scribepub's reviews
497 reviews

A timely and important alert to the accumulating consequences of the economic policies of governments of both persuasions over the last several decades … Batten down the hatches!
John Hewson, Former Leader of the Liberal Party and the Federal Opposition

A terrific book that provides the big-picture economic alternative we have been searching for.
Brian Howe, Former Deputy Prime Minister

The material can be desolating, but Irani generates plenty of black comic detail, evoking the vividness and moral ambiguity of the best Indian noir.’
Cameron Woodhead, The Saturday Age, Pick of the Week

The Parcel is a magnificent novel, with powerfully imagined characters who yanked me into their lives from the first page and would not let go of me until the last. It is bold, bawdy, tender, funny, sorrowful, all that life is made up of, and when I did reach the end I felt abandoned.
Anita Rau Badami, Author of The Hero’s Walk

Immersive and devastating, The Parcel is a searing tale of personal transformation amid toxic patriarchy. Madhu is at once pathetic and honourable, despicable and mighty — and imbued with such complexity, Irani brings dignity to all the transgender sex-workers of India.
Rajith Savandasa, Author of Ruins

Harrowing, enraging, unexpectedly humorous, and also profoundly sad, The Parcel is a haunting work of fiction that illuminates the ways in which history, both political and personal, pervades the present day.
Lauren B. David, Trevor Ferguson, and Pasha Malla (2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury)

As engrossing as any thriller, Anosh Irani’s fourth novel offers readers so much more … The Parcel captivates with its vividly rendered characters and commands the reader’s attention by way of unnerving — and at times profoundly disturbing — portraiture of an abject group at the bottom of an already denigrated community at the heart of India’s booming financial hub, Mumbai … Irani’s compassion for these discarded souls, and the assertion of their essential dignity, renders them simultaneously touching and distressing.
Quill & Quire Starred Review

Part of the way this excellent book heals such a sprawling, horrifying reality is with beauty and religious depth.
The Globe and Mail

Deeply etched in man’s inhumanity to man and his capacity for both depravity and redemption.
Courier Mail

Irani’s portrait of Madhu and her community is tender and heroic, comic and tragic, dignified and destitute all at once.
The Skinny

The Parcel is such a fantastically moving novel … one of the most heartbreaking and fascinating novels I’ve read all year.
Lonesome Reader(blog)

Madhu is an ambiguous figure in many ways, and Irani delves deeply into her sad past among a world of outcasts. Pulling its readers’ sympathies in conflicting directions, The Parcel is a challenging novel, sharp and uncompromisingly written.
Sunday Herald

I loved this book. Beautifully written, with an atmosphere I could taste, October is the Coldest Month had me questioning the line between rescue and culpability in an unflinching, white-knuckle read.
Dianne Touchell, Author of A Small Madness

Taut, tense, and thick with atmosphere.
Saturday Age

The writing is as lean and edgy as the characters … utterly believable and utterly compelling.
Ellie Marney, Author of The Every Series

A compulsive read … Gripping.
The Big Issue

A gritty, edgy thriller that will get under your skin.
Sunday Independent

Each twist and turn ripples with menace … Gripping.
Anne Cassidy, Author of Moth Girls

Gritty Nordic Noir that grips you from the get go.
Tim Pegler, Author of Five Parts Dead

The desolate landscape is the perfect backdrop for this taut tale of old family feuds and unfurling secrets.
The Irish Times

Vega herself is a desperate, resourceful, unstoppable protagonist … Carlsson has delivered a well plotted mystery … with a couple of gasp-worthy twists.
Robert Goodman, Pile by the Bed

The writing flows and it's hard to put down. It's not only the suspense — something in the way its written makes the story get under your skin … in a good way.
Emma Krypin, blogger

So cool that Christoffer Carlsson is suddenly writing young adult. A thrilling whodunit set in the isolated countryside. Love it! Hope to read more about Vega, the paper-friend I have come to like so much.
Prickiga Paula, blogger

A wonderfully well-written book. Exciting, beautiful, horrible, and creepy.
Stories from the City Blog

October is the Coldest Month by Christoffer Carlsson is a dense, claustrophobic thriller with a few surprising twists and plenty of suspense.
En Bok Vid Havet

...And exciting it is. The seasoned crime writer Christoffer Carlsson always has intrigue under his control, and slowly turns up the mystery and drama.
Andreas Palmaer, Dagens Nyheter

Short and taut — and all the better for it.
Auckland Herald

Sweden’s new Queen of Crime. Mikaela Bley is a new star among the Swedish crime stars, and with her debut, Lycke, she sweeps the floor with many of them.
Expressen

An unrivalled thriller.
Plaza Kvinna

The story of Lycke is a powerful story, which invites you to look for the evil inside your house. Mikaela Bley is the new queen of the Swedish thriller.
Vanity Fair

It’s not often that I get as completely caught up by a crime novel, the way I’ve just been by Mikaela Bley’s Lycke. Immensely thrilling, curious, uncomfortable, entertaining. I just discovered a new crime writer.
Alex Schulman, Co-Author of bestselling Tid

The closer we get to the truth, the tighter the noose around those who were closest to Lycke. Love is both warm and cold in this blood-curdling story.
Halmstadsbladet

An excellent crime story.
Sydsvenskan

What a debut success! … includes everything a crime novel needs: interesting setting, suspense, drama, tragedy, and an insistent main character who ties up the story in a fantastic way.
Anna Deckartips

Powerful, gripping and very enthralling. 5 out of 5!
Jennies Boklista

An icy thriller … In every chapter, the guilty one seems to emerge, only to be proved wrong the page after. And don’t switch off the light until the last line.
GIOA

In this bestselling debut novel, Swedish author Mikaela Bley tells us that the worst nightmares come out of families.
La Stampa

Mother love and its mad and extreme variants. An irresistible plot, depicting our times and taking stock of our society. Become fond of the new star of Swedish crime.
Tu Style

[Joosten’s] characters are faced with all the complexity of the modern world, and sometimes the decisions they make turn out to be wrong. Watching them face the consequences makes for riveting reading … This is the work of an elegant and vital novelist, someone fully engaged and grappling with the multitude of difficulties involved in the way we live now.
Louise Swinn, Sydney Morning Herald

Joosten’s plotting is both wonderfully assured and stunningly unexpected: as details fall into place readers cannot but admire her chutzpah even as they respond to the complex humanity of her intimately realised characters.
Adelaide Advertiser

Masterfully constructed … Though there is loss at the centre of Gravity Well, Joosten knows that the most urgent observations about life come from making sense of the unfathomable. This is a carefully crafted, emotionally cathartic novel. Our journey away from suffering, Joosten suggests, begins with our movement towards each other.
Gretchen Shirm, Weekend Australian

[Gravity Well] is only the second novel by Melanie Joosten, but it achieves a textured and realistic quality that for some writers takes a lifetime.
The Saturday Paper

Melanie Joosten’s devastating second novel reminds us of the risks and redemptive power of human connection. Gravity Well brilliantly conveys the magnitude of love and loss, even as its exquisite planetary imagery reveals how small we truly are.
Emily Bitto, Author of The Strays

Cleverly constructed and beautifully written, Gravity Well is an absorbing, heart-squeezing novel about family, friendship, grief, and forgiveness. Joosten’s empathy shines through, as does her insight into how easy it is to wound the people we love the most. In Eve and Lotte, she has created two very different characters, but both display an all-too-believable mix of selfishness, generosity, fragility, and toughness, and their deep, complicated, vital friendship is gorgeously real.
Emily Maguire, Author of An Isolate Incident

An expert dissection of friendship and relationships in all their beautiful, terrible, constantly surprising glory … Joosten has a gift for tracing the random lines of connection and disconnection that shape human life: the fractures that break us and the stubborn power of love to put us back together again.
Kirsten Tranter, Author of Hold

Exceptionally written … Joosten’s meditations on friendship, ambition and family life are wise and thought-provoking. She has created fully rounded and credibly flawed characters, with an authorial gaze moving seamlessly between the broad and the telescopic.
Annie Condon, Readings

A quiet, intelligent story about loneliness and friendship, about grief tempered by hope. I admired Joosten’s thrilling plot-twist just past the halfway mark, and her beautiful imagery … a pleasure to read.
Naama Grey-Smith, Australian Book Review

Brilliant ... nuanced and engrossing … [Doyle] is intrepid and brutal, but only towards herself. She spills her doubt and angst yet she sallies onward, never judging or whining, always entertaining, open-hearted and open-minded … If you’re a millennial, or you love one, or you hope to live long enough to see the world governed by them, you should be reading Briohny Doyle.
Toni Jordan, The Guardian

It's dangerous to declare anyone the voice of your generation, but if Briohny Doyle was declared the voice of mine, I'd be nothing short of honoured. In this book, she somehow articulates and refines every foggy frustration and anxiety millennials feel about their status, place in life, and where they're headed. This is a book of consolation – reminding us we're not insane or alone – and revelation, by asking all the right questions and finding answers that never fail to surprise and help.
Ben Law, Author of The Family Law

A blend of personal essay and cultural criticism from one of Australia’s best emerging practitioners of the form … [Doyle] is emerging as one of Australia’s best essayists.
Mel Campbell, The Rereaders

Adult Fantasy is like a gut-punch from L'Étranger and a balm for anti–Gen Y rhetoric. Confronting, existential, tremendous.
Anna Spargo-Ryan, Author of The Paper House

A consolation to any underachiever, bursting with wry humour and sharp insight, while unearthing the contradictions of western cultural narratives.
The Guardian

Smart, insightful, and a pleasure to read, seamlessly combining serious analysis with wry asides.
Jo Case, Books+Publishing four and a half stars

Adult Fantasy is a thoughtful, honest, and engaging examination of the myths and realities of adulthood. It’s a real pleasure to accompany Doyle as she tugs at the threads of conventional adulthood and then re-weaves them into something softer, messier, and far more forgiving.
Emily Maguire, Author of An Isolated Incident

Briohny Doyle moves beyond generationalism to explore fledgling adulthood and the failures of neoliberalism with a sharp, lucid eye. Always warmhearted and frank, and often poignant, Adult Fantasy is a vital examination of what it means to come of age today.
Jennifer Down, Author of Our Magic Hour

I loved this book. I found myself underlining so much of it that I thought I may as well give up annotating, lest I render it unreadable; often I found myself reading it and nodding vigorously in agreement ... An absorbing mix of memoir and social critique for anyone curious about millennial ennui. I want to give this book to everyone I know.
Kelsey Oldham, Readings

Rising from the ashes of a tired argument [of conflict between boomers and millennials] is Adult Fantasy, guided by a lively voice and dark humour ... The style, a mash of personal essay and cultural criticism, is a regular feature of American nonfiction and exploded in 2015 with Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Similarly, Doyle critiques culture through self, and is tightly reined in her use of personal anecdotes ... Firmly establishing a growing nonfiction genre.
The Australian

Thoughtful, insightful and genuinely worth the time. Weaving together historical context, observation and her own laugh-out-loud-funny experiences, Adult Fantasy is cleverly written and very readable ... Doyle’s academic smarts lend the book cred, [bringing] rigour to a subject usually shrouded in hysteria and outrage. Boomers and generation X will get just as much out of reading as younger people ... Adult Fantasy is the beginning of a conversation about generationalism that Australia sorely needs to have. And Doyle has kicked it off in a careful, considered and compassionate way.
Jamila Rizvi, Readings

A deeply insightful exploration of how traditional milestones can be both outmoded and repressive ... A thoughtful book on the future of young people.
Thuy On, The Big Issue

Doyle’s voice is a mix of cynicism, wryness and impatient desire to shrug off the inheritance of adulthood and not give a shit. Nihilism mingles with paralysing self-awareness. She doesn’t pretend to speak for her generation, but her observational humour and emotional openness make it impossible for the reader not to relate to her struggle.
The Monthly

Sharp, entertaining ... a wide-ranging meditation and, in the end, a mature reflection on 50 years of neo-liberalism, millennial political apathy, and the conclusion that responsible freedom rests upon ensuring the freedom of others.
Sydney Morning Herald

A joy to read ... a thoughtful consideration of what getting older looks and feels like to one woman.
Herald Sun

Doyle observes – and writes – with extraordinary clarity and intellect ... [This is] a wholesale, redoubtable response to a sort of sour intergenerational bluster ... A few pages in, I started picturing Doyle as the Lorax: a beautiful mind, alone on a platform above the fray, bitter and wise and weary.
Listener New Zealand

Briohny Doyle gets it ... a well-informed and heartfelt meditation on “growing up” in the strange first decades of the twenty-first century. [This is] a smart read for anyone who suspects they might be an adult, but doesn't know how to be sure. This book helps you understand and, maybe more importantly, helps you feel understood.
Brunswick Street Bookstore

Briohny Doyle brings a sobering and deeply insightful perspective to the intergenerational war over what it means to be an adult.
Citymag

I call Dr. Winter a sleep whisperer. Through his work with top athletes, he’s found an amazingly effective way to show that sleep can be the ultimate performance enhancer — in sports, at work, and in every aspect of our lives.
Arianna Huffington

Until I met Chris Winter, I slept like a baby: I woke every two hours and cried. And then Dr. Winter … helped me. He was my sleep solution; this book will be yours.
Peter Moore, Co-author of The Eight-Hour Diet

Chris is world class in his field; he is incredibly pragmatic in his application of medicine to real world, high-performance settings.
Mark Simpson, LA Clippers Director of Performance and Former Head of Strength and Conditioning for the British Cycling Team

Dr. Winter has spent his career bringing attention to the benefits of sleep and for the first time, this book brings it all together. He has written an important resource for athletic trainers and professional athletes alike. His professional experiences and research has assisted with bringing to light the impact sleep has on our athletes within their sport.
Ben Potenziano, Assistant Athletic Trainer, Pittsburgh Pirates

Dr. Winter's ‘personal touch’ [is] his … touch of humor and true caring about improving … lives through ‘healthy sleep’.
Herm Schneider, Head Athletic Trainer Chicago White Sox

Dr. Chris Winter’s new work, The Sleep Solution, is a jewel of a book for anyone who has struggled with sleep issues.
Ron Adams, Veteran Coach of the Golden State Warriors

Dr. Winter is our go-to sleep specialist. In The Sleep Solution, you will find much of what he has shared with our athletes as he has helped us navigate the rigorous NBA schedule.
Donald S. Strack, Dpt. ATC Director of Medical Services Oklahoma City Thunder

In the baseball industry, the travel, change in time zones and just sleeping in a different bed is not easy. I have leaned on Dr. Winter many times. Thank you Chris.
Ron Porterfield, Athletic Trainer Tampa Bay Rays

Reverent but still rooted in clinical science … [Winter’s] no-nonsense advice can be quickly summoned at 3.07am when the temptation to check Facebook or raid the biscuit tin can feel overwhelming.
Evening Standard

[The Sleep Solution] is already being hailed as a ‘solution’ to insomnia. It's a no-nonsense, colloquial approach to sleep difficulties that aims to change the narrative around sleep in order to make it more manageable.
Jess Commons, Refinery29

For a year, between the fall of France and the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the men and women of the seven countries of occupied Europe were Britain’s only non-colonial allies. For them Britain was the only hope. The nature of that unbalanced relationship, so crucial to the postwar future of the Continent, is the subject of this fascinating, uplifting and at times horrifying book … A complex narrative of need and desperation, tales of almost unimaginable courage, brilliant improvisation, fantastic stupidity and vile treachery … Exciting and informative.
David Aaronovitch, The Times

[An] excellent book … [Olson] acknowledges that British bravery and determination were the only things that gave Europe hope during the darkest days of the war. Europeans have always been grateful for this, and continue to be so today. We British have not always shown the same sense of gratitude. Olson’s message is simple: when it comes to the Second World War at least, we should give credit where credit is due.
Keith Lowe, The Mail on Sunday

This is Olson’s fourth book dealing with Britain and World War II, but in Last Hope Island she argues an arresting new thesis: that the people of occupied Europe and the expatriate leaders did far more for their own liberation than historians and the public alike recognise. Books and films have dramatised individual stories of the resistance, but the scale of the organisation she describes is breathtaking … Olson’s histories have well honoured Britain’s heroism. In Last Hope Island, she justifies her toast to the exiles and their compatriots.
The New York Times book Review

A rip-roaring saga of hair-breadth escape, espionage, and resistance during World War II — Olson’s Last Hope Island salvages the forgotten stories of a collection of heroic souls from seven countries overrun by Hitler, who find refuge in Churchill’s London and then seek payback in ways large and small. In thrilling fashion, Olson shows us that hell hath no fury like a small country scorned.
Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling Author of Dead Wake

In a series of compelling books in recent years, Lynne Olson has established herself as an authoritative and entertaining chronicler of perhaps the largest single event in human history — the Second World War. Now comes Last Hope Island, a powerful and surprising account of how figures from Nazi-occupied Europe found Great Britain an essential shield and sword in the struggle against Hitler. This is a wonderful work of history, told in Olson’s trademark style.
Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of American Lion

Lynne Olson is a master story teller, and she brings her great gifts to this riveting narrative of the Resistance to Hitler's war machine. You will be thrilled and moved — and enraged, saddened and shocked — by the courage and steadfastness, human waste and stupidity, carelessness and nobility of an epic struggle. Last Hope Island is a smashing good tale.
Evan Thomas, Author of Sea of Thunder and Being Nixon

You wouldn’t think that there would still be untold tales about World War II, but Lynne Olson, a master of that period of history, has found some. Not only does she narrate them with her usual verve, but her book reminds us how much we unthinkingly assume that it was the United States and Britain alone who defeated the Nazis in Western Europe. Last Hope Island is a valuable, and immensely readable, corrective.
Adam Hochschild, Author of Spain in Our Hearts and King Leopold’s Ghost

Exhilarating and epic.
The Mail on Sunday

Last Hope Island is a book to be welcomed, both for the past it recovers and also, quite simply, for being such a pleasant tome to read … Certain of these refugee groups have had their stories told before … but Olson’s book is the first to weave this all together … It’s a well-written and well-illustrated book, and deeply researched.
The Washington Post

[A] pointed volume . . . [Olson] tells a great story and has a fine eye for character.
The Boston Globe

In Last Hope Island [Olson] argues an arresting new thesis: that the people of occupied Europe and their expatriate leaders did far more for their own liberation than historians and the public recognise … She is persuasive in dramatizing great deeds done and then forgotten.
The Scotsman

Bestselling historian Olson writes a vivid history of the war through the eyes of the exiles and compatriots left behind. She reveals inspiring tales of heroism, suffering, and sacrifice … [and] delivers an engrossing, sometimes-disturbing account of their energetic efforts.
Kirkus Reviews

Spellbinding … [A] masterful account of England in World War II … [Olson] brings both a journalist’s eye and a novelist’s command of character and setting to this subject … For American readers inclined to begin their World War II reading after U.S. entry into the conflict, Last Hope Island opens a fascinating trove of stories, characters and facts … Olson’s book, 10 years in the making, not only helps illuminate the past but also serves as an insightful backdrop for today’s discussion of the future of 21st-century European alliances.
Bookpage, Top Pick

This is a history book that reads like the best thrillers … Olson offers a fascinating view of the war and its aftermath, less from a military than from a high-level civilian perspective … The many individuals are finely drawn, major developments are well covered, and the book provides an unusual and very insightful angle on the war.
Booklist (Starred Review)

Lynne Olson’s gifts as a storyteller, combined with her ability to find exciting new aspects of World War II to write about, give Last Hope Island the page-turning power of a great novel … Olson writes so vividly that the past seems like the present, and she has a way of connecting what happened in an earlier time to our contemporary concerns.
Connecticut Post

Uplifting … a gripping story.
Harold Evans, The Week

Lynne Olson is one of the best popular historians now living and writing.
Peter Hitchens, Mailonline

[Olson’s] clear-eyed prose challenges popular myths about Britain’s “finest hour” …Although it is a brick of a book with a daunting number of subjects, it skips along, focusing on the vibrant personalities and their extraordinary stories … the lasting interest of Last Hope Island is its cool reckoning of history, away from the heat of bombs and battles.
The Guardian

The wealth of evidence [Olson] presents, and the verve with which she tells her stories, many not widely known, is a necessary antidote to the myths with which we all live.
Financial Times

Last Hope Island is a great read, packed with the stories of very colourful characters … highly recommended.
Military History Monthly

Enthralling from beginning to end, In the Land of Giants is an inspired telling of an uncommon story.
West Australian

When reading this book, one gets gusts of the best of Kipling, and also of Chatwin, even of Robert Byron. It’s the story of an obsessive trip, of a murder, of several love affairs, of a journey, of an adventurer who got lost forever, of the danger latent in trying to uncover an elusive truth and a truth only meaningful for he who wants it told (and then also, of course, for the fortunate reader). Fascinating from start to finish, In the Land of Giants is the kind of incredible story only an excess of reality can provide.
Javier Marías

Martinez ably conjures the scent of juniper, the taste of black, salty tea and the sight of a 40-donkey convoy heading to Panjsh.
Spectator

A murder mystery more intriguing than anything you could make up.
Sunday Territorian

Berlin Syndrome is a compelling literary thriller.
Australian Book Review

A courageous and exciting debut ... Berlin Syndrome is an intelligent novel, and Joosten is masterful in her descriptions of the loneliness that can be found both in a foreign city full of strangers and in an apartment shared by two people.
Eloise Keating, Books + Publishing

Berlin Syndrome is a beguiling psychological dance.
Canberra Times

In language that's hypnotic and sparse, Joosten's remarkable first novel demands to be guzzled in one sitting.
Courier Mail

Begs to be guzzled in one sitting.
Daily Telegraph

This gripping psycho-thriller has put the talented Melbourne writer on our radar big time.
Grazia

Joosten’s debut novel is a taut and intimate psychological thriller … an unflinching examination of power dynamics in a relationship.
Literary Minded

[Joosten’s] frank evocative depiction of what happens when loneliness and obsession collide makes for a striking debut novel.
North & South Magazine

Startling yet understated ... Joosten writes with authority and restraint, uncommon attributes for a first-time novelist.
Patrick Allington, SA Weekend Magazine

A gripping, well-written, undisputedly strong novel.
Louise Swinn, Saturday Age

Elegantly written, especially difficult given the subject matter.
Sunday Age

A psychological thriller of the highest order, this is a strong first showing. More, please.
Sunday Herald Sun

A true psychological thriller.
Sunday Tasmanian

[A] haunting debut novel.
Sydney Morning Herald

An impressive debut.
Vogue Australia

Capture[s] the psychodynamics of a generation that is just emerging into its own on the page. I look forward to seeing what she does next.
Weekend Australian

Joosten excavates the psychology of captivity — its fear, smells, delusions and helplessness — in relentless detail and with considerable skill.
Fiona McGregor