March New Reads

By Mike Shuttleworth of Readings

701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn

As we move into March, great reads rain down like autumn leaves and Readings looks forward to some great new books.

Irish author Marian Keyes returns with ‘Again, Rachel’ a moving and funny novel that transports us back to the 1990s. It is a journey of love, tears and redemption.

In ‘Booth’, Karen Joy Fowler, the Booker-shortlisted author, portrays an ill-fated family in a brilliant historical novel set in the times of Abraham Lincoln.

Closer to home, Jane Caro offers a tense and timely thriller, ‘The Mother’, and asks how far you would go to protect your child. Staying with crime fiction, detective Commissario Guido Brunetti returns in ‘Give Unto Others’, Donna Leon’s 31st Venetian adventure.

Big ideas are front and centre in ‘The Idea of Australia: The Search for the Soul of a Nation’ by Julianne Schultz, chair of in-depth analysis, research and news website, The Conversation.

Australia’s preeminent biographer Brenda Niall turns the gaze to her own long and productive life in ‘My Accidental Career’.

Australia’s longest serving Labor prime minister is the subject of political biographer Troy Bramston in ‘Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny’.

Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd analyses the contest between the world superpowers in ‘The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China’.

In the brilliant children’s section, we are so delighted to see Miles Franklin Award winner Sofie Laguna return to picture books with ‘When You’re Older’. It’s a tender message to a new baby, illustrated by Judy Watson.

After a stop-start 2021, Readings is thrilled to be back and helping everyone find the books they want to read and share. Our events program has returned offering conversations, launches, and meet-the-author opportunities – see readings.com.au for all the details.

While you are there, please consider signing up for our special email subscriber offers. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Mike Shuttleworth has been a bookseller and event coordinator at Readings Hawthorn since 2015. Prior to working at Readings, he was a program manager at the Melbourne Writers Festival and at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library Victoria. He reads widely from children’s to classics and anything with a French flavour is likely to be of special interest.