Win, Lose or Draw by Peter Corris (Allen & Unwin)
If crime novels are your summer reading matter of choice, Peter Corris has you covered. The Australian writer has been churning out his Cliff Hardy detective novels for years now – there are more than 40 of them – but with this book, he’s about to send Hardy into retirement.
Win, Lose or Draw is not just the final instalment in the series, but also Corris’ final novel – the author’s eyesight has been steadily deteriorating over the past few years, and writing has become impossible.
In it, we find Hardy grappling with a missing 14-year-old girl, her wealthy and highly regarded father, and a search that takes him all the way out into the islands of the South Pacific. And if you like this one, there’s plenty more where it came from. – SC
Available now.
The Trapeze Act by Libby Angel (Text)
Better known as a poet, Libby Angel’s debut novel, The Trapeze Act, has been a long time in the making. Beginning as a PhD project 12 years ago, it was shortlisted for a South Australian unpublished manuscript award in 2006 and later won a prize supported by Penguin and the University of Melbourne. The final product, however, is delivered courtesy of Text.
The Trapeze Act is not a novel about being in the circus, but about what happens after the circus. Loretta is the daughter of Leda, a former trapeze artist, and Gilbert, a barrister. Having two imposing personalities as parents affects Loretta and her brother, Kingston, very differently; the novel follows Loretta’s journey as she grapples with her parents’ past and their influence on her present. – SC
Available now.
The Telomere Effect by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel (Orion Spring)
How can a 40-year-old look 60 while a 60-year-old looks 40? Can we influence the rate of our ageing, or is it all down to genes?
These are the driving questions behind The Telomere Effect, a science-based health book that places at its centre the telomere: the part of our chromosomes that determines how fast our cells age and die. By Dr Elizabeth Blackburn (a molecular biologist) and Dr Elissa Epel (a health psychologist), the book takes the matter of longevity and health right down to a cellular level, and investigates ways to alter a course previously thought to be unalterable.
They explain the science and suggest lifestyle changes to delay the inevitable – and while there is nothing really new here (eat healthily, sleep well, don’t stress, exercise) the explanations about how these things can affect cellular ageing are galvanising. As they write: you can’t successfully fight your enemy until you really understand it. – LC
Available now.
Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land (Penguin)
This is one of those books that publishers peg as a bestseller from the get-go. Land reportedly secured a very generous book deal for Good Me, Bad Me off the back of a slush-pile submission, and the marketing hype is already in full swing, with words such as “explosive” and “controversial” being splashed in all-caps across the listings.
We can neither confirm nor deny if these are accurate descriptors for Good Me, Bad Me, but we can tell you that it is one of a number of “toxic family” thrillers that have come out recently. Good Me, Bad Me is written from the perspective of Annie (or is it Milly?), whose mother is a serial killer – and you probably already know whether or not you want to read it, right? If you’re still not sure, there’s an extract available. – SC
Available now.
Override: My Quest to Go Beyond Brain Training and Take Control of My Mind by Caroline Williams (Scribe)
In neuroplasticity studies over the last decade, we have explored ways in which the brain can change itself through the prism of an injured brain. Of course it makes sense to repair a damaged brain using the principles of plasticity, but why would you want to change a perfectly healthy one?
This is the first question science writer Caroline Williams comes up against when she decides to apply the latest neuroscience to herself. She sets out to see if she can change some parts of her thinking processes that have, in a way, made her who she is – her attention span, her worrying, her creativity, her sense of direction, her time perception and her number sense. She submits to testing and brain training, surveys the vast landscape of research and makes practical suggestions for taking control of your own mind. – LC
Available now.
Little Deaths by Emma Flint (Picador)
Emma Flint’s debut crime novel is a reimagining of the case of Alice Crimmins, whose two children were found dead in 1965 after they went missing from her apartment in Queens.
Flint is not the first to have found inspiration for fiction in the grim story, but the Guardian reviewer Maggie Orford argues that it’s a “strong and confident” contribution to the new domestic noir trend. She writes: “Flint pulls the reader into the finely observed working-class Queens neighbourhood, where the heat shimmers on the crowded apartment buildings and the social surveillance of women is palpable. This is a place where everybody knows everybody else’s business and judgment is quick and brutal.” – SC
Available now.
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (Faber)
The Acclaimed US novelist Paul Auster has a long and distinguished writing career, including 15-odd novels including The Brooklyn Follies and the New York Trilogy, alongside works of nonfiction and memoir. His last novel, Sunset Park, was published in 2010.
The Guardian writer Alex Preston marked 4 3 2 1 off as one to watch in 2017: “This meticulously plotted book weaves four possible stories out of the life of one man – Ferguson – who makes his way through the second half of the 20th century being buffeted by forces political and personal. Think a postmodern take on Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.” – SC
Available 25 January.
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay (Hachette)
Roxane Gay is most well-known for her bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist, her opinion columns in the New York Times and for her writing and editing at the Rumpus. But those expecting to read the next Bad Feminist should be warned: Difficult Women is comprised not of essays, but short stories. That said, the subject matter is not far removed from the politics of Gay’s nonfiction.
Writing for the Observer, the reviewer Claire Kohda Hazelton says Gay’s stories are “phenomenally powerful and beautifully written, [demonstrating] the threats so many women in reality face, but also how, whatever their situation, they have agency, resilience and identities away from stereotypes created and reinforced by men.” – SC
Available 10 January.
The Golden Legend by Nadeem Aslam (Faber)
Born in Gujranwala, Pakistan, in 1966, Aslam’s five novels – including the Kiriyama award-winning and Man Booker-longlisted Maps for Lost Lovers – have all been in dialogue with his birth country and the geopolitics of the region in some way.
The Golden Legend goes back to Pakistan itself: Nargis’ husband is shot to death during the opening of a new library that they, both architects, have designed. Nargis and her surrogate daughter, Helen, a Christian, are both in danger.
Lara Feigel writes for the Guardian: “The country [Aslam] depicts is one bent on completing what the west has begun with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by revealing quite how dark and unsafe the world can be. This is a landscape of irrational sectarian violence, rivalry and cruelty …
“[But] there’s a collective spirit that makes its way across the country, enabling a communality of the good or the sane. It’s this that makes reading this exquisite, painful book not merely bearable but exhilarating, as it counters the despair with hope.” – SC
Available now.
Landscapes by John Berger (Verso)
John Berger’s death at the age of 90 reminded many people of the acclaimed English writer’s talent and influence, and encouraged many others to check out his work for the first time.
The author of the Booker prize-winning novel G and the seminal essay Ways of Seeing was known for what Michael McNay called his “characteristic tone of sweet reasonableness”. Sally Potter argued his expression was “pithy, plain language, bold – and, above all, the ideas themselves that he shaped with such clarity, had the startling effect of feeling both brand new and yet obvious, creating a feeling of recognition.”
Landscapes is a collection of essays on art history – on its UK release in October, Kate Kalloway called it “a fascinating series of encounters with the thinkers who have mattered to Berger, from Brecht and Walter Benjamin to Rosa Luxemburg”. – SC
Available now.
