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The Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing. The $50,000 prize is awarded annually to one outstanding book deemed to be original, excellent, and engaging. Announcing the 12 exceptional books by Australian women and non-binary writers in the running for the tenth annual Stella Prize. The 2022 Stella Prize longlist includes novels, short fiction, memoir, social history, a book-length essay, a graphic novel, and – eligible for the first time in 2022 – poetry collections. Why not reserve one or more now and see if you can pick the winner before is announced Thursday 28 April.
City of Parramatta Libraries is very excited to present our first in-person author talk for 2022 with none other than global best selling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey, Heather Morris! Three Sisters is her third novel, and the final piece in the phenomenon that is the Tattooist of Auschwitz series.
Heather will be speaking about her heartbreaking new historical novel of love and survival Three Sisters – a story of three brave and inspiring sisters Cibi, Magda & Livia. Their story will break your heart. Their journey will fill you with hope. Their names will be remembered.
Three Sisters is a beautiful story of hope in the hardest of times and of finding love after loss. Two of the sisters are alive in Israel today, surrounded by friends and family. They have chosen Heather Morris to tell their story.
This wonderful event will be at Wentworth Point Community Centre & Library on Friday 11 March, 6.15pm arrival for a 6.30pm start. Copies of Three Sisters can be purchased on the night and signed by the author. Tickets are limited for this free event so book your place now.
It is that time of year, with Library Lovers’ Day (perhaps better known as Valentine’s Day) just around the corner on 14 February when you may be inspired to pick up a tale of love. The library has romantic titles of all kinds and for all ages from sweet romance to shifter romance to sexy romance and everything in between. Here are just some of the tales of love we have in our libraries.
For those of you who enjoy listening and reading online to a book then why not visit the ‘Escape into Love‘ list on our BorrowBox site or for even more eBook titles visit the ‘Love is in the air‘ list on our Wheelers site.
Finally don’t forget that if you visit one of the City of Parramatta Libraries from Friday 11 February to Monday 14 February, borrow one of our ‘blind date’ books and ‘rate the date’ you can enter our Library Lovers’ Day promotion to win a great prize.
Fans of Australian authors received a treat late last year when Claudia Karvan embarked on a literary journey to celebrate our love of books, met some of our most beloved and brilliant writers, and explored our Australian identity through the place, its people and the power of our stories in ‘Books that made us’ from the ABC. In this 3 episode series Claudia highlighted a diverse range of both modern and past Australian classic stories. The series is available to stream for free via iview so why not (re)watch the series and be inspired to read one or more of the amazing titles featured. The Library has all of the books mentioned in the show available for reserve, simply click on a cover or title. Continue reading →
The Christmas break proved to be the perfect opportunity to finally read some of Sally Hepworth’s books. Sally Hepworth is one author who I have been wanting to read for a while. It is fair to say I had fairly high expectations of this author as her books are always in demand by library members and book clubs and I wasn’t disappointed.
I started my reading off with Sally’s latest book, ‘The younger wife’; which had the perfect mix of family drama and dark long hidden secrets.
Tully and Rachel are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact Heather is half his age isn’t even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease. Heather knows she has an uphill battle to win Tully and Rachel over – particularly while carrying the shameful secrets of her past. But, as it turns out, her soon-to-be stepdaughters have secrets of their own.
The story is told from the view of the three main characters, sisters Tully & Rachel, and Heather, their dad’s new younger wife. I enjoyed this aspect of the book very much as it gave me the opportunity to get to know each character and decide if I like them or not. While it was clear each of the characters in the books were holding onto some distressing secrets from their past, this was only slightly expanded on. Though the story touches on some serious issues such as rape, eating disorders, kleptomania and both verbal and domestic abuse it never delves deeper into the details and didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story. ‘The younger wife‘ left me eager to read more of Sally’s books.
The next book I read was, ‘The family next door’. I was intrigued by the premise of the story.
The small suburb of Pleasant Court lives up to its name. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows their neighbours, and children play in the street. Isabelle Heatherington doesn’t fit into this picture of family paradise. Husbandless and childless, she soon catches the attention of three Pleasant Court mothers.
What better way to get a readers attention then to mention a close knit street and mothers!
I enjoyed this book from the start and found all of the women in the story likeable. I couldn’t wait to read on and find out what hidden secrets each of the women were holding onto. I finished this book in one sitting and enjoyed it from start to finish.
I am currently reading ‘The good sister’ and am loving it so far.
As you can probably tell by now, I consider myself a huge fan of Sally Hepworth’s books and will continue to read my way through all her books while I eagerly await the release of her next release which I hope will be in 2022.
Happy reading,
Jody
Should you wish to learn more about Sally Hepworth and her books take a look at her website. Sally is Dymocks ‘author of the month’ and there is a great Q&A interview to watch for those who are interested.
