September 2009
This is the twelfth gripping Temperance Brennan thriller from world-class forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, the no.1 international bestselling author and producer and inspiration behind of the hit TV series Bones
A routine case turns sinister when Dr Temperance Brennan is accused of mishandling the autopsy of a missing heiress. Someone has made an incriminating accusation that she missed or concealed crucial evidence. Before Tempe can get to the one man with information, he turns up dead. Back in Montreal, three more women have died, their bodies brutally discarded.
Tempe is convinced there’s a link between their deaths and that of the heiress. But what - or who - connects them? Tempe struggles with the clues, but nothing adds up. Has she made grave errors or is some unknown foe sabotaging her? It soon becomes frighteningly clear. It’s not simply Tempe’s career at risk. Her life is at stake too.
After the fire, a still small voice / Evie Wyld
Set in the haunting landscape of eastern Australia, this is a stunningly accomplished debut novel about the inescapable past: the ineffable ties of family, the wars fought by fathers and sons, and what goes unsaid. After the departure of the woman he loves, Frank drives out to a shack by the ocean that he had last visited as a teenager. There, among the sugarcane and sand dunes, he struggles to rebuild his life.
Forty years earlier, Leon is growing up in Sydney, turning out treacle tarts at his parents’ bakery and flirting with one of the local girls. But when he’s drafted to serve in Vietnam, he finds himself suddenly confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father. As these two stories weave around each other-each narrated in a voice as tender as it is fierce-we learn what binds Frank and Leon together, and what may end up keeping them apart.
Alex Tremain is a pirate in trouble. The two women in his life have left him. He’s facing a mounting tide of debts and his crew of modern-day buccaneers, a multi-national band of ex-military cut-throats, is getting restless. They don’t all share his dream of going legit, but what Alex really wants is to re-open the five-star resort hotel which once belonged to his Portuguese mother and English father on the Island of Dreams, off the coast of Mozambique.
A chance raid on a wildlife smuggling ship sets the Chinese triads after him and, to add to his woes, corporate lawyer Jane Humphries lands, literally, in his lap. Another woman is the last thing Captain Tremain needs right now – especially one whose lover is a ruthless shipping magnate backed up by a deadly bunch of contract killers. What Alex really needs is one last big heist – something valuable enough to fulfil his dreams and set him and his men up for life. When the South African government makes a controversial decision to reinstitute the culling of elephants in its national parks, Alex finds the answer to his dilemma – three tonnes of ivory.
When Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border, he’d hoped to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of the good life with his late wife, Rie. But the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave behind a church, soon makes it clear that he won’t escape so easily.
In this thrilling and intricate work, James Lee Burke has once again proven himself a master storyteller and a perceptive chronicler of the darkest corners of the human heart
Blood brother : justice at last / Robin Bowles
On 28 August, 1993, at 4.30am, then 23-year-old Jeffrey Gilham appeared at his neighbour’s house in Woronora, South Sydney, wet and distraught, wearing only boxer shorts. His family home was on fire. He gasped out that he had just stabbed his brother to death, after finding him standing over the stabbed bodies of their father and mother, whom the brother, Christopher, was trying to set on fire.
Jeffrey pleaded guilty to manslaughter, received a bond, inherited the family estate, married, fathered a family and became a successful businessman. But his Uncle Tony never believed his story, and in 2008 Jeffrey Gilham was charged with murder.
Charles Kingsford Smith and those magnificent men / Peter FitzSimons
Known to millions simply as ‘Smithy’, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was one of Australia’s true twentieth-century legends. In an era in which aviators were superstars, Smithy was among the greatest and, throughout his amazing career, his fame in Australia was matched only by that of Don Bradman. Among other achievements, Kingsford Smith was the first person to fly across the Pacific, he broke the record for the fastest flight from England to Australia, and at one point he held more long-distance flying records than anyone else on the planet. If that wasn’t enough, Smithy was also a war hero, receiving the Military Cross for gallantry in action after being shot - and losing three toes - during one of many flying missions during World War I.
Smithy was not the lone adventurer of the skies. Early aviation drew to it a company of daredevils who all challenged gravity and fear. This comprehensive biography, written with typical flair by Peter FitzSimons, covers the triumphs and tragedies of not only Kingsford Smith’s daring and controversial life but also those of his companion aviators.
Heaven + earth : global warming : the missing science / Ian Plimer
In this controversial new book Australia’s leading geologist makes the case that carbon dioxide is just one of many factors that drive climate — and a relatively insignificant one at that.
The Earth is an evolving dynamic system. Current changes in climate, sea level and ice are within variability. Atmospheric CO2 is the lowest for 500 million years. Climate has always been driven by the Sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics and the oceans, atmosphere and life respond. Humans have made their mark on the planet, thrived in warm times and struggled in cool times.
Heaven and Earth is a powerful argument against many of the punitive–and expensive — laws that are now being passed to ‘protect’ our environment. Ian Plimer blows away the smoke and let’s us look directly into the flame.
Add your own book reviews online! Using our Ratings & Review you can let other readers know your views about these books
Junior/Young Adult Fiction
- Evernight / Claudia Gray
- Grace / Morris Gleitzman
- The sorceress / Michael Scott
- Lessons for a werewolf warrior / Jackie French
Adult Fiction
- A distant shore / Peter Yeldham
- The housekeeper and the professor / Yoko Ogawa
- Even money / Dick Francis
- Dragon keeper / Robin Hobb
- Smash cut / Sandra Brown
- The people’s train / Tom Keneally
- The true story of Butterfish / Nick Earls
- Alexandria / Lindsey Davis
- Starting over / Tony Parsons
- Whispers of the dead / Simon Beckett
- Wives and girlfriends / Shireen Lolesi
- Noah’s compass / Anne Tyler
- The spell of rosette / Kim Falconer
Adult Non-Fiction
- Battlelines / Tony Abbott
- The ghost at the wedding / Shirley Walker
- Michelle Obama : first lady of hope / Elizabeth Lightfoot
- Innocence lost : the crimes that changed Australia / Amanda Howard
- The night my bum dropped : a gleefully exaggerated memoir / Gretel Killeen
- The bloodiest battles : true stories of the fiercest firefights from the Afghan War / Danny Collins
- Troubled teens : strategies to help troubled teenagers / Denise Bewert
- The lost art of sleep / Michael McGirr
- Meltdown : the end of the age of greed / Paul Mason
- Hell’s heroes : the forgotten story of the worst P.O.W. camp in Japan / Roger Maynard