Suspense, spells and a deeply moving diary: 10 new books

The Age

07-05-2025

This week's new releases range from tales of toxic friendship and family dramedy to a moving first-person account of life in Gaza and an examination of the effects on the brain of physical and psychological trauma.
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Such Quiet Girls
Noelle W. Ihli
Macmillan, $34.99
An ordinary day takes a disastrous turn when a school bus is hijacked in Noelle W. Ihli's Such Quiet Girls. Ten children and the bus driver, Jessa, find themselves trapped underground in a shipping container, with time (and air) running out. They look to be doomed if a ransom demand isn't met, unless 12-year-old Sage can come up with a plan to outwit their kidnappers and find a way to get help. Reportedly based on a true crime, this novel flits between multiple perspectives – paralysed Jessa, plucky Sage, parents of the hostage children, and the hijackers – in an anxiety-driven psychological suspense tinged with horror. The storytelling is breathlessly fast-paced and traumatic events unfold with nightmarish inevitability. Claustrophobes should probably give this one a miss; crime fiction fans could easily devour it in one sitting.
Holly Wainwright is the host of Mamamia podcasts and bestselling author of I Give My Marriage a Year. Her latest novel focuses on five families whose mothers met many years before through a parenting group and stayed friends. A summer camping trip at Green River has been organised annually by Liss Short, who seems to be one half of a perfect couple. Her superficially charming husband, Lachy, however, could well be a narcissist, and as the story unfolds through various characters, flaws in the glass appear. Wainwright weaves a tale of drama and shocking betrayal, and a toxic relationship, dipping back in time to give a broader picture of female friendship developed over years, and of parenting struggles from post-natal depression, to dealing with the confusions of teenage kids. It's a characterful novel driven by acutely drawn domestic dynamics, although the ending isn't as fleshed out as the set-up.
Favourite Daughter
Morgan Dick
Viking, $34.99
Half-sisters Mickey and Arlo meet in a most unusual way. Their alcoholic father has recently died, bequeathing a $5 million inheritance to Mickey, who has despised him all her adult life, ever since he abandoned her as a child to start another family. There's a catch – five therapy sessions with her unwitting half-sister Arlo to sort out some lingering issues. (Mickey has inherited, among other things, her father's weakness for liquor.) In contrast to Mickey, Arlo adored her father, and oddly, she's been cut out of the will, though her own issues – notably her questionable ethics as a therapist – suggest the adoring and bereaved daughter carries a darker legacy. Morgan Dick's Favourite Daughter is an offbeat, black comic family dramedy unafraid to confront the unlikeable psychological effects that abusive parenting can have.
Three Juliets
Minnie Darke
Penguin, $34.99
It's 1980 and famous designer Claudie Miller has dazzled the world with an exquisite dress, known as the 'Juliet', but the story behind it remains a private grief to her; Claudie was forced to give up a child for adoption 16 years earlier. Her search to find her now teenage daughter draws in Roisin, Bindi and Miranda, all born on the same day, all raised by adoptive parents. None of them knows they could be Claudie's biological child, nor that one of them has inspired a garment of captivating beauty. Minnie Darke's Three Juliets fashions a love story, draped in a quest narrative that cleaves to the silhouette of a fairytale. It's a poignant exploration of the bond of motherhood, of the heartbreak of parting unwillingly with a child, and the deep love to be found in adopting and nurturing one, woven with elegance and depth of feeling.
Spellbound
Georgia Leighton
Bantam, $34.99
A retelling of Sleeping Beauty – sans a prince to come to the rescue – Spellbound doesn't make the most of its creative premise. The queen of this fictional kingdom is a foreigner who insists on ritual blessings for her newborn daughter; tragedy strikes when a dark sorceress inflicts a fatal curse upon the child. To avoid magical doom, the queen teams up with two other women – her chief lady-in-waiting Meredyth and Sel, an itinerant mage, to spirit the princess away and raise another in her place. The switcheroo leads to the two children being raised very differently, and as they become teenagers, the bookish Talia and free-spirited Briar must face the curse that binds them. Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying retake on a classic, needing more complex lore and magic, culture and characters to ground the feminist fantasy.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Eyes of Gaza
Plestia Alaqad
Macmillan, $29.99
What was it like to be living in Gaza when the bombs began falling? Twenty-two-year-old Plestia Alaqad's diary of the first 45 days of the invasion brings this reality shockingly alive. Before the invasion, she was a young idealist who dreamt of telling the wider world about the beauty of her homeland. Within a matter of months, she'd become a hardened journalist documenting the atrocities and devastation inflicted by the Israeli military. Her raw, intimate entries powerfully capture the disbelief, the pain and the daily struggle to survive. She writes: 'There have been days where I've been on the edge of breaking down, only for a little kid to give me a cup of water or a piece of candy ... If that kid can live in a world where everything has been stolen from them, and still display kindness and compassion, then so can I.' Alaqad's inner battle to keep faith in life in the face of all that she witnesses is deeply moving.
Candice Chung
Allen & Unwin, $34.99
'A food story,' says restaurant reviewer and food writer Candice Chung, 'is a story of wish fulfilment. It is where we lay bare our desires... to be looked after, to be fulfilled. But what happens if our wishes don't line up?' This anxiety fuels Chung's wry, smart, playful memoir as she charts her relationship with her parents and the nerve-wracking business of falling in love again after a long-term relationship ends. Her parents didn't like her previous partner, and it took them 13 years to get over it. How will they react this time around? Not surprisingly, meals – the 'container into which we pour our cravings' – are central to the bonding process as Chung eventually summons the 'ginger' – the courage in colloquial Cantonese – to bring together her parents and new partner. The subtlety with which she captures how her parents show their love is one of the many pleasures of this endearing tale.
Immortal Gestures
Damon Young
Scribe, $32.99
Because they literally embody a message or emotion, gestures pack an immediate punch. Think of a bent knee, a raised fist. While loaded with silent meaning, they are often trivialised, says philosopher Damon Young, as 'failed phrases'. Conversational yet oblique, this meditation excavates the layers of meaning embedded in common signals such as a shrug or handshake, along with more subcultural, cinematic gestures such the Vulcan salute from Star Trek. Young's selection is unapologetically idiosyncratic, given form by the philosopher's probing mind, memories of his younger self, social encounters and poignant moments from his personal life. The same gesture, he reminds us, can take on quite different meanings depending on the culture, place and time in which they are used. To us, a ring made with thumb and forefinger means 'OK'. In Plato's time, it was a declaration of love.
Broken Brains
Jamila Rizvi & Rosie Waterland
Penguin, $36.99
What is a 'broken brain'? For the authors, it is a brain that has been damaged by physical or psychological trauma. Jamila Rizvi was in her early 30s when she developed a brain tumour. The 'break' in Rosie Waterland's brain began at birth or even before, as the child of alcoholic, drug-addicted parents. Rizvi, a social policy expert, and Waterland, a comedian, are friends who decided to collaborate on this book to challenge the false binary that divides our understanding of illness as either physical or mental. As they tell their stories and those of others struggling with ill health, the women reflect on the role love plays in healing, the difficulties of parenting when one is seriously unwell, the difference family and friends can make, and the impact on working life. Anyone living with chronic ill-health or reeling from a life-threatening diagnosis will find solace and guidance in this book.
All Of It
Brooke Boney
Joan, $34.99
Brooke Boney's pop always said that as Aboriginal people, they had to be the best if they wanted to be seen as equal. She realises that this is why she has been so driven. But now she is 'pulling the ripcord'. She's had enough of her slice of celebrity as a presenter on Channel Nine's Today, enough of being stalked, of walking the tightrope between 'vulnerability and relatability' and of being churned by the 'fame machine'. Her aim was to be a voice for her people, to offer perspectives on subjects such as Australia Day that her mainstream audience was not familiar with. She's had to broadcast the result of the Voice referendum and been gutted by it. In these candid essays, she reflects on where she has come from, the ghosts that haunt her family and her desire to 'share my luck with people who have less'.