New Reads March - April 2025
Robbie Arnott’s latest novel, Dusk, continues his exploration of the intricate and often unsettling relationship between humans and the natural world.
Set in a vast, untamed landscape reminiscent of Tasmania's wilderness, the novel follows twins Iris and Floyd Renshaw. The siblings embark on a dangerous quest to capture a puma known as Dusk; an animal responsible for the deaths of several shepherds.
As they traverse the wild and rugged terrain, the novel delves deep into their personal struggles and evolving connection to the environment around them.
On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change her life.
Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.
It was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan's relentless campaign to get her to come back.
Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.
Isobel Ashworth breezes through life, blissfully accustomed to the privilege which comes with her family name. But that changes when she arrives in the exclusive town of Hartwell.
Sent there by her father to complete a controversial property development - and prove herself a serious player in the succession plan - her perfect life is unravelling. Isobel's fiancé is telling lies, the project is a disaster and the locals hate her; could her father be setting her up to fail?
Buzzing with the promise of a big story, journalist Meg Hunter arrives in Hartwell to expose the Ashworth family dealings and transform her faltering career. As she follows the trail of corruption, she uncovers clues about her mother's mysterious past.
When the next-gen Ashworth's each receive an anonymous Christmas gift of a DNA testing kit, Isobel questions everything she knows about her family. Isobel is drawn to Meg and her pursuit of the truth... but someone out there will stop at nothing to hide the secrets of both families.
It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines.
First thing, she loses her job – or quits, depending on who you ask. Then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door expecting to stay for the festivities. He doesn’t even have a suit. Instead, he’s brought memories, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home.
Just as Gail is wondering what’s next, their daughter Debbie discovers her groom has been keeping a secret…
Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people - but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall Inn who isn't here for the big event.
When the bride discovers her elaborate destination wedding could be ruined by a divorced and depressed stranger, she is furious. She has spent months accounting for every detail and every possible disaster - except for, well, Phoebe... Soon, both women find their best-laid plans derailed and an unlikely confidante in one another.
Hilarious and moving, The Wedding People is an irresistible novel about love, friendship, dysfunctional families, and the unexpected paths that lead to happiness.
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in the little town of Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from his community. A visit from the doctor is always a sign of bad things to come.
His youngest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed her chance at real love – and passed up an offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.
But in the advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.
Winner of the Booker Prize 2024. Life on our planet as you've never seen it before.
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.
The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?