Book reviews, new books, publishing news, book giveaways, and author interviews

The purpose of chick-lit and Debby Holts Recipe for Scandal

The purpose of chick-lit and Debby Holt's Recipe for Scandal

If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting! Earlier this year I read Stephen Mays Life! Death! Prizes! (review) a title that refers to protagonist Billys nickname for those trashy magazines they stock by the counters of supermarkets and...

Parallels between Drabbles The Millstone and Jan Murrays Goodbye Lullaby

Parallels between Drabble's The Millstone and Jan Murray's Goodbye Lullaby

  Earlier this year I read Margaret Drabbles excellent'The Millstone, a novel about a young, unmarried Englishwoman who falls pregnant and who, after an unsuccessful attempt to abort the pregnancy, opts to keep the child. Its a fascinating novel that looks at the highly curtailed rights of women in the 1960s, and also at the many...

Interview: There will always be stories about women finding their way in the world, says author Jane Heller

Interview: 'There will always be stories about women finding their way in the world,' says author Jane Heller

'When my first novel (Clean Sweep, formerly titled Cha Cha Cha) was published in 1994, the term chick lit hadnt even been invented,' says bestselling author Jane Heller. At the time she was told that she was writing 'contemporary women's fiction'. It was a categorisation she assumed was used strictly for booksellers so...

Book Review: The Harbour by Francesca Brill (love and war in 1940s Hong Kong)

Book Review: The Harbour by Francesca Brill (love and war in 1940s Hong Kong)

Harry says shes awfully intelligent. Its a comment thats dripping with contempt. The unnamed she of the sentence is Stevie Steiber, a forthright, forward woman who is not known for endearing herself to others by toeing the lines of propriety and mid-century gender roles. An American female journalist in 1940s...

Book Review: Mr Chens Emporium by Deborah OBrien (love in Goldrush-era Australia)

Book Review: Mr Chen's Emporium by Deborah O'Brien (love in Goldrush-era Australia)

Its not as if you know these people, says Angies son Tim. Youre acting as if theyre your long-lost relatives when theyre just people from the nineteenth century. They have'no relevance to'your life. Its a sentiment with which any reader or researcher would disagree. Its curious,...

Book Review: The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber (catharsis in a small-town setting)

Book Review: The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber (catharsis in a small-town setting)

Cedar Cove is a town that will be familiar to many readers as the home of many of Debbie Macombers characters over the years. For these readers,'The Inn at Rose Harbor will be both familiar and something slightly new. Though the settings the same, and a few previously seen characters may crop up in small cameo roles, the novel marks the beginning...