As I have said before, I use this purely so I can promote books both new releases and backlist titles!

Books I Purchased Myself

Most of these were purchased with a gift card I got for Xmas.

Plot: BFFs examines female friendship as a site of radical intimacy, as told through the cultural touchstones around us. From Elena Ferrante to Booksmart, Little Women to Insecure, and beyond, the book considers how female friendships can offer a more expansive and emancipatory understanding of female intimacy.

Plot: In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.  Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home. At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective. As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Plot: Since its inception decades ago, the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons has offered an escape from the real world, the chance to enter distant realms, walk in new shoes, and be part of immersive, imaginative tales as they unfold. More so, in Thom James Carter’s opinion, it’s a perfect vessel for queer exploration and joy. Journey on, adventurer, as Dungeon Master Thom invites readers into the game’s exciting queer, utopian possibilities, traversing its history and contemporary evolution, the queer potential resting within gameplay, the homebrewers making it their own, stories from fellow players, and the power to explore and examine identity and how people want to lead their lives in real and imagined worlds alike.

Plot: At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out. No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore. So Veris will travel deep into the Elmever to face traps, riddles, and monsters at the behest of another monster. One misstep will cost everything.

Plot: Detective Chief Inspector Ryan retreats to Holy Island seeking sanctuary when he is forced to take sabbatical leave from his duties as a homicide detective. A few days before Christmas, his peace is shattered and he is thrust back into the murky world of murder when a young woman is found dead amongst the ancient ruins of the nearby Priory. When former local girl Dr Anna Taylor arrives back on the island as a police consultant, old memories swim to the surface making her confront her difficult past. She and Ryan struggle to work together to hunt a killer who hides in plain sight, while pagan ritual and small-town politics muddy the waters of their investigation.

Plot for Vol. 1: Transported back to Japan’s feudal era, high school student Kagome accidentally releases the feral half-demon dog boy Inu-Yasha from his imprisonment for stealing the Jewel of Four Souls.

Plot for Vol. 1: When Usagi Tsukino adopts a stray cat, she gets more than she bargains for The talking cat, Luna, informs Usagi that she is actually Sailor Moon, a magical princess from the future and protector of the Solar System. With the help of her new friends, the Sailor Scouts, and the mysterious Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Moon embarks on a quest to save us all from the evil powers of the Negaverse.

Books Sent To Me By the Publisher

Plot: When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out. The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:

• the debut writer (me!)
• the forensic science writer
• the blockbuster writer
• the legal thriller writer
• the literary writer
• the psychological suspense writer

But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

Plot: Raised in a small village near the spirit-wood, Liska Radost knows that Magic is monstrous, and its practitioners, monsters. After Liska unleashes her own powers with devastating consequences, she is caught by the demon warden of the wood – the Leszy – who offers her a bargain: one year of servitude in exchange for a wish. Whisked away to his crumbling manor, Liska makes an unsettling discovery. She is not the first person to strike this bargain. And if she wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts of his past. Those who enter the wood do not always return.

Plot: Gogmagog tells the story of an epic journey through the sixty-mile long ghost of a dragon. Travel is by boat, a rickety steam launch captained by veteran taxi pilot Cady Meade, on the river Nysis. In her heyday Cady carried people and goods from the thriving seaports of the estuary into Ludwich, the capital city. Now she’s drunk, holed up in a rundown seaside resort, telling her bawdy tales for shots of rum. All that’s about to change, when two strangers seek her out, asking for transport, one of whom – a young girl – is very ill, and in great danger. The other, an artificial being of singular character, has secrets hidden inside his crystal skull. So begins the voyage of the Juniper. The Nysis is unlike any other river. Mysteries unfold with each port of call. Not many can navigate these channels, not many know of its whirlpools and sandbanks, and of the ravenous creatures that lurk beneath the surface. Cady used to have the necessary knowledge, and the powers of spectral navigation. But her glory days are well behind her now.  This might well be her final journey.

Plot: Three women cross a loch. It is 1567, one of them is pregnant, two of them fretful. The boat takes them to Lochleven castle in the middle of the water. Awaiting them are courtiers braying for blood, hellbent on keeping one of them under lock and key: Mary Queen of Scots. In the tower, Mary’s maids Frenchwoman, Cuckoo and watchful Scot, Jane are her only allies, and the chamber their entire world. A new reality sets in where they are at the mercy of not only their keepers, but of raging Scotland itself. In the outside world, Mary’s kin, Queen Elizabeth claims she can do little but write. Downstairs, the shrewd jailor-courtier Margaret Erskine places her daughter-in-law Agnes in the chamber as her pair of eyes. Hope seems futile until the bewitching Lady Seton arrives. Seton’s power shifts everything in the tower and soon a plan is hatched. But which of them will risk it all to save their mistress? Which woman loves her queen best? 

Plot: Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed ‘anti-gender ideology movements’ dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization – and even ‘man’ himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so disturbing about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how ‘gender’ has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and transexclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of critical race theory and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a galvanizing call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice. Imagining new possibilities for freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us an essentially hopeful work that is both timely and timeless.

Plot: When Sara Marsala’s beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, she leaves Sara a valuable piece of land in Sicily, but there’s a catch: the locals refuse to acknowledge the rightful owner of the deed, and if Sara wants the land she must first uncover the truth about what happened to her great-great grandmother, Serafina Marsala. Because Rosie didn’t think Serafina died of illness as family lore states . . . Rosie believed Serafina was murdered, and she wants Sara to prove it. Sara’s investigations take her up and down the picturesque Italian countryside and, along the way, she learns more about Serafina, a headstrong young woman thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life for all the woman of her small village. Yet a woman who challenges the status quo is never safe, and as Sara discovers more about Serafina, she comes up against the same menacing forces that took down her great-great grandmother. And now they want to destroy Sara too.

Plot: Jai is nothing more than a royal hostage and lowly servant to the empire that slew his family and now rules his people. He has been manservant to the old emperor for most of his life, and only watches on from a distance as the empire grows more powerful – a new alliance is to be formed as the young prince is betrothed to Princess Erica of the Dansk Kingdom – a people from a northern, icy realm. The princess brings with her a gift: dragons. Only Dansk Royalty can soulbond with these magical beasts to draw on their power and strength. Until now. When the betrothal goes wrong, a bloody coup leads to chaos at court, and Jai uses the turmoil as an opportunity to escape. Fleeing, Jai comes into possession of a dragon egg – sparking the beginning of a bond which will change his fate – and that of the world – forever.

Plot: Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul’s Mapo Bridge. But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white—her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. And our protagonist just may be that special someone. But the young woman’s initial excitement turns to frustration when she learns being a magical girl in real life is much different than how it’s portrayed in stories. It isn’t just destiny—it’s work. Magical girls go to job fairs, join trade unions, attend classes. And for this magical girl there are no special powers and no great perks, and despite being magical, she still battles with low self-esteem. Her magic wand . . . is a credit card—which she must use to defeat a terrifying threat that isn’t a monster or an intergalactic war. It’s global climate change. Because magical girls need to think about sustainability, too.

Plot: Historian Tabitha Stanmore transports us to a time when magic was used day-to-day as a way to navigate life’s challenges and to solve problems of both trivial and deadly importance. It’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do?In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might have been cunning folk: practitioners of ‘service magic’. Neither feared (like witches), nor venerated (like saints), they were essential to everyday life, a ubiquitous presence in a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane and a cherished everyday resource. We meet lovelorn widows, dissolute nobles, selfless healers and renegade monks. We listen in on Queen Elizabeth I’s astrology readings and track treasure hunters trying to unearth buried gold without upsetting the fairies that guard it. Much like us, premodern people lived in bewildering times, buffeted by forces beyond their control; and as Stanmore reveals, their faith in magic has much to teach us about how we accommodate ourselves to the irrational in our allegedly enlightened lives today. Charming in every sense of the word, Cunning Folk is at once an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world and a thought-provoking commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.

Plot: It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something. It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you. Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?

Plot: 1932, Shanghai. By day, Jingwen delivers bones for her grandmother, the exclusive surgeon to the most formidable gang in the city. By night, she dances at the Paramount, a lavish cabaret club, competing ruthlessly to charm the wealthy patrons. When mysterious attackers starts stealing dancers’ faces for the powerful elite, Jingwen fears she could be next. To protect herself and her fellow performers, Jingwen has no choice but to delve deeper into the city’s glittering underworld. But in this treacherous realm of cutthroat businessmen, silver-limbed gangs and vengeful gods, Jingwen soon learns there are far more dangerous forces at play than she could have ever imagined . . .