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The must-read books to pack with you these summer holidays
By Georgie Gordon
Credit: Jennifer Soo
Looking for inspiration for your own private book club these holidays? Georgie Gordon rounds up the page-turners not to be missed.
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Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
Set in the 1960s, this delightful novel follows Elizabeth Zott, a chemist who unexpectedly finds herself hosting a popular cooking show. A single mother in a male-dominated world, Elizabeth uses her platform to create a quiet revolution one dish at a time, encouraging her audience of housewives to resist repression and rise against the patriarchy. Funny and thought-provoking, the plight of this heroine stays with you long after the final page.
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The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
In Egan’s follow up to her hugely successful A Visit from the Goon Squad, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author expertly crafts a series of short stories into a captivating novel about the search for authenticity. Set in a dystopian future where people upload their memories into a collective storage cloud, it shows how the digitalisation of society has beneficial outcomes – solving crimes – as well as morally questionable ones.
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Carrie Soto is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Set in the 1990s, Reid’s latest novel sees star tennis player Carrie return to the game at 37 to defend her title as the winner of 20 grand slam singles championships. With younger player Nicki Chan nipping at her heels, her father coaching and the media poised for her to fail, Carrie rallies to restore her record and reputation. A fun read that also explores the darker side of tennis at a time when sexism and racism were rife.
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Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng
Set in the near future, this powerful novel imagines a world of economic instability and violence, where Asians in America are treated with disdain and distrust. Bird, a young boy who’s been abandoned without explanation by his mother, a Chinese-American poet, discovers that she’s the author of work deemed unpatriotic. It’s at once the story of Bird’s quest to find his mother and of her unwavering love for him amid injustice.
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Exiles, Jane Harper
The queen of outback noir’s latest thriller does not disappoint. Investigator Aaron Falk is visiting friends when he’s drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a mother at a wine festival a year earlier. Kim Gillespie vanished, leaving her baby in a pram. Some believe she abandoned her daughter but the more Falk digs, the more the evidence suggests that Kim came to harm. True to form, Harper keeps you enthralled until the final twist.
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Wrong Place Wrong Time, Gillian McAllister
This gripping psychological thriller sees a mother’s worst nightmare come to life. Lawyer Jen is waiting up one night for her teenage son Todd to return home when she witnesses him murder a stranger. The next time she wakes up, she’s gone back in time to the day before the crime and she continues to wake up further into the past until she can piece together the truth about her child. A compulsive read of surprising twists and turns.
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Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris, Mark Braude
Le Violon d’Ingres, Man Ray’s iconic image of his muse Kiki de Montparnasse, recently sold for $US12.4 million, making it the most expensive photograph in history. This biography centres around the model, singer and memoirist’s life during the decade she lived and worked with the famous photographer and mixed in circles that included Pablo Picasso and Peggy Guggenheim.
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Honor, Thrity Umrigar
This is the story of two women: journalist Smita who, having vowed to never return to India after moving to America at age 14, finds herself on assignment in her country of birth, and Meena, a Hindu village girl who suffers brutal indignities at the hands of her neighbours and even her own family. A horrific act of violence sees the women’s lives converge, laying bare India’s cultural complexities and the power of privilege.
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The Club, Ellery Lloyd
Set in the tantalising world of private clubs for the super-rich and famous, this gripping murder mystery has it all – glamour, intrigue and a cast of colourful characters. The Home Group is set to open its most exclusive club to date, but the meticulously planned launch goes awry when someone is murdered. Everyone becomes a suspect and the bodies keep piling up. It’s Soho House meets Agatha Christie with thrilling results.
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The Registrar, Neela Janakiramanan
Written by an Australian doctor, this novel is not only a gripping page-turner, it offers a fascinating insight into the stressful world of a surgeon in training. Surgical registrar Emma, following in the footsteps of her brother and father, has begun training at the prestigious Mount hospital; it isn’t long before the pressure of her relationships, the frustrating medical system, the lack of sleep and the relentless demands of work take their toll.
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All the Broken Places, John Boyne
In this follow-up to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Boyne explores themes of complicity and intergenerational trauma through the story of 91-year-old Gretel, whose life is marred by the atrocities of Auschwitz and the death of family members. Her neighbour, a wealthy film producer who lives in the apartment downstairs with his wife and young son, harbours a dark secret, and Gretel is forced to make a life-altering decision.
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Free Love, Tessa Hadley
Phyllis is a bourgeois 1960s housewife enjoying a suburban world of tennis clubs for herself and private schooling for her two children when she blows up her life for an infatuation with Nicky, a much younger man. Leaving her civil servant husband in her wake, Phyllis embraces a new world of bohemian friends and social revolution in gritty London. But the affair also reveals an unexpected connection that tests relationships. An immersive family drama.
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The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman
The third instalment of the hugely popular The Thursday Murder Club series is as charming as its predecessors. This time, the “four harmless pensioners” – Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim – are trying to solve a decade-old cold case, the murder of TV reporter Bethany Waites. As the case becomes an active investigation, the retirees deal with everything that comes their way with their signature humour and grace.
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A Pocketful of Happiness, Richard E. Grant
Actor Richard E. Grant has kept a diary since childhood. In his deeply moving memoir, he shares his entries and experiences with throat-catching honesty, from the highs of Hollywood to the devastating loss of his great love, Joan Washington. There’s plenty of salacious celebrity gossip but mostly it’s a celebration of love and finding the joy in life; he promised his wife on her deathbed to find “a pocketful of happiness” every day.
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We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman
This brilliant novel manages to be both heartbreakingly sad and incredibly funny. It’s the story of Ashley and Edith, best friends since they were children growing up in Manhattan. When Edith is given a terminal diagnosis after a gruelling battle with ovarian cancer, she moves to a hospice in Massachusetts to be nearer to her friend. An unputdownable book about love, loss and female relationships.
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