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Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Francis Kelland and you're listening to the Vision Australia Library Radio Show. Today we have a feast of Australian fiction, so I do hope you enjoy the show. Let's start off with the winner of the Miles Franklin Award for this year, Shankar Chandran, for her novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens. Welcome to Cinnamon Gardens, a home for those who are lost and the stories they treasure. Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home is nestled in the quiet suburb of West Grove, Sydney, populated with residents with colourful histories, each with their own secrets, triumphs and failings. This is their safe place, an oasis of familiar delights, a beautiful garden, a busy kitchen and a Bountiful recreation schedule. But this ordinary neighborhood is not without its prejudices. The serenity of cinnamon gardens is threatened by malignant forces. More interested in what makes this refuge different, rather than embracing the calm companionship that makes this place home to so many as those who challenge the residents existence, make their stand against the nursing home with devastating consequences, our characters are forced to reckon with a country divided. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to storytelling and how our stories shape who we are. Let's hear a sample of Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankar Chandran. This was the winner of the Miles Franklin Award for this year. It's narrated by Rachel Tidd. Myer shuffled towards the front desk. The new linoleum of the nursing home floor bubbled and curled in places, the heat expanding under its synthetic skin. The liner was only six months old, a change required by new aged care regulations. The old blue gum boards.
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Underneath it would outlive the new minister for health. The teenager at the desk studied her mobile phone with surgical intensity, her thumb skating across its screen, both aimless and purposeful. Maya parked her walker against the desk, her swollen fingers still wrapped tightly around its cushioned frame. She could move from her bed to her bathroom without it. But the walker was essential for long distance travel. It's just arrived, Auntie, The girl said, picking up a package. She turned it over, but didn't hand it over. Mrs. Maya Ali. She read the name on the label and shook it. What is it? Carnatic music tapes. Lots of them. My cousin in America sent it. Maya answered, Not too quickly. Recordings of Ms.. Subbulakshmi s last concert in Colombo. Your grandmother will remember her. My cassette player still works. Maya tapped the small tape recorder clipped to the frame of her walker. She took the recorder with her everywhere. Oh, is that all? The girl gave her the package and went back to her phone. Maya's Daily Mail checks had started to raise suspicion, but not enough to compete with the allure of other people's gourmet dinners, exotic holidays and impossibly talented children.
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And that was Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankar Chandran. Shankar is spelt s h a n fanelli i s h a n k r i Chandran is spelt c h a n Fanelli, Darren Fanelli c h a n Darren. And that book goes for 11 hours and 50 minutes. And congratulations to the author Shankar, for winning the Miles Franklin Award this year. The next author is Michael Meehan. He's been shortlisted for the University of Queensland fiction book for awards for this year, along with great other Australian authors Geraldine Brooks, Fiona Macfarlane, Alexis Wright. The book he's been shortlisted for is an Ungrateful Instrument, which was very recently published in 2020 three inches February. So we have a sample of another book of his, so we don't have that one. This is below the sticks. Martin Frobisher has beaten a close family member about the head with an with a heavy object for this crime. Frobisher, a successful publisher and community leader, is in the city remand centre awaiting trial for murder. What could have led a cultivated and reflective man known to shoe spiders and earwigs out of harm's way to such a reckless act of violence? And why does Frobisher appear to care more in the end about the life of troubled writer Marcus Clarke than he does about his own? This novel is fiendishly clever, wickedly funny, intriguing and constantly surprising. Below the sticks will take you on a journey like no other. Let's hear a sample of Below the Sticks by Michael Meehan. It's narrated by Andrew Doyle.
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You are, she said. Allows. It was the word that hurt. It was the word indeed that set the infernal thing. The blunt object in question into its fatal motion. Her opinion I was long aware of. I had lived with it long enough. She knew that the word would hurt because I once told her it would. As the arguments grow old, we grasp about for refreshment, for new ways of twisting the knife without great effect. It's the old insults, the old jibes lurking deep in their furrow that really bite. The deep griefs of a long, sometimes intimate relationship intimacy. Therein lies the trap. You do admit in fonder moments the gaps, the lacks, the secret hurts. The mood then shifts and all you've done is stockpile ammunition. It was only after I came across her rummaging in my black plastic bags that she first used the word Martin Frobisher as Laos. The word Laos, you see, has associations. It was an expression of my father. A Laos was a person without principle. A human parasite always allows singular, never the plural. Once you started talking about lice, it all got too close to the real thing. One flaming louse after another. And a whole train of lousy rips passed through my childhood in moralists. All of the darkest hue, but more usually parking inspectors, council employees, tax gatherers, hangmen and other forms of public service. Pestilence. I struck her, or at least the object struck her with me. Unfortunately, and as I have already explained in great detail to Clive Partington attached to the other end of it.
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That was below the Sticks by Michael Meehan and by the way, below the sticks, as in the River Styx. So that is spelled Styx. Styx. Michael is m i. C. H. A. E. L. M. I. C. H. E. L. Meehan is m w e h a n. And that book goes for seven hours and I'm just looking at the ANZ lit Lovers lit blog. This is a website, so if you just go to ANZ, lit lovers, ANZ lit lovers, you'll come up with some reviews of Australian fiction. So below the sticks there's a review here by Lisa Hill that's from 2022. And yes, the River Styx is a is a theme in the book means. Narrator In Below the Styx is in the underworld of the Melbourne Remand Centre. He's there charged with murder. Lisa Hill says this isn't a crime novel, though, but it can be considered in the Broad Church of Crime fiction. Lisa also adds below, The Styx is one of the most entertaining novels I've read. It is, as the blurb goes on to say, fiendishly clever, wickedly funny. The narrator tells us that his wife's death was an accident and no spoilers. There are revelations in the final chapter that cast doubt on what the reader has been led to believe. There are other books by Michael Meehan in the collection, including The Salt of Broken Tears, Stormy Weather and Deception, being launched this week on one of the streaming services is the Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. It's gaining a lot of fanfare with an incredible cast, including international star Sigourney Weaver. And we have the audiobook in the collection by Holly Ringland. Nine year old Alice Hart grows up in an isolated, idyllic home between sugar cane fields and the sea, where her mother's enchanting flowers and their hidden messages shelter her from the dark moods of her father. When tragedy irrevocably changes her life, Alice goes to live with the grandmother she never knew existed on an Australian native flower farm that gives refuge to women who, like Alice, are lost or broken. In the Victorian tradition, every flower has a meaning, and as she settles into her new life, Alice uses this language of native flowers to say the things that are too hard to speak. And as she grows older, family secrecy, a devastating betrayal. And a man who's not all he seems combined to make Alice realise there are some stories that flowers alone cannot tell. If she is to have the freedom she craves, she must find the courage to possess the most powerful story she knows her own. Let's hear a sample of the lost flowers of Alice Heart by Holly Ringland. It's narrated by Bridget Parke.
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In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane. Nine year old Alice Hart sat at her desk by the window and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire. In front of her on the eucalyptus desk, her father built a library book lay open. It was filled with stories collected from around the world about the myths of fire. Although a north easterly blew in from the Pacific full of brine, Alice could smell smoke, earth and burning feathers. She read whispering aloud. The Phoenix bird is immersed into fire to be consumed by the flames, to burn, to ashes and rise. Renewed, remade. Reformed the same, but altogether different. Alice Hubbard, a fingertip over an illustration of the Phoenix rising. Its silver white feathers glowing, its wings outstretched and its head thrown back to crow. She snatched her hand away as though the licks of golden red orange flames might singe her skin. The smell of seaweed came through her window in a fresh gust. The chimes in her mother's garden warned of the strengthening wind. Leaning over her desk, Alice closed the window to just a crack. She pushed the book aside, eyeing the illustration as she reached for the plate of toast she'd made hours ago.
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And that was The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland. Holly is spelled h o w h o. L. Y. Ringland is ring land. R i n g l a. And that book goes for 14.5 hours. It's also available in Braille. And another book that I enjoyed greatly was The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, which was her second novel. Another series that was filmed in Australia and about an all based on real life in the Clearing by JP Palmer. Amy has only ever known what life is like in the clearing. She knows what's expected of her. She knows what to do to please her elders and how to make sure life in the community remains happy and calm. That is until a new girl joins the group. She isn't fitting in. She doesn't want to stay. What happens next will turn life as Amy knows it on its head. Freya has gone to great lengths to feel like a normal person. In fact, if you saw her go about her day with her young son, you'd think she was an everyday mum. That is until a young girl goes missing and someone from her past, someone she hasn't seen for a very long time, arrives in town. As Amy and Freya's story intertwines the secrets of the past bubble up to the surface, this rural Aussie town's dark underbelly is about to be exposed and lives will be destroyed. Let's hear a sample of In the Clearing by JP premiere. It's narrated by Erin Jean Norville.
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The child was taken. It was on the news. And I just had to get out of the house. You see, there are some things, Freya Haywood That is to say, I can't see without changing. I'm like you. But then again, I'm different. I wear the skin of others. The way you wear clothes, not in a Silence of the Lambs kind of way. Although now that I think about it, I do have something of a dungeon and a dog I care about more than I do other people. No, this layer of skin I wear is pure metaphor. I learned how to behave by watching others slowly building up an ideal of a person. But if you were to slide a scalpel from my head down to my toes, an entirely different woman might climb out. There's an art in the small details. Are increases that makes someone convincing. It's not easy to be this person 24 over seven while everyone else is just so natural. I could be the neighbor you've only met a few times, or the woman you've seen reading the nutritional label on a box of muesli at the supermarket or someone at your local cafe rocking a pram with her foot while she googles the answers to the crossword.
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That was a sample of In the Clearing by JP Palmer. So the initials are J then P surname is Pomeroy Pomeroy. That book goes for nine hours and 45 minutes. And again, that's on one of the streaming services in about six six part series, I think. And based on the true story of the family, the famous son cult family led by a matriarchal figure dyed all of the children's hair blonde. There's been a documentary made about the group, so it's based on the family with Miranda Otto performing wonderfully as the matriarch now to very popular author Fleur McDonald and her Dave Burrows detective series. The ninth one has been released. It's into the night and it is available in the library. So if anybody wants to embark on this great, engrossing Outback detective series, let's start with Fool's Gold number one, where we introduced to Dave Burrows and his partner Melinda. When newly badged detective Dave Burrows arrives in the West Australian Goldfield town of Baraboo, a town where prospectors live by their own tough rules. It's exactly where he wants to be. But Melinda, his wife of two weeks, is devastated at leaving behind her family, friends and career. As Dave investigates reports of mysterious late night trespassing, a missing person and guns being drawn on strangers, he must navigate his way in a town where prospectors, prospectors live by their own rules and find a way to keep his marriage from falling apart. This audio book includes the bonus short story The Farmer's Choice Laodicea A Sample of Fool's Gold by Fleur McDonald. It's narrated by Lani Tupou.
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1997. We're not staying here long, are we? Belinda asked, her lips curled in disgust for as long as the department wants me to. I guess maybe 1 or 2 years. Detective Dave Burrows pushed open the gate of his new house and ignored the hissing sound that came from Melinda, as he said, or two. He'd been told his new partner, Spencer, was going to meet him at the house with the keys. But either they were early or he was running late because there was no sign of him. Maybe there was a key somewhere so they could get out of the incessant heat. He ran his fingers along the door frame. Nothing. He lifted the freight mat before moving on to the empty pot. No. No key. This hadn't been the welcome to Baraboo scene he'd been hoping for. It wanted his new wife, Melinda, to love the place as soon as she arrived. For there to be a welcoming committee of. Well, he didn't care who. Just someone to make Melinda feel comfortable and happy to make a friend straight away. For the house to be lovely and modern. Sadly, it was tiny and run down with a patch of brown lawn at the front. The fibro dwelling had a small porch which would keep the northern sun from the doorway. But they weren't any verandas to keep the house from heating up or to sit on with an evening drink.
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And that was fool's Gold by Fleur McDonald. Fleur is spelled f l e. U r f. L e. U r. McDonald is emcee Don Aldi, MC Don Aldi. And that book goes for nine hours. Part one in the Detective Dave Burrows series with Into the Night and number nine in the series hitting the shelves this year and hitting our library shelves as well. Let's stay in outback Australia with the novel Wake and this is by Shelley Burr. The small town of Nuneaton lies in the harsh red interior of New South Wales, once a thriving outback centre. Years of punishing drought have whittled it down to no more than a couple of pubs and a police station, and its one sinister claim to fame the still unsolved disappearance of Evelyn McCreery 19 years ago. From the bedroom she shared with her twin sister, Meena McCrory's life has been defined by the intense and ongoing public interest in her sister's case. Now, an anxious and reclusive adult, Meena lives alone on her family's sunbaked d stocked sheep farm. The million dollar reward her mother established to solve the disappearance has never been paid out. Enter Lane Holland, a private investigator who dropped out of the police academy to earn a living cracking cold cases. Lane has his eye on the unclaimed money, but he also has darker motivations for wanting to solve the case. Let's hear a sample of Wake by Shelley Burr. It's narrated by Jackie Brennan.
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He'd thought he remembered what it was like out here, the dry heat that sucked everything out of you. But memory couldn't touch the real feeling, especially when you had nowhere to escape to. He stared through the strung wire fence of the flat expanse of red dirt, occasionally broken up by clumps of grass or the odd mallee tree. Far in the distance was a timber structure, not the house. He'd spent enough time staring at pictures of the McCreary home to clock that in an instant something much more industrial and rough. A barn, maybe. At first he thought he'd imagined the movement. He saw a long shadow, too tall and thin to be livestock or a wild animal. There was someone walking around the outside of the building. He eased open the car door and took out his camera. It had been one of his early impulse purchases when he'd thought he was rich. A deer cellar and a telephoto lens. He was no great photographer, but it was the sort of thing he'd thought a private investigator should have since then had used it to take far more pictures of couples eating in restaurants or unlocking motel room doors than a murder suspects. But there were bills to be paid. After a few seconds of fiddling with the focus, he could see that the building was derelict and easily 100 years old. It was built from hardwood planks, several of them missing, and a section of the roof had collapsed.
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That was wake by Shelley. BR Shelley is spelled s h e l e. Y s l e y. BR is br for. And that book goes for ten hours. This is the debut novel by Shelley Burr. There has been another one released, similar themes set in outback town. So Wake is her first novel and has had much acclaim from the critics. Shelley BR grew up on Newcastle's beaches and her grandparents property in Glen Rowan on the road between the two. When not writing, she has a small permaculture farm and is studying agriculture at the University of New England, and she won the Matt Rachelle Award for New Writer of the Year for Wake. Along with Chris Hammer, Jane Harper, she's captivating people with her stories of mysteries and dark doings in small Australian towns. Now to another small Australian town. This is a book called Thornwood House, and it's by Anna Roma. When Audrey Kepler inherits an abandoned homestead in rural Queensland, she jumps at the chance to escape her loveless existence in the city and make a fresh start. In a dusty back room of the old house, she discovers the crumbling photo of a handsome World War Two medic Samuel Riordan, the homesteads former occupant, and soon finds herself becoming obsessed with him. But as Audrey digs deeper into Samuel's story, she discovers he was accused of bashing to death a young woman on his return from the war in 1946. When she learns about other unexplained deaths in recent years, one of them a young woman with injuries, echoing those of the first victim, she begins to suspect that the killer is still very much alive. And now Audrey, thanks to her need to uncover the past, has provided him with good reason to want to kill again. Let's hear a sample of Thornwood House by Anne Roma. It's narrated by Julie Lancashire.
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The sky over the cemetery was bruised by storm clouds. It was only mid-afternoon, but already dark. A large group of mourners stood on the grassy hillside, sheltering beneath the outstretched arms of an old elm in the branches overhead. A congregation of blackbirds shuffled restlessly, their cries punctuating the stillness. Crows. Darkness. Death. Tony would have loved that. I swallowed hard, wishing I was anywhere but here. Anywhere but standing in the rain, shivering in a borrowed black suit, silently saying goodbye to the man I once thought I'd loved. Bronwyn stood beside me, her dark blue dress, making her fair hair and complexion all the more stark. She was 11 tall for her age and strikingly pretty. She held an umbrella over our heads, her thin fingers bloodless around the handle. Despite the rain, despite the glances and hushed talk behind our backs. I was glad we'd come. No matter what anyone said, I knew Tony would have wanted us here. The coffin hovered over the grave, suspended from a steel frame by discreet cables. Nearby, a blanket of fake grass was draped over a mound of dirt that would later fill the hole. Huge wreaths of white lilies and scarlet anthurium carpeted the ground. They looked expensive and my hand picked roses seemed out of place among them.
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And that was a Thornwood house by Anna Roma. Anna is spelt Anna. Anna Roma is Roma from E and that book goes for 16 hours and 45 minutes. There are some other books by Anna Roma in the collection. There's Lyrebird Hill and Beyond the Orchard. And I'm on Anna Roma's site here and aroma commu Anna says I'm an internationally bestselling Australian author who unashamedly crosses genres with my writing. I adore writing mystery and romance, both historical and contemporary, and there's often elements of paranormal woven in ghosts, haunted houses and fairy tales. And that was a little bit there about Anna Roma. Thank you for joining me on here this today I'm Frances Kelland and this is the Vision Australia Library radio program here. This if you would like to give some feedback about any of the books that you've been reading. They are very valuable. People love to hear books recommended by other people. I do have a couple coming up next week and I received an email, for instance, from Andrew who said he hasn't heard a recommendation that he's made in a while. Well, next week I'll have your book on Andrew, I promise. If you would like to join the library as well, you can always call them on 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656. Or if you would like to email it is library at Vision Australia. Org. That's library at Vision Australia. Org. Have a lovely week and we'll be back next week with more here this.
