About the Book: A dictator's wife, overthrown and awaiting trial, pleads her case to a young female lawyer, while also drawing her into a tangled web of lies and dark, dangerous secrets. This dazzling and devastating debut is a Lead Launch for Headline Review for Spring 2021. WOMAN I learned early in life how to … Continue reading Book Review: The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry
History
Book Review: The Islands by Emily Brugman
About the Book: In the mid-1950s, a small group of Finnish migrants set up camp on Little Rat, a tiny island in an archipelago off the coast of Western Australia. The crayfishing industry is in its infancy, and the islands, haunted though they are by past shipwrecks, possess an indefinable allure. Drawn here by tragedy, … Continue reading Book Review: The Islands by Emily Brugman
Book Review: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
About the Book: In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage and of a woman's relentless errors. Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the … Continue reading Book Review: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Book Review: Flight of the Budgerigar by Penny Olsen
About the Book: The Budgerigar is arguably Australia’s best-known bird. At the same time, it is so ubiquitous that not everyone knows that it is Australian. Nor do many realise that the multicoloured bird that comes to mind—not to mention today’s super-sized, extravagantly coiffed show budgie—is as different from the free-living original as a chihuahua … Continue reading Book Review: Flight of the Budgerigar by Penny Olsen
The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
The Silence of the Girls: The greatest war story in literature, retold by our greatest living storyteller on war - in the voice of the forgotten woman who lived through it. Queen Briseis has been stolen from her conquered homeland and given as a concubine to a foreign warrior. The warrior is Achilles: famed hero, … Continue reading The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
Book Review: The Borgias by Paul Strathern
The Borgias… About the Book: The sensational story of the rise and fall of one of the most notorious families in history, by the author of The Medici. The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. But the … Continue reading Book Review: The Borgias by Paul Strathern
Book Review: Budgerigar by Sarah Harris & Don Baker
Budgerigar: How a brave, chatty and colourful little Aussie bird stole the world's heart... About the Book: A curiosity of everything you ever wanted to know (or realised you never knew) about budgies. Budgies, budgies, budgies. Beautiful and cheeky, delightful and enchanting, wild or tamed budgerigars are Australia's gift to the bird world. They sing … Continue reading Book Review: Budgerigar by Sarah Harris & Don Baker
Book Review: The Darkest Shore by Karen Brooks
The Darkest Shore... About the Book: The independent women of Scotland stand up to a witch hunt, male fury and the power of the Church in a battle for survival in this compelling historical novel based on true events in early eighteenth-century Scotland. 1703: The wild east coast of Scotland. Returning to her home town … Continue reading Book Review: The Darkest Shore by Karen Brooks
Book Review: All Our Relations by Tanya Talaga
All Our Relations Indigenous trauma in the shadow of colonialism... About the Book: The world’s Indigenous communities are fighting to live and dying too young. In this vital and incisive work, Tanya Talaga explores intergenerational trauma and the alarming rise of youth suicide. From Northern Ontario to Nunavut, Norway, Brazil, Australia, and the United States, … Continue reading Book Review: All Our Relations by Tanya Talaga
Book Review: Bjelke Blues edited by Edwina Shaw
Bjelke Blues: Stories of Repression and Resistance in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland 1968–1987... About the Book: ‘Bjelke Blues gives heart and soul to the remembrances of the men and women who were at the end of police batons... at the front line fighting for justice and decency’ – Matthew Condon, journalist and author of Three Crooked … Continue reading Book Review: Bjelke Blues edited by Edwina Shaw
Theresa Smith Writes 