January: New year, new fabulous books to read and win!
Hello 2025! My TBR is already teetering with new fiction from new voices. Let's kick off the year with some crime, fun and drama...
Well hello!
It’s a wee bit late to say it but we haven’t spoken since November, so I’m going there. Happy New Year! I hope your year is off to a flying start and you found sometime to chill out with a book during all the madness that is Christmas etcetera.
I’ve been reading A LOT! And, I’ve been organising the New Voices Down Under schedule for the upcoming months. I think we’re going to be spoilt for choice in 2025.
Kicking off the year we have three very different titles in Books to Love. Two novels that are loosely linked by themes of family and connection— Half Truth and The Inheritance. Half Truth follows a woman’s journey to Morocco to find the father she has never met but instead finds a family she never knew she had. The Inheritance, on the other hand, explores the family you might sometimes wish you could divorce! 2025 looks like it is going to be a strong year for crime fiction too. When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole is a creepy rural noir that will leave you guessing.
This month in Meet the Author, I chat with Emma Pignatiello about her debut romance suspense novel, Last Shot. If you love enemies to friends romance with a bit of a twist, then you’ll enjoy this romp. It was lots of fun to chat with Emma.
Congratulations to the four debut novelists who have made the shortlist for the 2025 Indie Awards. I reviewed three of these titles in this newsletter last year and it’s such a joy to see these authors’ hard work and talent recognised in this prestigious award. To find out which titles made the shortlist, scroll down to Newbie News.
And what would be a newsletter without Freebies? This month, there are three copies of Last Shot for you to win. Read the interview then answer the questions to be in the running.
Books to Love
Half Truth by Nadia Mahjouri
(Published 4 February 2025 ANZ)
At 22, Zahra has just become a mother. Isolated in a ramshackle beach hut on Bruny Island with her partner and their baby, her sense of dislocation is more than simply the shock of new motherhood. She and her mother are not close, she’s never met her Moroccan father. A desperate need for connection, for identity, grows inside her. Zahra and her baby leave the island and travel to Morocco to find her father’s family.
Khadija is packing up the home she first moved into as the eleven-year-old bride of a much older husband. She’s lived here for fifty years, raised four children, seen political unrest, poverty, happiness and tears. She has always been haunted by an impending sense of death. So it comes as no real surprise when she has a stroke.
Zahra arrives in Marrakesh. Her father’s family embraces her, accepting her immediately as one of their own. But both her hopes and theirs are dashed. No one knows where Zahra’s father is. No one has seen him in over twenty years. She thought he’d be here, they thought he must be with her in Australia. Khadija cannot speak so no one knows the guilty secret she’s carried for two decades. But in the words of the great poet, Rumi, the truth was a mirror in God’s hands. When it fell and shattered, the shards were scattered across the earth. Anyone who found a piece thought they owned the truth but, in reality, they only knew part of the story.
Half Truth builds on this idea of the pieces of mirror. How each of the women, Zahra and her grandmother, have their own piece but not the whole story. Author Nadia Mahjouri has used some autobiographical details of her own return to Morocco to find her family as a jumping off point to explore themes of identity, legacy and connection. Because Zahra grew up in Australia, the reader experiences the strangeness of this new world and family, this sense of belonging yet not, through her eyes. It gives the story a wonderful freshness.
Mahjouri has split the narrative between Zahra and Khadija. The grandmother’s story starting from when she was aged five and living in a village far from the city. We see the events that shaped Khadija’s life, why she chose to marry the man she did, her struggles with motherhood and loneliness. And ultimately what fractured her relationship with her beloved eldest son, Zahra’s father.
In Mahjouri’s hands, Half Truth is a deftly told story that never becomes judgemental about the choices these women have made. It focuses instead on what it means to understand where you came from, how you got here and what that might mean for who you might become. Half Truth is tender, sad and joyful blending forgiveness and acceptance despite some of the hard truths revealed on both sides. A fascinating and poignant story well told.
A little bit about the author …
Nadia Mahjouri is a Moroccan Australian writer, counsellor, and group facilitator specialising in maternal mental health. Her professional background is in health policy, governance and academia, where her research focused on ethics and feminist philosophy.
Nadia and her husband live in Hobart/nipaluna with varying combinations of their family which includes three young adults, two school-aged children and a black labrador puppy called Russell Sprout.
She is the host of The Whole Truth: Motherhood and the Writing Life. In this podcast, Nadia interviews authors about how they manage to keep writing while living in the messy middle of family life, work and creativity.
Connect with Nadia Mahjouri
Instagram @nadiamahjouriauthor
Find out more about Nadia on her website and subscribe to her newsletter here
Australia: Preorder a copy of the book here
The Inheritance by Kate Horan
(Published ANZ 1 January 2025)
Like a lot of journalists these days, Meg Hunter is trying to revive her fledgling career after being laid off from a major newspaper. Freelancing is hard work, always having to come up with fresh ideas for stories. On top of that, her mother suffers from dementia and now lives in a nursing home. Lost to the disease, she calls Meg Tina and talks about the past. As an only child and no idea who her father is, Meg latches onto one clue, the word Hartwell.
Isobel Ashworth is the daughter of a property tycoon. Her life is one of privilege and power but as the youngest child, and a girl at that, she has been sidelined in the running of the family empire. She wants to do more and when her father offers her the chance to take over the hotel project in Hartwell that is over budget and behind schedule, she jumps at the chance to prove herself.
Except, Isobel is not welcomed in Hartwell. If anything, the Ashworth name invites scorn if not downright hatred. Meg visits Hartwell to sniff around the hotel project and discovers all is not as it seems. When the two women meet, there is an uneasy connection. They are on opposite sides of the story yet are both looking for the truth about what is really going on in Hartwell. Add to that, someone gives each of the Ashworth siblings an anonymous Christmas gift — a DNA test— could this be where the answer lies?
The Inheritance is a pacy fun story about families, power, and finding answers in unlikely places. Kate Horan has clearly enjoyed creating her cast of characters and doing what a good author should always do, putting them in difficult situations and testing their mettle. It’s no surprise that families are complicated beasts, each with their own agenda, but that’s what makes it such a twisty entertaining story. If it’s a fun read you’re after, this might just be the ticket.
A little bit about the author …
Kate Horan has spent the last seventeen years working in corporate communications, helping executives to pitch and present. Before that, she taught English and Drama at high schools in western Sydney where she relished inspiring teenagers with a love of reading and writing. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 2001 with an Honours degree in English Literature.
After many years of feeling the niggle to write her own stories, she attended Faber Academy's Writing a Novel program in 2020. When she's not dreaming up stories about complicated families with dark secrets, she's kid-wrangling her two young, high-spirited boys, listening to podcasts and walking her golden lab on Sydney's beautiful Northern Beaches.
Connect with Kate Horan
Find her on Instagram here @kate_horan_author
Read more about Kate or subscribe to her newsletter here
Australia: Buy a copy of the book here
When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole by Geoff Parkes Horan
(Published ANZ 4 February 2025)
In the summer of 1983, law student Ryan, returns to the country town where he was born and raised, Nashville in New Zealand’s King Country. Here he rejoins the shearing team where he works as a wool presser. It’s hard work with long days spent in the company of people he probably wouldn’t have much to do with otherwise. Last summer, a Finnish backpacker, Sanna, worked in this team. She went missing and her body has never been found.
Her sister, Emilia, arrives in Nashville determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Sanna. Ryan has never told anyone that he and Sanna were lovers. As far as he’s concerned, it has nothing to do with her disappearance. But as Ryan is the person who reported Sanna missing, Emilia wants his help. Ryan is reluctant. He’s got enough problems on his plate. His best mate can barely speak a civil word to him. Many, including the local copper, think Ryan needs to decide if he still belongs in Nashville or will desert the town to become a big city lawyer. No one thinks Ryan is a suspect but there are plenty of other local men who fit the bill.
Geoff Parkes’ When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole has all the eerie creepiness you’d expect from rural noir— crime stories set in remote small community where everyone knows everybody, or do they? The natural majestic landscape, snow-capped mountains and dense bush surrounding the valley of farms is the ideal backdrop to this dark tale. Parkes perfectly captures the vibe of a small rural town teetering on the brink of obsolescence. Its youth lured to the cities and local jobs in peril the moment a faraway corporate makes a decision to relocate operations.
Parkes has populated Nashville with many likely suspects. His characters are richly realised and engaging, even when it is for all the wrong reasons. Tension simmers in every scene. It’s all the ingredients for a cracking read. The ending is the clue to what this whole story is about. Not so much a resolution to the crime as it is about small town secrets and how these communities are so reliant upon each other for survival. When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole keeps you guessing and isn’t that exactly what we want from good crime fiction?
A little bit about the author …
Geoff was born and raised in rural New Zealand’s King Country where the story is based. His experiences growing up in the area and working as a wool presser have informed the novel (without the murder of course!) Now based in Melbourne, for the last twelve years he’s written a weekly opinion column for The Roar, Australia’s leading on-line sports website.
Connect with Geoff Parkes
Find Geoff on Instagram here @parkes.geoff
Read more about Geoff on his website here
Australia: Preorder a copy of the book here
Emma Pignatiello wrote her debut romantic suspense novel, Last Shot, because not enough people were being murdered in the romance books she was reading. She lives by the coast in Western Australia near Walyalup (Fremantle) on the land of the Whadjuk Noongar people. In disguise at her day job, she attempts to make teenagers care more about writing than about how many days she’s worn her cringe millennial shoes in a row. Emma is dedicated to making her stories authentic – she frequented many wineries in the name of research for the Blood Wine Dynasty series but has not (yet) committed any murders.Lauren Keegan is a psychologist, writer and mother who lives in the Wollondilly Shire; the land of the Dharawal and Gundungurra people. She has worked in public mental health for twelve years, has two young girls and drinks more tea than is sensible. This is her first published novel.
A little bit about the book …
Solving a murder that hasn’t happened yet should be easy, right? But when Maxella Conrad barges her way onto the illustrious Barbarani Estate to warn them about a murder plot, her life becomes anything but easy.
For one thing, there’s Greyson Hawke, the Barbarani family’s ‘fixer’ who’s lived and worked with the wine dynasty his whole life. He refuses to believe Max, especially when he realises who she is: a disgraced ex-cop who’s just spent the last six months behind bars. But when it seems that Max might be telling the truth, Grey is forced to team up with her to save the Barbaranis.
But nothing is as it seems on the Barbarani Estate, and it soon becomes clear that they won’t be able to stop this murder unless they solve the secrets of the past – and learn to trust each other.
Can Max and Grey confront their own demons before the last shot fires and they both lose everything?
Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind this story?
It was a few different things and unfortunately one of the main ones is a bit of a spoiler! For the winemaking aspect of the story, that came from standing in my grandparents’ backyard and looking at the barrel my nonno used to use to make his own wine. It was barely drinkable but it got me wondering what might have happened if it had been really good! I can’t remember where it was but I also saw a photo of someone famous, I think it was some sort of Kardashian or royal, and you could see their bodyguard barely in the photo. There was something about the expression on his face that I couldn’t put my finger on and it got me thinking; I bet his story is way more interesting that the person he’s protecting…and the idea for Grey’s character started to form. For the murder aspect of the story, that came from my husband asking me what we were doing on the weekend even after I’d told him seventeen times already. But also I had this “vision”, for want of a better word, of a woman with dark hair and tattoos all over her arms screaming “there’s going to be a murder tomorrow night” and that was the line that started the entire premise of the book and solidified Max’s character in my mind. In all honesty, ideas flutter in from everywhere until finally, some (usually two or three) fall together into something that I think would be a good hook or a premise for a story. And then I wake up the next day either feeling like that premise is the idea equivalent of my nonno’s barrel of non-famous wine or that I could be on to something and start the outlining process.
I believe the setting of the novel is a fictionalised version of the Margaret River wine growing region in Western Australia. This is home turf for you. Did you grow up in a wine making family?
Technically yes – as I said, my nonno “made” his own wine. He was the only one who would drink it though! But the only thing my family has in common with the Barbaranis is that we are Italian – no mortal enemies or murder plots that I know of although my grandparents did have a bit of beef with the local teenagers who liked to draw smiley faces on their Tuscan columns in their suburban driveway (in the teenagers’ defence, the round spheres on the top of the columns DID kind of look like faces). It was important to me to set the book in WA – I always thought if I wanted to get published I’d have to set my book over east or somewhere else entirely and I have no idea where that false narrative came from because we have so many amazing books in Australia set in WA. There is something about the Margaret River Wine region itself; with its caves and raw, coastal landscapes – it lends itself well to mystery and romance – so I always knew I was going to set it there. Also it was a great excuse to visit a lot of wineries.
Our two leads, Maxela Conrad and Greyson Hawke are the classic case of opposites attract. They spend more time hating each other and getting on each other’s nerves until, well, they don’t. Was it fun to write?
I think I almost had too much fun with this aspect of the book. I could have written a whole 100K word manuscript with just their banter – some of it did get cut because it was slowing down the story! Enemies to lovers/ opposites attract are my favourite tropes and I think they feed into each other. When two people hate each other, or parts of each other (but secretly want to rip each others’ clothes off) there’s never ending material for snipes and insults, but it has to be balanced with sexual tension when it’s a romance novel. It’s sometimes difficult to know when enough is enough and I just have to find a way to make them kiss already and have it connect in a meaningful way to the plot. For banter to really flow, I’ve found you do have to know the characters though. I think the best exchanges between Max and Grey happened in second, third, fourth etc drafts because I knew them better than in the first draft when I was just vomiting out the bones of the story and they were slightly more two-dimensional.
The murder mystery plotline really drew me in. Romance stories don’t usually have murders in them, what made you want to throw that in the mix?
I must have some sort of secret desire for a life of crime because everything I’ve ever written has had a crime or mystery element to it! My favourite books always have plot twists that you never see coming and this has always been one of the biggest joys of reading for me. Early readers of Last Shot have said they didn’t see the twists coming so hopefully I’ve pulled it off to some extent! But mainly, I think I just wrote what I wanted to read. I distinctly remember looking at the towering TBR pile on my bedside table that was basically half romance books and half crime books – but I didn’t feel in the mood for one or the other. I was doing a romance writing course with the Australian Writers Centre at the time and from that course I realised that some of the books I’d loved to read when I was younger would have been categorised as ‘romantic suspense’ so I knew there was a market for it – I just hadn’t come across many on the shelves lately. So I plotted out the basic outline of Last Shot – knowing the two plotlines (the romance and the crime) would have to be equally as strong as each other and have to intersect somehow based on what I was learning in the online course. High stakes situations have the potential to show us who we really are and the biggest joy about falling in love is often about finding someone who truly sees you for who you are, the good and the bad, so I think the essence of the two genres are more similar than people sometimes think.
We’re chatting on the eve of publication. How does it feel to have your novel go out into the world, for it to be a ‘real’ book?
I will admit to opening the very first copy of Last Shot and taking big old sniff of the middle of the book for that ‘new book smell’…everyone does this right?? It feels like very soon someone is going to scream loudly in my ear: ‘JUST KIDDING! It’s not real!’ It’s been my dream forever and so it’s a strange sensation of it actually coming true. I started taking writing seriously towards the end of 2019 and since then have written 7 manuscripts. Last Shot was the 5th so it feels like it’s taken forever but at the same time has happened (to quote Rowan Atkinson in ‘Love Actually’) in the “flashest of flashes”. But it’s very humbling to have a book going out in the world and still have to clean the toilet and stand in line at Woolies to buy milk on the same day – life goes on as normal! I’m nervous but excited to have people read Max and Grey’s story which used to just be a couple of random notes on my phone and a bunch of scenes playing out in my mind.
To WIN a copy of Last Shot, scroll down to Freebies
Connect with Emma Pignatiello
Find Emma on Instagram @emmap_writes
Visit Emma’s website here
Australia: Preorder a copy of the book here
Newbie News!
Australian independent booksellers have nominated their favourite Australian books of 2024 and are thrilled to announce their SHORTLIST for the Indie Book Awards 2025!
Established in 2008, the Indie Book Awards celebrate the best Australian writing; and who better to nominate and judge the best-of-the-best than indie booksellers! What makes indie booksellers uniquely placed to judge and recommend the best Aussie books of the past year, is their incredible passion and knowledge, their contribution to the cultural diversity of the Australian reading public, by recommending beyond the big brands, and above all, their love of quality writing.
The Category Winners and the Overall Book of the Year Winner will be announced at a virtual awards event on Monday 24 March 2025.
DEBUT FICTION SHORTLIST
The Deed by Susannah Begbie
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston
All The Bees in the Hollows by Lauren Keegan
Pheasants Nest by Louise Milligan
Freebies!!
If you enjoyed the interview with Emma Pignatiello, then this is your chance to win a copy of Last Shot. Thanks to Penguin Books Australia for providing us with **three** copies to giveaway. All you have to do is send a reply email with the answer to this very tricky question.
Name one of the lead characters in Last Shot.
The fine print: Giveaways are currently only open to subscribers and you must reside within Australia to be eligible to win (postage!) The winners will be picked at random and will be emailed on Tuesday 18 February 2025. Good luck!
The End
And here we are at the end of the first edition of the newsletter for 2025. I hope some of the books discussed have tickled your fancy. Please leave a comment, follow us on socials and come back again next month where there will be more bookish news, reviews, interviews and freebies. See you soon!
Don’t forget, you can always catch up with us on Instagram @newvoicesdownunder
And, if you’d like to subscribe to my author newsletter, you can subscribe to A Cuppa With Meredith here The next edition is out Monday 5 February!
More incredible books to add to my TBR pile! Thank you Meredith, for continuing to spotlight debut Australian authors.
Thank you so much Meredith!!