Title: If I Tell You Author: Alicia Tuckerman Publisher: Pantera Press (2018) Genre: YA Contemporary If I Tell You follows the story of small-town teenager Alex Summers as she navigates her final year of high school and a budding relationship with her first love, Phoenix Stone. When Phoenix moves to the farming community of Two…
Tag: Australian fiction
Review: The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean, by Shelley Carter
Title: The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone Author: Felicity McLean Genre: Fiction Thriller/Mystery Favourite Part: When a young Tikka re-enacts (unsuccessfully) the Lindy Chamberlain saga as her talent show act — it was a great juxtaposition to the seriousness that was happening regarding the Van Apfel sisters during the climax of the story, and also…
Issue 26: Ashes
Cover by Ari Moore Issue 26: Ashes is here for your reading pleasure. This month we bring you a tasting plate of short fiction, flash fiction and poetry by writers from around Australia, including Sophie Roberts, Elaine Mead, Nadia Kim, W.D. Farnsworth and Ash Leonard. Editor Shelley Carter gives us a run-down of Gus Henderson’s…
Interview: Kerri Turner, author of The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers and Underground Writers Alumni
Interview with Kerri Turner, author of The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers and Underground Writers Alumni In 2017, Kerri Turner submitted her short story The Cause and an Effect to Underground Issue 17: Hitchhiker. Now her debut novel, The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers, has just been released and the second is on…
Review: Driving Into the Sun by Marcella Polain, by Dylan Dartnell
Title: Driving Into the Sun Author: Marcella Polain Genre: Literary fiction Publisher: Fremantle Press (2019) The novel that took some ten years to write, Marcella Polain is back with her breath-taking work, Driving into the Sun (Fremantle Press, 2019). The story revolves around an eleven-year-old girl named Orla on the precipice of womanhood. She, like most…
Review: Alex and the Alpacas Save the World by Kathryn Lefroy, by Kate Lomas Glendenning
Title: Alex and the Alpacas Save the World Author: Kathryn Lefroy Genre: Australian children’s fiction Favourite Part: When Alex discovers she can understand the alpacas Alex and the Alpacas Save the World, by Kathryn Lefroy, follows Alex who is visiting her grandfather’s farm in Tasmania for the summer. Lefroy quickly throws her heroine into shenanigans…
Review: Flight Risk by Michael McGuire, by Fred Woolhouse
Title: Flight Risk Author: Michael McGuire Genre: spy thriller Favourite Part: Ted finally meets the individuals behind the terror attacks Favourite Quote: “No doubt plenty of people think the work I do is a bit murky, a bit underhand, maybe even lacking in ethics and morality. But there is a certain honesty in my dishonesty”…
Review: Stay Well Soon by Penny Tangey, by Jemimah Halbert Brewster
Title: Stay Well Soon Author: Penny Tangey Genre: Australian Middle-grade fiction Favourite part: The times when Stevie is playing imaginative games and her friends come to join her. Favourite quote: ‘[Mum] can’t stop me going to the toilet, it is against the Geneva Convention.’ Stay Well Soon by Penny Tangey is told through the eyes…