Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe

  • The Silken Thread – Gabrielle Wang

    Penguin Australia July 2025 This beautiful new novel from former Laureaute and multi-award winner, Gabrielle Wang, is an absolutely outstanding, and almost mystical, exploration of East meets West. It is not a time-slip but rather a shift in the universe, from Chongming Island in China to Melbourne, Australia, with two very different young people crossing…

  • Into the Bewilderness – Gus Gordon

    Hardie Grant July 2025 ISBN:9781761211287 Price:AU$24.99, NZ$27.99 Publisher:Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing Where to start with this piece of magnificence, I ask myself? I know! I’ll start with this anecdote. A week or so ago, the estimable Gus Gordon was going to be at Quick Brown Fox in Grange and I had determined I would go.…

  • The Remembered Soldier

    Anjet Daanje (trans. David McKay) Scribe Publications June 2025 ISBN (13):9781761380136 RRP:$37.99 Ok, so I haven’t actually read this one yet but putting in the deets for you all to finish off this week of tributes for the 80th Anniversary. This is a mammoth book – almost 600 pages – and I just haven’t had…

  • The Year We Escaped – Suzanne Leal

    Harper Collins Australia June 2025 Suzanne Leal’s Running with Ivan was a book that took me to a very different part of the Second World War, and it was a privilege to write the teaching notes for it. I was lucky enough to be asked to write them for this new book as well. And…

  • The Poisoned King: Impossible Creatures #2 – Katherine Rundell

    Bloomsbury ISBN 9781408897454 (p/b) Imprint Bloomsbury Children’s Books RRP: $18.99 (P/b) $29.99 (H/b) $15.19 ebook editions I have raved over Impossible Creatures since I first ate it up greedily and, trust me, I am not the only one. Evidence of that is in the fact that it was the Children’s Book of the Year in…

  • Detective Galileo- Peter Helliar. Illustrated by Andrew Joyner.

    Harper Collins Australia June 2025 While I’m not a big fan of ‘celebrity’ authored books in general, and always ready to be unimpressed, I have to say that this isn’t dreadful at all. And, in particular, if you have some kiddos who are reluctant or struggling readers who should be moving upwards in their reading…

  • The Haunting of Hindmarsh Hall – Kate Gordon

    Riveted Press Simon & Schuster April 2025 RRP: AU$ 16.99 / NZ$ 18.99 If you have kidlets who are mad for detectives and mystery, and particularly if they’re the ones who love an Enid Blyton ‘find-outer’ adventure, then you are going to need this one. In a small town of indeterminate location, two boys are…

  • Dianne Wolfer – Double Delight.

    Dianne’s talent as a writer is undeniable and her ability to write prose fiction, narrative non-fiction and picture books with equal ease sets her apart. Here are the two latest examples of her outstanding ability to capture the essence of a story as well as place and time, both of these reverbrating with a true…

  • In Plain Sight: Friday Barnes #13 – R. A. Spratt

    Penguin Australia It was quite synchronistic to get #13 Friday Barnes arriving on Friday 13th, I thought! And, needless to say, I promptly gobbled it up over two nights with much snickering and snort laughing [No R. A. Spratt is ever read without the snaughling!]. The Friday romp continues with our intrepid but ‘special’ detective,…

  • R.I.P. Nanny Tobbins – Lucie Stevens

    Harper Collins Australia June 2025 ISBN: 9781460766521 ISBN 10: 1460766520 $16.99 It’s one thing having a strict but kind and fair Nanny who is alive – and quite another when that Nanny is dead. Nine-year-old Albertine is a sweet child, who is without a mother but with a very loving and protective father. He is, in fact,…