over a roughly three-year period as the story moves back and forth skilfully at a comfortably engaging, entertaining pace that never loses its way despite the frequent back-and-forth time shifts.

The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers

15/3/2019

 
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Kerri Turner: Harper Collins $29.99
 
WINTER is coming – and so, too, for the average citizen of Russia are the desperate privations that accompany full-blown war.
As German troops move into the empire’s westernmost provinces, however, life for the elite of Petrograd society remains virtually unchanged.
Petrograd – as St Petersburg has been officially retitled in a move to make the grand city appear more patriotically Russian – is the seat of power of Tsar Nikolai II and his family, an all-powerful royal dynasty that not only rules the country but also celebrates arts such as dance. To be a principal of the Romanovs’ Imperial Russian Ballet is the ultimate aim of fledgling danseurs such as Luka Zhirkov, whose father barely manages to support himself while working in a factory and whose brother is now fighting bitterly to keep the would-be invaders at bay.
As the closing months of 1914 unfold, Luka’s standing soars, buoyed at least in part by his association with prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska, who almost inexplicably draws the young corps member ever deeper into her acquaintanceship.
For the tempestuous Valentina Yershova, emerging quickly as a celebrity in her own right, a personal battle to rival that waged by Russia’s starving soldiers brews. Valentina has been traded by her original “protector” – one of the rich and influential older men who traditionally keep a young dancer as a mistress – and is now at the mercy of Maxim Sergeivich, a volatile and at-times cruel and calculating newspaper columnist who openly craves the approval of Tsarina Alexandra and her closest advisor (and reputed lover), “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin.
In this debut novel Sydney author and ballet teacher Kerri Turner weaves historic figures and events into an engrossing, unpredictable, heartrending story that fleshes out the circumstances in which Petrograd and its dancers find themselves as World War I closes in.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes

8/3/2019

 
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Alexander McCall Smith: Penguin Random House US$16.00

SURELY any incident demanding police intervention is sensitive, Detective Ulf Varg’s fellow law-enforcement officers reason. This much is self-evident. Why, then, should a select few cases be singled out to receive special attention from an independent team within the force?
This is the question that shadows Varg as he battles to focus his mind in equal measures clearly on the job and firmly off his attractive married colleague Anna. The two are at the core of ‘sensitive’ investigations in Malmö, Sweden’s southernmost city and home to more than just the occasional curious offence.
Ulf Varg – a man whose given and family names mean ‘wolf’ ‘wolf’ in Swedish and Danish respectively – heads a department tasked with investigating the unexpected, the unorthodox and the just plain kooky – and none is more left-field than the latest baffler: the stabbing of a market stallholder in the back of one knee. Stabbing, yes – but midway down the leg? What sort of criminal would stoop – literally – to do such a nonsensical thing?
Solving this mystery will require Varg and his colleagues to set aside conventional thinking.
For Varg this is hardly a challenge; he is, after all, the owner of Sweden’s first and only lip-reading dog.
However, throw in commercial sabotage on the back of infidelity and the disappearance of an imaginary boyfriend and the workload for Varg and his new offsider Blomquist suddenly starts to look all-consuming.
From the king of lighthearted quirk comes this debut title in a new series of feel-good fun and frivolity, defined by author McCall Smith himself as being the antithesis of deep, dark, brooding Nordic noir: a new genre labelled ‘Nordic blanc’.
The Department of Sensitive Crimes contains a preview of the planned follow-up, The Talented Mr Varg. Two novellas published exclusively as Kindle editions – The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists and Varg in Love – are prequels.

The Glovemaker

1/3/2019

 
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Ann Weisgarber: Mantle $29.99
 
DEBORAH Tyler’s husband, Samuel, is overdue. A travelling wheelwright, Samuel left the couple’s small orchard in Utah Territory months earlier intending to return by the start of December at the latest. It’s now well into the new year, however, with the savage Rocky Mountains winter at its most severe, and there’s still no sign of him reappearing, nor so much as a single letter relayed home to explain his prolonged absence.
In 1888 life on the Wild West frontier is difficult at the best of times for any woman, let alone one born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The federal authorities are outraged by the practice among some male Mormons of taking “plural” wives and welcome any opportunity to bring the weight of the law down on communities such as the Tylers’.
As Deborah – who sews exquisite leather gloves in her scarce free time – waits and worries, a man on horseback does materialise, but it’s not Samuel. Rather, the new arrival is a stranger running from a posse of deputies as he seeks help to reach a remote property deep within the snow-bound valley on which he will be hidden safely from prosecution as a polygamist.
Deborah knows the penalty for assisting will be high if she’s caught yet tiny, tightly knit Junction’s custom of providing hospitality won’t allow her to contemplate turning this fellow church member back out into a snowstorm with night approaching.
Deborah’s circumstances are further complicated the following day when a second man emerges from the gloom – this time a sheriff tracking the original rider.
With the future of her brothers-in-law, sister and nephew in jeopardy she must decide how to respond to an emergency that, if handled incorrectly, could see the family group at best turned off its land and at worst executed as criminals.

    ' Books are treasure for the spirit and ​the soul. '​
    — VB 2020

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    Book reviews

    WABONGA Press produces an original book review every Friday. Books are chosen from among the latest English-language fiction and non-fiction releases in Australia and internationally.
    Each 300-word review is accompanied by a high-resolution cover image.
    All are available for licensing to print media in selected regions.​For less than the cost of one takeaway cup of coffee each week, a publication can make use of this service to access a new review every seven days, backed by a written guarantee that the same content will not be licensed for use by any direct competitor.
    Please contact Wabonga's publisher, Rosalea Ryan, to discuss how this service can be tailored to your newspaper or magazine.​

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