scribepub's reviews
497 reviews

A smart, romping adventure, featuring some of the most memorable and powerful female characters I've seen in print for a long time. I loved every page as I followed the Kopp sisters through a too-good-to-be-true (but mostly true!) tale of violence, courage, stubbornness, and resourcefulness.
Elizabeth Gilbert

Hardened criminals are no match for pistol-packing spinster Constance Kopp and her redoubtable sisters in this hilarious and exciting period drama by bestseller Stewart (The Drunken Botanist). This is an elegant tale of suspense, mystery, and wry humor … A surprising Kopp family secret, a kidnapped baby, and other twists consistently ratchet up the stakes throughout, resulting in an exhilarating yarn.
Publishers Weekly, Starred/b>

Stewart crafts a solid, absorbing novel based on real-life events — though they're unusual enough to seem invented. Stewart deftly tangles and then unwinds a complicated plot with nice period detail … More adventures involving gutsy Constance, quietly determined Sheriff Heath, and a lively cast of supporting characters would be most welcome.
Kirkus, Starred

In her engaging first novel, Stewart (The Drunken Botanist) draws from the true story of the Kopp sisters (Constance became one of the country’s first female deputy sheriffs) and creates a welcome addition to the genre of the unconventional female sleuth. Colorful, well-drawn characters come to life on the page, and historical details are woven tightly into the narrative. The satisfying conclusion sets up an opening for future Constance Kopp novels. VERDICT: Historical fiction fans and followers of Rhys Bowen’s “Molly Murphy” mysteries and Victoria Thompson’s “Gaslight Mystery” series will delight in the eccentric and feisty Kopp women.
Library Journal, Starred

A period thriller that rivals any other historical-based suspense novel. Stewart weaves an amazingly delightful tale, one I was hard pressed to put down. This novel should be listed for debut novel awards.
Suspense Magazine

How could you not fall in love with a book about one of the first female deputy sheriffs and her sisters — especially when it’s written by the enthralling Amy Stewart? Full of long-held secrets, kicked-up dust, simmering danger, and oh yes, that gun — this gritty romp illuminates one of history’s strongest women with a hold-your-breath panache.
Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling Author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

Girl Waits With Gun makes excellent use of history to put a fresh spin on classic cop-and-crook types. Amy Stewart's true-life protagonist is a “rough and tumble” version of the early 20th century's New Woman. She is witty, sharply-drawn, and suffers no fools!
Suzanne Rindell, Author of The Other Typist

Yowza! Amy Stewart’s debut boasts pomaded gangsters, pistol-packin’ dames, kidnappings, shots in the dark, and everything from Girls Gone Wrong to carrier pigeons finding their way home. You might want to stay up all night reading, you might want to lie down on your fainting couch with a cool cloth on your forehead. Either way, you’ll have the time of your life.
Robert Goolrick, New York Times bestselling Author of A Reliable Wife

Girl Waits With Gun is fresh, funny and utterly compelling — and Constance Kopp and her sisters are not just great investigators, but completely original women. It was a blast from start to finish and I can’t wait to see what Deputy Kopp gets up to next.
Lisa Lutz, Author of The Spellman Files and How to Start a Fire

Amy Stewart has crafted the best kind of historical novel; she uncovers an intriguing, all-but-forgotten historical nugget and spins it into a wildly entertaining tale with an engaging, tough-minded heroine. Girl Waits With Gun hits the bulls-eye.
Daniel Stashower, Author of The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War

Amy Stewart’s debut novel Girl Waits With Gun is an irresistible and thoroughly enjoyable book, a suspenseful historical mystery spiced with marvelous characters, wit, and humor. Is it too soon to beg for a sequel?
Jennifer Chiaverini, Author of Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

Engaging, lively, and substantive, Girl Waits With Gun is a perfect mystery, and the Kopp sisters are my new best friends. Amy Stewart writes about crime as well as she writes about plants and poisons. I loved this book, and will be first in line for the next installment.
Sara Gran, Author of Claire Dewitt and the Bohemian Highway

[Girl Waits With Gun] stars an unforgettable, not-to-be-messed-with heroine — one of the nation's first female deputy sheriff's … A kick-ass history.
Marie Claire US

One hundred years ago, Constance Kopp was well on her way to becoming the baddest chick in the West.
Cosmopolitan US

Constance must defend her sisters from a thug (who doesn't go quietly) in this funny tale set in 1914 New Jersey.
Good Housekeeping US

[Girl Waits With Gun is] set in 1914, but its heroine, Constance Kopp, feels about 100 years more modern as she boldly takes on a gang hellbent on destroying her family.
Glamour US

A fine, historically astute novel … The sisters’ personalities flower under Stewart’s pen, contributing happy notes of comedy to a terrifying situation … Stewart integrates the beliefs and conditions of a vanished way of life into the story, enriching it without playing the intrusive docent. Transportation, domestic arrangements, dress, food, the place of women and the lot of the worker are neatly stitched in, as are the isolation of the country and the public glare of the city, and, most entertainingly, sensational, inaccurate newspaper accounts of events … Sequestered for years in the country and cowed by life, [Constance Kopp] develops believably into a woman who comes into herself, discovering powers long smothered under shame and resignation. I, for one, would like to see her return to wield them again in further instalments.
Katherine A. Powers, New York Times Book Review

A marvellous romp … Stewart’s declarative, efficient sentences successfully convey an early 20th-century style without ladling florid prose on to the plot’s high drama.
Sarah Weinman, The Guardian

A captivating romp of a novel … inspired by the real-life adventures of sisters Constance, Norma and Fleurette Kopp … With its well-developed characters as well as its evocative conjuration of what 1900s America felt and looked like for women, Girl Waits With Gun is a thrilling yet substantive read for any feminist. It’s the assured work of an author who wanted to do justice to the headstrong pioneer who came before her.
Ms Magazine

Author Amy Stewart digs into the archives for information on Kopp, her family, her colleagues and her arch enemy … It’s a great romp, with well drawn characters, a little mystery gently revealed, and plenty of wry humour.
John Grey, Sunshine Coast Daily

A pleasing tale of female empowerment with a light, humorous touch … Elegant and charming.
Maxium Jakubowski, Lovereading

A tongue-in-cheek fable of feminist empowerment … Often funny, and always likeable, Girl Waits With Gun is as offbeat and original as its heroine.
The Sunday Times

[Constance Kopp] is a likeable heroine in a breezy romp, which is thrilling and amusing in equal measure.
Sunday Herald

This is a fast-moving, joyful tale that lifts the spirits and causes many a smile. Very enjoyable stuff.
Crimesquad

A sheer delight to read and based on actual events, this debut historical mystery packs the unexpected, the unconventional, and a serendipitous humor into every chapter. Details from the historical record are accurately portrayed by villains and good guys alike, and readers will cross their fingers for the further adventures of Constance and Sheriff Heath. For fans of the Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood, and the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Laurie R. King.
Booklist, Starred

[Klein’s] interview subjects explain their science clearly and display their passions vividly, making this an engaging introduction to a great breadth of scientific topics.
American Scientist

Strongly recommended for biography readers and science enthusiasts who want to take a look at what events have shaped the lives of influential scientists, and how their scientific discoveries have changed the way they see the world.
Universe Today

[A] comprehensive book of ideas, distilled in language that even a layperson can understand.
Thuy On, Sunday Age

Klein has chosen an eclectic group to tackle everything from expected questions about their areas of study to issues concerning religion, morality, pain, and parenthood … He is exceedingly well read in the work of his interviewees, and they exchange ideas with ease, moving readily from deeply technical concepts to pop culture, making for an exceedingly welcome volume that will expose readers to all manner of topics that are likely new to them in a manner that focuses first on the lively personalities of the scientists, while slowly diving into their work … Truly enjoyable.
Booklist

If you want to get a glimpse of the workings of some great minds — and find out how a trip in a sports car led to a Novel Prize and what Lord Rees nearly ended up doing for a living — this is the book for you.
BBC Focus

This work will enthral popular science lovers and STEM enthusiasts.
Library Journal

The dazzling clutch of scientific minds caught in mid-thought here makes for a read that provokes thought in its turn … This collection sees science writer Stefan Klein interview the likes of anthropologist Sarah Hrdy and astronomer Martin Rees. Delights abound.
Barbara Kiser, Nature

All superheroes have strange myths of origin, but the politically and erotically charged back-story of Wonder Woman outstrips any comic book. Jill Lepore unmasks the comic-strip heroine as the strange daughter of early 20th-century women’s suffrage and the bondage-fixated imagination of William Moulton Marston, a hucksterish psychologist who invented the lie-detector test and lived in a covert threesome with his wife and girlfriend … A startling and intelligent double biography.
James McConnachie, Sunday Times

The book I read most eagerly and discussed most avidly in 2014 was The Secret History of Wonder Woman … Lepore is among the most productive, intellectually invigorating and surprising cultural critics in the US.
Elaine Showalter, Times Literary Supplement ‘Books of 2014’

In pursuit of Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore has tackled archives, interviewed contemporaries and dug through court transcripts, college records, the literature of the early 20th-century suffragism and the annals of Wonder Woman and her rivals. The result is a tour de force.
Helen Dewitt, Literary Review

Jill Lepore’s obsessively researched book on Wonder Woman, the four-color embodiment of the women’s rights movement, reveals that the life of the character’s creator, Dr William Marston — inventor of the lie detector, charming crank, ardent feminist and secret polygamist — was waaay more colorful than any comic book superhero. Suffering Sappho!
Art Spiegelman, Author of Maus

Hugely entertaining … Lepore teases out [connections] between Wonder Woman, the early-20th-century women’s movement, and Marston’s fascinating life and odd psyche, in which the liberation of women somehow got all mixed up with bondage and spanking.
The Atlantic

An absolutely unputdownable book. The life history of polymath charlatan and/or genius (I couldn’t ever decide) William Moulton Marston, who worked his way through law, movie scenarios, lie detection, ménages a trois, free love, BDSM and polygamy before creating the first feminist super-person had me saying “wow” practically every other page. And that’s not even mentioning the tough-as-nails women he exalted, lifted from and, uh, shared who make up the molten core of this newly-revealed story. Rocketing from the suffragism of the 1910s to the ERA of the 1970s on a wave of home-spun pop culture righteousness, this story’s head-spinning weirdness ultimately makes you question your own accomplishments, aims, and — almost like a great modern novel — your real motives.
Chris Ware, Author of Building Stories and Jimmy Corrigan

All credit to Jill Lepore for simultaneously rescuing Wonder Woman from indifference, establishing her as an expression of first-wave feminism and introducing her creator, who must be one of the more repellent individuals ever to call himself a feminist … Terrific reading.
Catherine Bennett, The Observer

I love writers (and, indeed superheroines) who balance muscularity with intellect, surface charisma with depth, passion with politics. Lepore’s achievements are even more likely to pass into greatness and myth than Wonder Woman’s, so when the two of them meet, as they do here in the pages of a book, it's a thrilling adventure.
Bidisha

Seamlessly combining rigorous scholarship and riveting readability, this richly rewarding book illuminates the histories of a problematic comics icon. A must-read.
Alex Summersby, SFX Magazine

More than a treat for comic fans, Lepore’s superb book is for anyone interested in the social history of America.
Martin Gray, Scotland on Sunday

What Lepore does so well is to show how Wonder Woman’s career mirrored the hopes, progress, and eventual disappointments of the American women’s movement in the 20th century … There’s a new Wonder Woman movie coming in 2017. If Lepore’s “secret history” has proved one thing, it’s that at least so far each era has gotten the Wonder Woman it deserves.
Buzzy Jackson, The Boston Globe

This book is several things at once: a history of Wonder Woman’s creator, Marston; a reflection on the themes underpinning the comic; and an exploration of how it was influenced by the early women’s suffrage and reproductive rights movements … Where [The Secret History of Wonder Woman] shines is in laying bare how explicitly political the comic book was always intended to be.
Helen Lewis, New Statesman

Enthralling … It is hard to do justice to the many layers of this wonderful book. Meticulously detailed and lovingly constructed, it is part biography, part social history, part detective story. Above all, it is a portrait of an extraordinary family — and the women who made the man who made Wonder Woman.
Jemma Lewis, Daily Mail

A meticulously researched account on the life and influences of the female superhero’s eccentric male creator.
Emma Jacobs, Financial Times

This eye-opening cultural history delves into the marvelously eccentric life of William Moulton Marston: psychologist, early feminist, inventor of the lie detector, sexual non-conformist and creator of Wonder Woman … An extraordinary story, very well told.
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller ‘Non Fiction Book of the Month December 2014’

Ms Lepore’s lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip. The author, a professor of history at Harvard, places Wonder Woman squarely in the story of women’s rights in America — a cycle of rights won, lost and endlessly fought for again … Her superb narrative brings that history vividly into the present, weaving individual lives into the sweeping changes of the century.
Wall Street Journal

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is as racy, as improbable, as awesomely righteous, and as filled with curious devices as an episode of the comic book itself. In the nexus of feminism and popular culture, Jill Lepore has found a revelatory chapter of American history. I will never look at Wonder Woman’s bracelets the same way again.
Alison Bechdel, Author of Fun Home

Wonderfully vivid … Intertwining biography, history and fiction, this is about much more than a comic book character.
Prospect

The Secret History of Wonder Woman is the fullest and most fascinating portrait ever created about the complicated, unconventional family that inspired one of the most enduring feminist icons in pop culture … In [Lepore’s] hands, The Secret History of Wonder Woman is its own magic lasso, one that compels history to finally tell the truth about Wonder Woman — and compels the rest of us to behold it.
Los Angeles Times

The secret identity and ironic origin of Wonder Woman, gleefully revealed here, lie less in comic book fantasy than in the racy life of her creator and the history of women’s liberation.
The Times

Lepore, a Harvard historian, is the first scholar to have full access to the Marston family papers and she mines these to marvellous effect. She also situates Wonder Woman’s story in multiple historical contexts, especially that of twentieth-century women’s history. Wonder Woman, she finds, was the bridge between the originary feminism of the 1900s and the modern women’s movements beginning in the 1960s. Where others have seen only kinky chains, she perceives direct connections to earlier feminist images of fettered women overcoming social and political restraints … For Lepore the real superhero, here, is that of her own field, History … Lepore notes that “history raises questions about the nature of truth”, and that the historian’s diligent sifting through evidence is more effective in distinguishing fact from fiction than Marston’s lie detector and Wonder Woman’s lasso … The Secret History of Wonder Woman is an exemplary case by a model practitioner.
Michael Saler, Times Literary Supplement

What Lepore seeks to do here is tell the story of women’s experience in the 20th century through this pop-culture icon … A cracking narrative.
Louise Jury, Independent

Lepore’s discipline is worthy of a first-class detective … [The Secret History of Wonder Woman] convinces us that we should know more about early feminists whose work Wonder Woman drew on and carried forward … A key spotter of connections, Lepore retrieves a remarkably recognizable feminist through-line, showing us 1920s debates about work-life balance, for example, that sound like something from The Atlantic in the past decade.
New York Review of Books

Part detective fiction, part drama, part biography, but mostly an utterly gripping read.
Giulia Miller, Times Higher Education Supplement

Lepore’s voice is fresh, clear and often cheeky … This is a truly gorgeous book — beautiful to have and to hold, with lovely little black-and-white photos on most pages — as well as a sumptuous colour cartoon section. It is brilliantly written and splendidly researched.
Julie Burchill, Spectator

The Marston family’s story is ripe for psychoanalysis. And so is The Secret History, since it raises interesting questions about what motivates writers to choose the subjects of their books. Having devoted her last work to Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Lepore clearly has a passion for intelligent, opinionated women whose legacies have been overshadowed by the men they love. In her own small way, she’s helping women get the justice they deserve, not unlike her tiara’d counterpart … It has nearly everything you might want in a page-turner: tales of S&M, skeletons in the closet, a believe-it-or-not weirdness in its biographical details, and something else that secretly powers even the most “serious” feminist history – fun.
Entertainment Weekly

Not just for serious comics historians, The Secret History Of Wonder Woman is also a must-read for anyone interested in feminist or utopian literature.
Andrea Battleground, A.V. Club

Deftly combines biography and cultural history to trace the entwined stories of Marston, Wonder Woman, and 20th-century feminism … Lepore — a professor of American history at Harvard, a New Yorker writer, and the author of Book of Ages — is an endlessly energetic and knowledgeable guide to the fascinating backstory of Wonder Woman. She’s particularly skilful at showing the subtle process by which personal details migrate from life into art.
Christian Science Monitor

In the spirited, thoroughly reported The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore recounts the fascinating details behind the Amazonian princess’ origin story.
Newsday

A wonderfully entertaining study.
Simple Things

Jill Lepore’s generously illustrated The Secret History of Wonder Woman impressively links the iconic superhero’s 1941 creation by William Moulton Marston (also the inventor of the lie detector) both to the aims of mid-twentieth-century feminism and to the influential Marston family’s deep domestic intrigues.
Elle

A rigorous, unflinching, and long-overdue appraisal … [Lepore] distils the figures she writes about into clean, simple, muscular prose, making unequivocal assertions that carry a faint electric charge.
Glen Weldon, Slate

Few historians handle weirdness as deftly or thoughtfully as Lepore … [Her] brilliance lies in knowing what to do with the material she has. In her hands, the Wonder Woman story unpacks not only a new cultural history of feminism, but a theory of history as well.
New York Times Book Review

The Secret History of Wonder Woman relates a tale so improbable, so juicy, it’ll have you saying, “Merciful Minerva!” … An astonishingly thorough investigation of the man behind the world’s most popular female superhero.
NPR

If it makes your head spin to imagine a skimpily clad pop culture icon as (spoiler alert!) a close relation of feminist birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, then prepare to be dazzled by the truths revealed in historian Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman. The story behind Wonder Woman is sensational, spellbinding and utterly improbable. Her origins lie in the feminism of the early 1900s, and the intertwined dramas that surrounded her creation are the stuff of pulp fiction and tabloid scandal … It took a super-sleuth to uncover the mysteries of this intricate history, hidden from view for more than half a century. With acrobatic research prowess, muscular narrative chops and disarming flashes of humor, Lepore rises to the challenge, bringing to light previously unknown details and deliberately obfuscated connections.
San Fransisco Chronicle

On the one hand, the story [The Secret History of Wonder Woman] relates has more uplift than Wonder Woman’s invisible airplane or her eagle-encrusted red bustier. It’s a yea-saying tale about how this comic book character, created in 1941, remade American feminism and had her roots in the ideas and activism of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. On the other hand, The Secret History of Wonder Woman is fundamentally a biography of Wonder Woman’s larger-than-life and vaguely creepy male creator, William Moulton Marston … [Lepore] fully tells Marston’s history for the first time, as well as the complete history of how so many crisp feminist ideas made their way into Wonder Woman comics. It’s complicated material that she capably explores.
New York Times

An astonishing story told extremely well.
Tim Arnold-Forster, Daily Beast

A fascinating and eclectic study … Lepore has added to our understanding of an iconic literary character ensconced deep within the mythology of our modern society; but more importantly she has used this character to shape a new understanding of that society’s own history … Her research is surprising not only because it reveals what we did not know about Wonder Woman, but because it underscores what we did not know about our own history.
Pop Matters

This wham-bang-thank-you-superma'am book is thrilling, amazing, unexpectedly weird and right-on righteous!
Iain Finlayson, Saga Magazine

Lepore’s study of Wonder Woman, feminism and the strange Marston is riveting.
The Telegraph

A spectacularly detailed biography of both the comic book superhero and her creator, psychologist and inventor of the lie detector, William Moulton Marston … Both have riveting stories which Lepore tells with the same effusive energy and excitement of the comic strip.
Daily Mail

A fascinating foray into American popular culture.
Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday

Lepore meticulously unpicks Wonder Woman’s origins to reveal there’s more to her backstory than an Amazonian creation myth … Underneath the intriguing social history, this is a story of human flaws and foibles, with Wonder Woman standing as testament to the pitfalls and pleasures of chasing a dream.
Victoria Segal, The Guardian

[An] excellent, scholarly investigation into the strange, kinky, uber-feminist origins of the iconic superhero.
The Scotsman

No sooner than our weekend papers have started to pronounce a crisis of Oz Lit than along comes this absolute gem of a debut novel, a comic crime caper of the first order! Gott … has created a fully realised fictional world here that combines careful plotting with a fine sense of pace to deliver a completely satisfying read — and in William Power a most memorable comic creation! And as a wordsmith and stylist Gott has few equals I suspect …
Martin Shaw, Readings Newsletter

This is an intriguing, amusing and well-constructed parody whodunit debut.
Windsor Dobbin, Herald Sun

The storyline and characterisation make this a highly original piece of crime fiction … What I liked most about Good Murder was its language and humour … the dialogue is funny and pithy.
Ed Wright, Sydney Morning Herald

Elegantly rendered in a kind of high literary pastiche, Good Murder is a brilliant debut.
Graeme Blundell, Weekend Australian

Good Murder is ‘an absolutely hilarious read … Gott’s stellar accomplishment is his ability to sustain the tragically absurd voice of narrator Will Power … The results are brilliantly achieved and really really very funny … The author worked previously as a cartoonist, and that fine mental eye for caricature, humour and social observation shine through in this work that we can only hope is the first of many Will Power’s adventures.
Warren Hately, Fremantle Herald

In a strong field of recent political biographies and memoirs, this first published biography of Dick Hamer is a most welcome addition … Colebatch has done an excellent job.
Ross Fitzgerald, Weekend Australian

Tim Colebatch has written a fascinating account of one of Australia’s most remarkable post-war leaders. Dick Hamer is the forgotten reformer of the 1970s. As effective as Gough Whitlam in his pomp, and more popular than Don Dunstan in his prime, he restored Victoria's position as the nation's pre-eminent progressive state.
George Megalogenis

Dick Hamer was ahead of his time. He was implementing the so-called ‘Third Way’ well before the Hawke and Keating governments, and certainly ahead of the author of the ‘Third Way’ itself, Tony Blair… We should be grateful to Tim Colebatch for this biography. His account says as much about Victoria as it does about the Hamer government. He is right to assert that, apart from the Kennett years, all subsequent Labor and Liberal governments have governed in the same direction. May it ever be thus.
Steve Bracks AC, Premier of Victoria 1999-2007

This political biography stands up there with the best that come out of the United States and Britain … The research and detail are outstanding … This is no hagiography, but a critical analysis of politics and the people that brought it to life … There’s a lot in this biography that explains what is wrong with Australian politics today.
John Cain, Premier of Victoria 1982-1999

Dick (Sir Rupert) Hamer served his country, his state and his community. He did so with strength, with grace and with calm. His achievements as Premier and Minister in Victoria remain at the heart of what makes our State amongst the more liveable in the world … Tim Colebatch has brought together the headlines of the time and the detailed insights of someone who was there at the time — observing, writing, analysing, recording, questioning and critiquing. It's a great story — really well told. We can all be ever grateful for Dick Hamer’s remarkable legacy and grateful too for Tim Colebatch’s passionate record of how “Hamer made it happen”!
Ted Baillieu, Premier of Victoria 2010-2013

Colebatch’s Hamer delivers its share of criticism, but it is a magnificent biography of a man who deserves to be remembered by Australians of all political persuasions.
Nick Goldie

Colebatch chronicles how Hamer decriminalised homosexuality, abolished capital punishment, championed equal opportunity, gave Melbourne an arts hub — all done with courtesy and integrity. A true liberal.
Simon Hughes, Australian Financial Review, Best Books of 2014

[O]ne of the most compelling books on Australian politics I have read. The narrative is strong and the prose is fluent. The book makes me realise how, in writing the modern history of the nation, we too often focus on federal politics, forgetting that most of the political decisions that shaped human lives were made far from Canberra.
Geoffrey Blainey, Australian Book Review

[A] fine, fair, candid political biography.
Robert Murray, Quadrant

A poignant story of a family’s luck in one war and tragedy in another. A true Australian story.
Barrie Cassidy, Author of Private Bill

Michael McKernan is not only an exceptional storyteller, he brings both sympathy and rigour when positioning individuals within broader, epic tales of warfare, and transforms our understanding of both.
Geraldine Doogue

A must read, told with passion and honesty. At times, I struggled reading this book. It rang so close to my heart, to my own experiences, and to those of others I knew who suffered.
Barry Heard, Author of Well Done, Those Men

A must-read.
Barry Dick Sunday Territorian

[McKernan] has an understanding of the consequences of war on individuals, their friends and their families … [M]oving, fascinating, and full of insight.
Nick Goldie, Cooma-Monaro Express

This hilarious little book is the ultimate stocking filler.
Saga

Shakespeare, Not Stirred is a perfect combination of delicious Shakespeare, delectable food and delightful drinks. Gather your ingredients, invite your friends, and get ready for a meal of Shakespearean proportions. Falstaff would heartily approve!
Ian Doescher, New York Times Bestselling Author of The William Shakespeare Star Wars series

Shakespeare famously wrote, “Better a tipsy witty fool than a foolish tipless wit”... or something like that. Regardless, if you want to laugh, maybe get a little tipsy, and actually learn a thing or two about The Bard's works, Shakespeare, Not Stirred will more than hit the spot.
Christopher Monks, Editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

I love a good cocktail and have loved Shakespeare since high school and I'm always wanting to try new things (in the case of cocktails) and trying to remember the plot twists (in the case of Shakespeare). Reading Shakespeare, Not Stirred gave me both wonderful new cocktails to try and an amazing refresher English lit class by two women who happen to be English professors and incredibly funny. I’m now thinking of starting a regular book club/cocktail party to go through all the plays ... and drinks.
Rosalind Wiseman, Author of Queen Bees and Wannabes, the basis for the film Mean Girls

After guzzling every libation in Shakespeare, Not Stirred I became the most eloquent and witty drunk in my town, and so can you!
Gary Shteyngart, Author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

Shakespeare, Not Stirred is the perfect gift for that friend of yours who fancies himself a lofty intellectual but actually, when you get right down to it, just loves to drink.
Rachel Dratch

Witty and fun.
Thuy On, Sunday Age

A boozy, Bardy delight.
Metro

Splendid and outrageous!
Michael Dobson, Director of The Shakespeare Institute

Incredibly cheeky and really great fun … The rare kind of cocktail book you want to read from start to finish.
Rosianna Halse Rojas, Papertimelady

The perfect present for lovers of liquor and literature.
The Guardian

Intriguing.
Ian McKellen

With a big heart, a loud mouth, a thirst for alcohol and a propensity for choosing the wrong man to love, Stella Hardy is a wisecracking flawed heroine, and a promising addition to Australian crime fiction.
The Saturday Paper

[The] characters are complex, engaging and, most of all, real. You find yourself caring for them, laughing with them, and forgetting that this book is only paper-thin. The plot itself is clever and suspenseful, but it is the enigmatic and three-dimensional portrayals that make Good Money extra special.
Eliza Graves-Brown, Lip Mag

Gritty and terrifically engaging, this hardboiled story with its matching prose had me hooked from the first page. Leading lady Stella Hardy is a charming mix of chaotic and cool. She had me grinning like an accomplice as I read. The authentic characters and dry humour lift Good Money to that most satisfying place — unique, intriguing, quality crime. Green is an assured and bold new author doing already what great crime novelists do — delivering a bloody good story.
Honey Brown, Award-Winning Author of After Darkness and Through the Cracks

Stella Hardy is certainly a witty and engaging heroine, although as a Saints supporter clearly doomed. A satisfying romp through corporate and political corruption, love, drugs, sex and the Western suburbs.
Annie Hauxwell, Author of The Catherine Berlin Thriller Series

The narrative flows as easily as the Maribyrnong River; Green is a welcome addition to the growing coterie of Australian female crime writers.
Thuy On, Sunday Age

Green writes with a dry humour and wit that is enjoyable and more importantly, relatable … The novel progresses at a cracking pace and readers will have no time to be bored.
Pakenham Gazette

A rattling good story.
The West Australian

Set in Melbourne's western suburbs, the story races along with action scenes that have just the right amount of gritty reality to ensure that readers are along for the ride. Leading lady Stella is in equal parts engaging, exasperating and entertaining and I hope we see her in another outing soon.
Maryanne Vagg, Good Reading

An extraordinary, sometimes disturbing, journey into the world of dolphins … By turns uplifting and heartbreaking, filled with well-researched facts and personal adventures, this a vitally important book, both for the animals, and for us.
Philip Hoare, Author of Leviathan or, The Whale and The Sea Inside

Voices in the Ocean begins with a near-perfect set piece … Casey loves her subject, and we all know there is something special about dolphins.
Amazon Best of August 2015

This book puts our contradictory relationship with the natural world under the spotlight. We supposedly love and revere marine mammals, yet even today we still treat them with savage cruelty. Susan Casey uses her journalistic eye to skilfully expose the duality of our relationship with the ocean’s most charismatic inhabitants. Voices in the Ocean exposes the shameful abuse we inflict on our cetacean cousins.
Tim Ecott, Author of Stealing Water and Neutral Buoyancy

Voices in the Ocean is as much a beautiful, well-researched narrative about dolphins as it is a powerful and timely voice of reason urging us to connect with nature. You will be keenly recommending this to friends so that you can explore its depths together into the small hours.
Maya Plass, Marine and Coastal Ecologist, Author of Handbook of the Seashore

[A] meticulously reported global odyssey … Fans of Casey’s writing know that she has an inexhaustible curiosity and a knack for fully embracing her subject … We’re never quite sure where Casey’s investigation will take us … Casey isn’t afraid.
Outside

In making the case for animals possessing thoughts and feelings like our own, [this book] implicitly and explicitly argues for treating our fellow animals with more compassion and respect. Only a few decades ago, books like [this] would not have been possible. Animal minds were considered by many scientists to be unknowable “black boxes”. Recent trends in brain studies and field research have made understanding animal minds a possibility … Demonstrates how interested we as humans are in the minds of other animals, and just how much we still don’t know about other animals’ subjective experiences … Persuasively argues that the question isn’t “What are animals?”; it’s “Who are they?”
Mary Bates, Slate

A masterful, accessible book.
Jennifer Ridgeway, Everyday Ebook

An eye-opening look at the world below the sea.
Abby Haglage, The Daily Beast

Casey transports us through the many truths and myths about dolphins … Painstakingly researched and gorgeously written, Voices in the Ocean provides textbook-depth education that is based on Casey’s years of swimming the open seas with dolphins, interviews with leading experts and protectors, and harrowing trips to the nether reaches of the globe where horrific brutalities occur.
USA Today

[W]hat starts out as a feelgood, new-agey account darkens like the sunlight diminishing in the deep, subtly turning into a devastating chronicle of one of the most egregious mismatches in natural-human history. The result is a brilliantly written and passionate book ... timely and urgent.
The Guardian

Part science, part memoir, part impassioned plea for change, Casey's look at the world of dolphins — and our mistreatment of them — fascinates.
People

Humans have always wondered if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, when all the time it has been right alongside them, in the sea, in the form of dolphins.
Noel Shaw, Launceston Examiner

Engaging and original, rich in anecdote and analysis, this is a terrific work of history.
Jon Meacham

A nuanced history that captures the immense amount of material on the period and crafts a cracking good read.
New York Post

Brilliantly bursting with beautiful prose, Citizens of London flutters our hearts by capturing the essence of the public and private lives of those who faced death, touched the precipice, hung on by their eyelids, and saved the free world from destruction by the forces of evil.
Bill Gardner, Secretary of State, New Hampshire

This is history at its most personal and compelling, a group portrait of three fascinating individuals — Winant, Harriman, and Murrow — whose lives intersected at a pivotal moment in the twentieth century. The result is what the English call “a rollicking read”.
Strobe Talbott, Author of The Great Experiment: Ancient Empires, Modern States and the Search for a Global Nation

If you don’t think there’s any more to learn about the power struggles, rivalries and dramas — both personal and political — about the US-British alliance in the World War II years, this book will change your mind, and keep you turning the pages as well.
Jeff Greenfield, Senior Political Correspondent, CBS News

It doesn’t seem possible that support for Britain against the Nazis was so unpopular in America before December of 1941. In Citizens of London, Lynne Olson tells the stories of Britain’s few American champions — men who ended up on the right side of history. Her book brings alive this crucial time of our country’s recent past, and shows us how a few leaders can make sure a big difference.
Bob Edwards, Radio Commentator and Author of Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism

Citizens of London is a stirring portrait of brave England in its finest hour. Lynne Olson has produced a deeply inspiring chronicle of the special relationship when it mattered most. She’s turned out a truly grand companion to Jon Meacham’s majestic Franklin and Winston.
Chris Matthews, Anchor, MSNBC’s Hardball

Three fascinating Americans living in London helped cement the World War II alliance between Roosevelt and Churchill. Lynne Olson brings us the wonderful saga of Harriman, Murrow, and Winant. Her book is a triumph of research and storytelling. It’s history on an intimate level.
Walter Isaacson, Author of Einstein

An excellent and revealing chronicle.
Booklist

Ingenious … Olson, an insightful historian, contrasts the idealism of Winant and Murrow with the pragmatism of Harriman. But all three men were colourful, larger-than-life figures, and Olson’s absorbing narrative does them justice.
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

An engaging history … A vibrant city fuelled by courage and resolve.
The Christian Science Monitor

Citizens of London is a great read about a small band of Americans and their courageous role in helping Britain through the darkest days of early World War II. I thought I knew a lot about this dangerous period, but Lynne Olson has taught me so much more.
Tom Brokaw, Author of The Greatest Generation

[A] remarkable story of three Americans who were deeply involved in Britain’s struggle for survival in the early 1940s.
Launceston Examiner

Magnificent, beautifully written … This is gripping, page-turning history, with the future of the free world hanging in the balance, dangerous liaisons and broken hearts behind the public jubilation.
Grantlee Kizea, Courier Mail

Since its first publication by Penguin Random House in 2010, her Citizens of London has been described by reviewers as ‘an excellent and revealing chronicle’, ‘history at its most personal and compelling’, ‘an absorbing narrative’ and ‘a cracking good read’. I can endorse all these plaudits, and more.
NZ International Review