About the Book: A warm, tender and funny story about unlikely friendships, second chances, and the magic of soul music. **Selected as a book of 2024 by the Guardian, New Statesman and Good Housekeeping** Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town’s Northern Soul nights, where … Continue reading Book Review: Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global antinatalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It … Continue reading Book Review: Seed by Bri Lee| Theresa Smith Writes
Introduced by Susan Wyndham Published in HEAT 21 – Giramondo Publishing Previously unpublished, The Last Days was discovered by Susan Wyndham among Elizabeth Harrower’s papers in the National Library of Australia. It is supposed that it was written in 1959 to coincide with Harrower’s return to Sydney after living in London for eight years. The … Continue reading Short Story Review: The Last Days by Elizabeth Harrower| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable. Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the … Continue reading Short Story Review: Mr Salary by Sally Rooney| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Van Diemen’s Land, 1839. A young woman of means arrives in Hobart, with a young boy in her care. Leasing an old cottage next to an abandoned vineyard, Caroline Douglas must navigate an insular colony of exiles and opportunists to create a new life on this island of extreme seasons and wild … Continue reading Book Review: A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Winter 1962. As Britain becomes engulfed in one the coldest and longest winters on record, the lives of two newly married couples are changed in surprising and irrevocable ways. LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionWinner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2025 December … Continue reading Book Review: The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: It’s the early 1990s in Glasgow, and Stephen – music loving romantic – has emerged from a lengthy hospital stay diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, a little-understood disease …| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: In the heart-aching new novel from the author of the award–winning Golden Child, a mother searches for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago. Trinidad, 1980: Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl and leaves her with … Continue reading Book Review: Love Forms by Claire Adam| Theresa Smith Writes
About the Book: Internationally acclaimed for her five brilliant novels, Elizabeth Harrower is also the author of a small body of short fiction. A Few Days in the Country brings together for the first time her stories published in Australian journals in the 1960s and 1970s, along with those from her archives—including ‘Alice’, published for the first … Continue reading Elizabeth Harrower: A Few Days in the Country and Other Stories| Theresa Smith Writes
