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streaming 3cr.og.au, down load the Community Plus app, or listen to these and many other authors on 3cr/podcast/publishedornot

Some of the Australian authors we enjoyed in 2024

Crime

‘Murder in Punch Lane’ has well known people as suspects in Jane Sullivan’s gothic crime novel set in the laneways of 19^th century Melbourne.

The consequences of a once in a lifetime comet with reveal long held secrets, astronomy, romance and a thriller ending in Ruby Todd’s ‘Bright Objects’.

‘Pheasants Nest’ is a crime novel of rape and abduction, as well as action and suspense Louise Milligan has created characters which give this book a realistic heart.

What could be worse than losing a child and never finding them again. ‘Gone’ by Glenna Thomson has a younger sister still experiencing the grief, so centered in the family, but still questioning and looking 40 years after.

Historical fiction

The Dressmaker was published 24 years ago and now Rosalie Ham has written the prequel explaining how Tilly’s mother, and the cross dressing policeman came to Dungatar. in ’Molly’.

Movie reels, photographs in a camera and letters link two women 100 years apart in this parallel story of history and the complication of relationships in ‘The Lost Letters of Rose Carey’ by Julie Bennett.

An ancient map links two women from Rueben’s studio in the 1620’s to Antwerp today. Lisa Medved’s historical research and clever cryptic clues have you guessing in ‘The Engraver’s Secret’.

Family stories /good writing

Set in Melbourne through lockdown, an angry grieving family is helped to heal by a grandmother and rabbit that come to stay. In ‘The Burrow’ by Melanie Cheng.

Melbourne is the city. It and the characters who, just want to be heard, are given a voice in ‘The Degenerates’. They are brought to life with originality, humour and very fine writing by Raeden Richardson. 

Fay works as a translator but it is her choice of lover and employer that lead to betrayal, ambition and questioning what love really means in Jessie Tu’s ‘The Honeyeater’.

Fred is kind and has so much love to give, but no one to give it too. Mistaken identity gives him not only security and friends, but also immense guilt in Anna Johnston’s ‘The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife’.

Old friends and new beginnings are at the heart of ‘Whenever You’re Ready. Trish Bolton has three women looking at their past and possibility of an altered future after the unexpected death of a close friend.

And an amusing memoir – What happens when you are ‘Suddenly Single at Sixty’? Jo Peck has written of her loss, anger and hurt along with her social experiment with on-line dating. 

An interesting theme through some books this year - the main character is an author – and were having trouble completing their second novel – so the story came with writing tips:  The wedding Forecast by Nina Kenwood         The Close-Up by Pip Drysdale

                                           The Burrow – Melanie Cheng

                                                                                          Non fiction

When Captain Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia, he renamed many of the landmarks.  In ‘Warra Warra Wai’ the names and stories of these landmarks are explained as well as how the Indigenous Australians were impacted by this uninvited visitor.  Darren Rix and Craig Cormick have recorded and researched this most interesting book. 

David’s five books

Siang Lu’s, Ghost Cities, was an intriguing book to read utilizing Milton, iambic pentameter, a faux Chinese history and the current absurdity of uninhabited cities within China today. So epic was the read that I couldn’t cut down the pre-record to fit a standard show. That interview will go to air in the holidays and it’s worth following up on.

More conventionally, Robert Gott’s, Naked Ambition is a hoot playing on current day politics and the vanity of politicians. The premise behind this story is a politician who commissions a portrait of himself for posterity and the artist persuades him it should be a full frontal nude. Vanity and political practicality collide.

J P Pomare tackles the question of podcast trials in ‘17 Years Later’ where the innocence of a convicted murderer is investigated. 

Gabriel Bergmoser has us questioning our assumptions about characters in the thriller, ‘The Hitchhiker’.

Two disparate world have more in common in Courtney Collins’ novel, ‘Bird’ where two girls strive for their own truth and their own lives.

And some from Lisa

If You Go, by Alice Robinson is a unique and emotionally vulnerable novel about parenthood grief and inheritance. I found the work to be richly personal and distinctly intimate. A satisfying speculative read.

Together We Fall Apart  by Sophie Matthiesson was a stunning debut. Escape and addiction are themes threaded throughout. Clare escapes from her family in Australia and then doesn’t return to London when planned, under the premise of staying to help her brother. The novel is well crafted, flashing between Claire’s life in the present and the past. A riveting read.

Jan Goldsmith, Lisa Moule and David McLean chat with authors each Thursday at 11.30am. 

‘Published or Not’  podcasts available on your favourite podcast platform 

PUBLISHED OR NOT – live to air – 855AM, 3CR Digital – Thursdays 11.30am, streaming 3cr.org.au, down load the Community Plus app, or listen to these and many other authors on 3cr/podcast/publishedornot

Some of the Australian authors we enjoyed in 2023

Crime – callous and comedic

In The Rush, Michelle Prak has the weather and her characters morph from friendly to violent in this tense twisted thriller set in an isolated country pub.

Anna Buist’s crime novels centre around women in prisons or hospitals with Dr Natalie King as psychiatrist and solver in Locked Ward.

Death in the Sauna by Dennis Altman is a murder mystery with an array of interesting characters who may all be suspects in this story of politics, sexuality and secret lives.

Erina Reddan’s Deep in the Forest has a sanctuary a conservative closed community helping drug addicts, in country Victoria but could it be linked to a disappearance, bush fire and death in the township.

A short, strong boyhood friendship and catastrophe link lives and emotional responsibilities many years later in Matthew Ryan Davies, The Broken Wave.

A lighter and more comical read is Kerryn Mayne’s Lenny Marks gets away with Murder…or does she’. Lenny is an over organised, perhaps obsessive, primary teacher.

Set in Sydney’ garment industry of 1965, crimes can be solved by the most observant of people, in The Tea Ladies by Amanda Hampson.

Historical fiction

What’s more powerful the work of God or the threat of a gun? Ben Hobson has set The Death of John Lacey in the goldfields of Ballarat.

Pip Williams follows on with some of her characters from The Dictionary of Lost words in The Bookbinder of Jericho.

Natasha Lester’s The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard centres on the difficulties of three generations of women wanting their creativity acknowledged in the male dominated fashion industry.

In Robyn Annear’s book we read about some of the remarkable people and happenings in Melbourne’s early history linked to Corners of Melbourne.

Silvia Kwon has researched Vincent van Gogh in 1882 when he took a prostitute as his model and lover. Was he a good Samaritan or a self-centred artist in Vincent and Sien?

And other interesting reads

Anna Kate Blaire writes insightfully and amusingly while exploring the issues of social conformity, desire, sexuality and a career in art in The Modern.

Emily Spurr has researched brains, parasites. chat bots, psychological health and perimenopause and given us this humorous fictional relationship in Beatrix and Fred

Colin Batrouney has written about the mystery involving an enduring friendship as well as creatively crafting six books and their authors for a literary prize, The Bannerman Shortlist.

Co-presenter - David McLean’s recommendations

Here are just a few takeaways from the 2023 reading year.

Gregory Day’s, The Bell of the World’is full of evocative allegory and allusion as its character interacts with the landscape of Australia. ‘

After the Rain by Aisling Smith is a contemporary account of how two siblings only a few years apart cope with the breakup of their parents’ relationship.  

Armando Lucas Correa gives insight into generational dislocation in ‘The Night Travellers’. 

And Mark Brandi captures the voice, once again, of an isolated boy in Australia’s outback in, Southern Aurora’ 

New Co-presenter - Lisa Moule

spoke with these authors, along with others that you and you can listen to on our podcasts.   3cr/podcast/publishedornot

The Heart is a Star by Megan Rogers is a lyrical story about how we can uncover our true selves when we are forced to face the myths that make us.

The Hummingbird Effect by Kate Mildenhall. A kaleidoscopic story of four women connected across time and place by an invisible thread.