All is very exciting here at the Sun Bookshop if you are one of the many who was after the Betty Churcher bookNotebooks then dash on in because it is back in stock hooray! We are deciding on what cheese to have with our glass of wine when Jane Clifton comes down on Wednesday I just like a plain old Wanganui from Curds and Whey at the Vic Market it is a delicious and very tasty cheese from New Zealand, whilst some are pumping for a milder cheese hmmn maybe both! I have been reading reading reading and was hit by the idea that Michael Koryta is actually very Stephen King he started off as crime but a supernatural element began creeping in with So Cold the River anyway his last two books Cypress House and The Ridge (due September) have continued the whole supernatural thing. I really enjoy these books, well written page turners anyway I am now going to shelve them in fiction. So for Stephen King fans I say give them a go

Nostalgic for Cake?

Whether you made them for your children, or had them made for you when you were a kid...

We think everyone needs a copy of this Vintage Edition of the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake book.

You could make the jelly-filled pool! The dolly cake, the spaceship - maybe even the castle or the train!! The possibilities are practically endless, and topped with hundreds and thousands and jubes. Delish!

June New Releases

The Life: A Novel, Malcolm Knox : Allen & Unwin
He looked into the Pacific and the Pacific looked back into him. The Life tells the story of former-world-champion Australian surfer, Dennis Keith, from inside the very heart of the fame and madness that is 'The Life'. Now bloated and paranoid, former Australian surfing legend Dennis Keith is holed up in his mother's retirement village, shuffling to the shop for a Pine-Lime Splice every day, barely existing behind his aviator sunnies and crazy OCD rules, and trying not to think about the waves he'd made his own and the breaks he once ruled like a god. Years before he'd been robbed of the world title that had his name on it - and then drugs, his brother, and the disappearance and murder of his girlfriend and had done the rest. Out of the blue, a young would-be biographer comes knocking and stirs up memories Dennis thought he'd buried. It takes Dennis a while to realise that she's not there to write his story at all. Daring, ambitious, dazzling, The Life is also as real as it gets - a searing, beautiful novel about fame and ambition and the price that must sometimes be paid for reaching too high.

The Amateur Science of Love, Craig Sherborne : Text Publishing
They say we fall in love. But really we fall in sickness. I lost appetite for food in those two nights with Tilda. My stomach was sunken in its wishbone cavity. Me, I was never sick, but I was sick now, the strangest sickness that made my eyes gleam green with excellent health. They had shiny white edges. My cheeks were glossed in a fresh oil of pink. Colin dreams of escaping his parents’ New Zealand farm for a grand stage career. He makes it to London and a disastrous audition before meeting Tilda—beautiful Tilda, older, an artist—who brings his future with her. A heady romance leads to a new home in a decaying former bank in a small town hours from Melbourne. They are building a life together—but there are cracks in the foundation. This is a love story, told from passionate beginning to spectacular end. It is intimate and honest, blackly funny and emotionally devastating.

Parisians, Graham Robb : Picador

New Format
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller from the award-winning author of The Discovery of France. No-one knows a city like the people who live there – so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians is at once a book to read from cover to cover, to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and a book to return to again and again – rather like the city itself, in fact.

See more new releases on our website.

Lovesong is a winner

The 2011 winners of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were announced the other night.


There were lots of happy authors, including Alex Miller, who received the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction as well as the People's Choice Award for his book Lovesong, which was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award last year.


Click here for more information.

So I have been reading a lot of incredible books the list is long and it is time to indulge my secret passion CHICKLIT, only the highest quality of course. One title I have had on the shelf for ages is I Think I Love You by Alison Pearson now this being a book about a woman's old David Cassidy obsession, it completely spoke to me as did her first book I Don't Know how She Does It which begins with a woman breaking store bought shortbread in a desperate attempt to make it look homemade for her child's school fete. Anyway I am so far not disappointed it is very funny and filled with excellent1970's outfits. I know I should be reading Just Kids by Patti Smith for bookclub (and finishing To be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal) but I've nearly got a whole week. Ohh just confimed for June15 at 6.00pm is an event with the fab Jane Clifton to celebrate the release of her memoir The Address Book. So please come and join us for a glass of wine and a piece of cheese . Did I mention it was the Sun Bookshops birthday May 2nd, 13 years old we feel very teenagery now. Happy Birthday to Us.

So I was wondering how many people have discovered the fabulous Denise Mina, Scottish Crime Writer and one of my very favourites. She has so far written two trilogies and is onto her third. The first began with Garnet Hill which she won the Crime Writers Associations best first novel prize. Exile and Resolution completed this first series. Paddy Meehan appeared in the next, The Field of Blood, The Dead Hour and The Last Breath . Paddy was a reporter who grew up in quick smart in the 3 novels, solving crimes along the way. Now her latest protagonist DI Alex Morrow who has a dodgy family background and a whole lot of sadness she is trying to hide, is of course, a hard, yet fabulous detective first in Still Midnight and is now back in the new and page turning Wasp Season. Alex Morrow investigates the murder of a single woman who seems to live a quiet and private life, but is she really the demure spinster her neighbours believed her to be, Alex is another great strong female character . Of course we can not leave out Denise Minas stand alone book Sanctus the story of a psychologist accused of murdering one of her psychopath patients. Very excitingly Orion will be reissuing the Garnethill trilogy in July, hooray. While you are discovering new things have you ever been to Lulo a truly excellent and delicious Spanish and Latin American, modern food restaurant in Glenferrie rd Hawthorn. Take Denise Mina or a friend and go there for anything they suggest yum, great spanish wine too!

The Ottoman Motel

The Ottoman Motel, Christopher Currie (Text Publishing)

Christopher Curries’ debut novel is a fabulous page turner. I read it in one sitting and was totally engrossed. Simon, a young boy, stops with his parents in Reception the town where his grandmother lives. Whilst Simon stays at the hotel, his parents go for a drive and never return. A distressed Simon is taken in by the townsfolk but feels that nobody is searching for his parents in any meaningful way and that’s when he and another parentless boy take matters into their own hands. This book is a great way to while away a rainy weekend (and there seems to be plenty of those).

---Deb---