Tag: Adelaide

Adelaide Writer’s Week 2018

The third of March, 2018 marks the beginning of the six-day festival of authors and writing in Adelaide, South Australia. Eighty-Four Australian and international authors will attend the event for a variety of talks, across a diverse range of authors, books and genres to discuss literature and how the world impacts the stories we tell. The Adelaide Writer’s Week is part of the Adelaide festival that celebrates art and culture.

This celebration allows the community to engage with authors and the arts, and with each other. The various events will appeal to people of all ages and in all groups.

Hachette Australia has several Australian and international authors attending, and they are as follows, with the works they had published by Hachette last year:

Mark Brandi, author of Wimmera, appearing at the Small Towns event on the 3rd of March, 2018 at 3.45pm – East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden. Wimmera was published in 2017, and tells the story of Ben and Fab, and the body that is found twenty years after summer in 1989, and the mystery that unfolds. It is one I am yet to read and hope to do so soon.

terra nulliusClaire G. Coleman author of Terra Nullius, a speculative fiction that looks at the effects of colonisation, and displacement in a suggested future where humankind has been colonised and invaded by aliens. It draws parallels to the effects of real world invasion and colonisation on Indigenous populations, and it was an interesting read, as it started out as what felt like historical fiction, but the reveal half way through was quite a surprise, and admittedly, took some getting used to. It was an interesting read though, and one that will hopefully start conversations or make people think about the issues it draws upon. Claire will be appearing at 2.30pm on the 7th of March, West Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Thomas Mullen, author of Lightning Men, The Revisionists, and Darktown, will attend three events: American South, on the 3rd of March, East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden, at 2.3opm, Making history, East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden, at 12pm on the 5th of March and Darktown, at 10.45am on the 6th of March at the East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Louise Penny, author of Still Life
, Dead Cold, 
The Cruellest Month, The Murder Stone
, The Brutal Telling
, Bury Your Dead
, A Trick of the Light
, The Beautiful Mystery, How The Light Gets AWW-2018-badge-roseIn, The Long Way Home, The Nature of the Beast, A Great Reckoning, and Glass Houses ­– the Inspector Gamache series, will be attending two events on the 4th and the 5th of March: Glass Houses at 9.30am on the 4th of March, at East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden, and Into the Woods on the 5th of March at 5pm, at the East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

see what i have doneAnother Australian Author published by Hachette attending will be Sarah Schmidt, author of See What I Have Done, a fictional retelling of Lizzie Borden and her murdered parents, planting seeds of doubt and suggesting that there may have been other suspects, but not coming to any full conclusions, and working with the evidence provided from research. A strange and intriguing read, it gives insight into the people behind the history, as historical fiction aims to do. Sarah will be appearing with Thomas Mullen at Making History on the 5th of March at 12pm, at the East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Much-loved Scottish author, Alexander McCall-Smith, whose extensive backlist, including the latest in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series, The House of Unexpected Sisters, has been published by Hachette, will also be attending. The main event he will be attending will be Love and Tartan, on the 8th of March at 5pm, at the East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden. The House of Unexpected Sisters is book eighteen of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

Sarah Winman, author of Tin Man, A Year of Marvellous Wats and When God Was a Rabbit will also be attending and taking part in two events. She will be attending Friends on the 3rd of March at 9.30 am at the at the East Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden. and Tin Man on the 5th of March, at 9.30 am at the at the West Stage Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Links:

http://artsreview.com.au/2018-adelaide-writers-week-program-announced/

https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/writers_week_blog/

Booktopia

Craven by Melanie Casey

cravenBook Title: Craven, Book Two of the Cass Lehman and Ed Dyson series
Author: Melanie Casey
Publisher: Pantera Press
Genre: Crime
Release Date: June 1st, 2014
Book Synopsis: A reluctant psychic, a troubled detective… and a deeply twisted serial killer.

Moving to the city, Cass Lehman hoped to leave her recent notoriety behind her. Her ability to experience the final moments of a violent death helped the local police capture a serial killer, but also meant she was almost his first victim…

With a place of her own and a new job, things are looking up for Cass. But just as she starts to feel settled, Cass is targeted by a deranged stalker.

Are the personal attacks linked to a string of unsettling deaths that have left the police stumped?

Her gift is called on yet again by the one man she vowed she would never contact. Cass and police Detective Ed Dyson are thrown back into each other’s lives but can they overcome their feelings to put an end to the terror?

Will her experiences of death reveal the mind of the killer… or is there no such thing as a happy ending?

~*~

Picking up a year after where the devastating and traumatic events for both Cass and Ed left us in Hindsight, Craven brings a new world of threats to Cass and those she cares about. Things start out innocently enough in Adelaide with Cass house hunting. Though a vision of a death in one house, foreshadowed in the prologue, counts that house out. An effective way to bring Casey’s fans back into the fold, and reintroducing us to Cass and her gift, was the vision she had about the death that had taken place there. I would have liked to have known more about that victim and the case, but it served its purpose in the context of the novel and plot that was to follow.
Also in Adelaide, is Detective Ed Dyson, her former boyfriend and the police officer she assisted in the Fleurieu Killer case back in Jewel Bay twelve months ago, working with a new partner, in the Major Crime Investigative Branch, or MCIB, on a twelve-month secondment. When her car is vandalised, Cass calls Ed for help, spurring on a series of events that continue to throw them together, along with Dave, Ed’s new partner, and the only person Cass has been able to confide in since her move to Adelaide, Claire. Along with investigating his serial killer, Ed is thrown back into Cass’s life, trying to protect her from a stalker, yet little do they both know the danger hiding in the shadows that will befall them in the closing chapters of the novel.
Again, Casey has had me on the edge of my seat, with many sleepless nights out of a desire to find out what happens next and fear of the serial killer. I feel this fear is what makes her novels exceptionally well written, because I definitely felt the fear Cass felt. I felt her sleeplessness and I also felt her uncertainty about things. There were moments of sadness though, and moments where I wanted to shake some of the characters into thinking sense – again, this is why I loved this book, because the characters were so believable. They weren’t just black and white, they had grey areas and were flawed: nobody is perfect. Cass and Ed illustrate this in a wonderful way. I am looking forward to reading future Cass Lehman books, and I recommend the series to crime lovers anywhere.