Buderim Library
Top 50 Books You Can’t Put Down – Get Reading is back with the ultimate guide to the best Australian reads.
Andy McNab –The stunning new Tom Buckingham thriller from the bestselling author of Bravo Two Zero. Tom Buckingham returns in another thrillingly contemporary, action packed adventure. The second thriller to feature Andy McNab’s new series character, Tom Buckingham.
Josephine Pennicott –Currawongs appearing at the Manor in vast numbers had come to portend one thing… Death was on its way.
When photographer Elizabeth Thorrington is invited to document the history of Currawong Manor for a book, she is keen to investigate a mystery from years before: the disappearance of her grandfather, the notorious artist Rupert Partridge, and the deaths of his wife, Doris, and daughter, Shalimar. For years, locals have speculated whether it was terrible tragedy or a double murder, but until now, the shocking truth of what happened at the Manor that day has remained a secret.
Relocating to the manor, Elizabeth interviews Ginger Flower, one of Rupert’s life models from the seventies, and Dolly Shaw, the daughter of the enigmatic ‘dollmaker’ who seems to have been protected over the years by the Partridge family. Elizabeth is sure the two women know what happened all those years ago, but neither will share their truths unconditionally. And in the surrounding Owlbone Woods, a haunting presence still lurks, waiting for the currawongs to gather…
An evocative tale set in the spectacular Blue Mountains, Currawong Manor is a mystery of art, truth and the ripple effects of death and deception.
Jennifer Scoullar –For Nina Moore, the rare marshland flanking the beautiful Bunyip River is the most precious place on earth. Her dream is to buy Billabong Bend and protect it forever, but she’s not the only one with designs on the land. When her childhood sweetheart Ric returns home, old feelings are rekindled, and Nina dares to dream of a future for both of them on the river. But a tragic death divides loyalties and threatens to tear apart their fledgling romance.
This star-crossed rural romance sets Nina, a floodplains grazier, and Ric, a traditional cotton farmer, on a heart-rending collision course, amid the beauty of northern NSW.
Michael Veitch –All over the world during World War II, thousands of young men who had never so much as been near an aeroplane left offices, farms and classrooms to learn to fly and fight in the greatest conflict the world has ever seen. They fought over deserts, cities and jungles, in-single-engine fighter aircraft, heavy bombers, transport planes and flying boats. How do they feel about their dramatic days in the air? What is it they remember, and what do they choose to forget?
In these candid and moving stories, Michael Veitch, writer, broadcaster and aeroplane fanatic, uncovers some of the untold stories of World War II: Australian, British and even German. He captures the events that defined a generation of men before these stories are lost forever.
Karen Robards –In New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards’s latest heart-pounding romantic suspense novel, a reckless former detective knows too much, and a hostage negotiator is forced to join him on the run for his life.
Caroline Wallace is one of New Orleans PD’s top hostage negotiators, and she’s never failed to get every hostage out alive. But this time, it’s different. This time, the hostages include her boss – the chief of police – and the mayor. And this time, she’s trying to negotiate with Reed Ware, a former co-worker who left the force disgraced, under investigation by Internal Affairs, and worst of all, considered to be volatile and extremely dangerous. As police snipers arrive on the scene and manage to get a clear shot of Reed, Caroline knows she only has a few moments left to persuade the hot-headed, reckless (and extremely handsome) Reed to let the hostages go and turn himself in before anyone gets hurt. When the SWAT team runs out of patience and launches an attack, Reed takes Caroline hostage and manages to escape with her in the chaos.
During the escape, Reed reveals to Caroline that he’s uncovered corruption at the highest levels of the police department and New Orleans city government, and those involved will stop at nothing to keep him from exposing what he knows…including murder. Now, the normally cool, calm, by-the-book Caroline is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her job and her city and join Reed on the run…putting both her life – and her heart – in jeopardy.
Allison Kingsley –In quaint Finn’s Harbor, Maine, cousins and best friends Clara and Stephanie Quinn run The Raven’s Nest bookstore. But thanks to Clara’s ability to read minds and see the future, selling books sometimes gets shelved in favor of saving lives…
When the new mayor calls a press conference about the controversial hotel resort being built on the edge of the city, the residents of Finn’s Harbor have an opportunity to express their concerns about traffic and tourists. But when the debating turns into outright fighting, Clara gets a premonition that’s nothing but trouble.
While Stephanie is enthralled with her cousin’s vision, Clara just wants it to go away. Then a customer comes into The Raven’s Nest talking about a fatal fall at the hotel’s construction site, and Clara knows better than to ignore her Quinn Sense. In a town full of citizens who want the project to fail, Clara and Stephanie have to figure out who made the jump from anger to murder.
Nancy Horan –The passionate and turbulent story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny. At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and a nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine.
A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature, and who would eventually write such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson’s charms. The two begin a fierce love affair, marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness, which spans decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health.
Eventually they settled in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried underneath the epitaph:
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
(Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)
Michael Connelly –Mickey Haller gets the text, “Call me ASAP – 187,” and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game.
When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.
Haunted by the ghosts of his past, Mickey must work tirelessly and bring all his skill to bear on a case that could mean his ultimate redemption or proof of his ultimate guilt.
The Gods of Guilt shows once again why “Michael Connelly excels, easily surpassing John Grisham in the building of courtroom suspense” (Los Angeles Times).
Deb Hunt –The true story of an unlikely romance set in the Australian outback.
The year before she turned fifty, Deb Hunt stopped dating. She was done with love and sick of chasing men who didn’t return her affections. When her most recent flame announced he was marrying someone else, Deb knew it was time to make a change.
She landed a job as a marketing assistant with the Royal Flying Doctor Service and left London for the sunshine of Sydney on a mission to find happiness without a mate. But then on a trip to the red-dust town of Broken Hill, she encountered a man unlike any other. A legend of the RFDS, he was practical, steady, financially responsible and conservative – everything Deb was not. The wanted a relationship. She wanted to flee.
Funny, warm, and beautifully told, this is the story of what happens when you ditch your fantasies of romance and discover the truth about love.
Clare Wright –The Eureka Stockade. The story is one of Australia’s foundation legends, but until now it has been told as though only half the participants were there.
What if the hot-tempered, free-wheeling gold miners we learnt about in school were actually husbands and fathers, brothers and sons? And what if there were women and children inside the Eureka Stockade, defending their rights while defending themselves against a barrage of bullets?
As Clare Wright reveals, there were thousands of women on the goldfields and many of them were active in pivotal roles. The stories of how they arrived there, why they came and how they sustained themselves make for fascinating reading in their own right. But it is in the rebellion itself that the unbiddable women of Ballarat come into their own. Groundbreaking, absorbing, crucially important—The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is the uncut story of the day the Australian people found their voice.