Fiction What rhymes with murder? - Penny Tangey A cosy mystery set in East Melbourne, with a crime occurring in the local library. Parents from the Baby Rhyme-time group band together and attempt to solve the mystery. The vivid descriptions of East Melbourne streets, the incorporation of well-known real events and the familiar library setting add to our enjoyment of the story. The chocolate factory - Mary-Lou Stephens This Australian novel is set in 1921 in Hobart, and concerns a plot to steal the famous Cadbury recipe for milk chocolate, which is held in a secure vault. When chocolate spies target the factory, two female employees try valiantly to protect the recipe. People skills - Nina Kenwood A book editor, recovering from a failed love affair and unfair dismissal from her editorial position, becomes the personal assistant to the volatile organiser of a literary festival at a small town in beach-side Victoria. She finds herself managing not just her employer’s whims but needing to deal with the woman’s very unlikeable son, who arrives for the festival badly hung-over and looking a wreck. As she sorts out his problems, she finds that he is not nearly as bad as she had assumed. An enjoyable and amusing light read. Near death in Venice - Jonathan Biggins A delightful Venetian romp involving a tourist group with a tour leader about to be sacked and with nothing to lose. Non-fiction Simple too - Yotam Ottolenghi The master-chef and international Television personality has released another inspiring cookbook, in good time for Christmas. I was lucky enough to be given it as an early Christmas present, and simply reading it is an absolute delight. As the title indicates, the recipes are not very complex and don’t involve many steps or ingredients. He makes use of interesting spice mixtures such as za’tar, which gives many dishes a touch of the exotic. This is one for the aspiring gourmet cook, and it is readily available at several shops in Wangaratta. Ottolenghi also demonstrates several of the recipes on his YouTube channel. Three shocks - George Megalogenis The political journalist lists three changes in Australia’s make-up that politicians need to be more aware of: migrants and their children are now in the majority; professional women form the largest segment of the workforce, outpacing blue-collar men; our traditional allies and our international trade partners have proved to be unreliable. Politicians in the major parties need to embrace and work with these changes if they hope to remain relevant in modern Australia. The country schoolmaster - Kate Grenville The author is adept at finding her way among archives, and shows great intellectual curiosity and determination, as we’ve seen in novels such as Secret River. This time, she began researching Currabubula in NSW, the town where her grandmother had lived. Out of curiosity, she decided to look at the archives of the Currabubula school. A series of letters written from the 1880s to 1890 really stood out. There were angry accusations against the schoolmaster, who was variously accused of viciously beating the children, stealing their lunches and letting his wife do the washing on a Sunday. This would have been when her grandmother was a pupil at the school, so Kate’s interest intensified. She endeavoured to work out whether there could be any truth in the worst accusations, bearing in mind that education had only recently become compulsory in NSW, with the Public Instruction Act, and many farming parents were resentful about losing the labour of their children, who were now spending all day at school. Could this have been a motivation for false accusations? Was the schoolmaster a villain or a victim? Careful detective work finally leads Kate to decide on the truth. Note: Names have been changed to protect the descendants, but otherwise the facts are true. All books in these reviews are available at local shops, or from the Wangaratta Library.
