13 new books to read this month
Eden
Mark Brandi
Hachette, $32.99
Out now
Mark Brandi novels are far from conventional crime novels. Indeed, he has an unerring eye for the social context of any skulduggery committed in his pages. If you read his first book, the award-winning Wimmera, you'll recognise a clue on the third page of Eden to the real identity of the main character who has just emerged from jail and has got a job − and a place to sleep − in the cemetery. But there's more than burying the dead going on, and a nosey journalist is on his trail.
Deep History: Country and Sovereignty
Eds., Ann McGrath & Jackie Huggins
UNSW Press, $49.99
July 1
Professors Ann McGrath and Jackie Huggins have collected a group of essays by historians, anthropologists, artists and archaeologists that consider 'how temporality plays out in relation to sovereignty' across Australia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea and New Zealand. After all, Indigenous people have been making histories and caring for Country 'significantly longer than colonial intruders'. The writers examine place, song, histories, landscape, rock art and more.
Your Friend and Mine
Jessica Dettmann
Atlantic Books, $32.99
July 1
The premise of Jessica Dettmann's fourth novel is delicious: 20 years after the death of her best friend Tess, Margot gets a letter from her via a solicitor inviting her on an all-expenses-paid trip to London. The pair had long ago planned to visit Tess' home, but life and death got in the way. This trip, however, is no sightseeing tour − Tess had a number of tasks in mind for Margot to undertake. There's the question of Tess' ashes, revenge to be gained on cruel lovers, and more. This at-times wistful and tender romp is a hoot.
The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson
Belinda Lyons-Lee
Transit Lounge, $34.99
July 1
Belinda Lyons-Lee's second historical novel − her first was about that wizard of waxworks, Marie Tussaud − delves into how Robert Louis Stevenson came to write his classic of duality, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Narrated by Stevenson's wife, it begins with a bizarre seance, reimagines Stevenson's relationship with the murderer Eugene Chantrelle and investigates the morbid influence of the work of 18th-century bodysnatcher Declan Brodie. The author says she wants her work to be 'illuminating, entertaining and transporting'. It is.
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