Archive for May, 2015

Harrowing accounts reveal disaster details

May 29, 2015
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Harrowing accounts reveal disaster details

Fukushima: Japan’s Tsunami and the Inside Story of the Nuclear Meltdowns, by Mark Willacy (Macmillan, RRP $40): Three years ago, and just a couple of weeks after the deadly Canterbury quake, Japan was also hit by a big quake. While more than 180 died in the 6.3 magnitude Canterbury quake of February 22, 2011,...

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King and Maxwell more enjoyable in right order

May 23, 2015
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King and Maxwell more enjoyable in right order

King and Maxwell, by David Baldacci (Macmillan, RRP $38): In what at first appears to be a straightforward story, a teenage boy is told his father – a soldier – has been killed in action in Afghanistan but then something extraordinary happens: he receives a communication from his father. The boy, Tyler, hires private...

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Behind the speech synthesiser, a wit

May 20, 2015
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Behind the speech synthesiser, a wit

My Brief History, by Stephen Hawking (Bantam Press, RRP $35): There’s a lot more to uber-genius Stephen Hawking than a big brain and a debilitating illness, and this memoir offers a glimpse into what makes the man tick. This is the first book Professor Hawking has written entirely on his own since the groundbreaking...

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Engaging tale set in China

May 17, 2015
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Engaging tale set in China

Blood Brothers, by Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog Books): As a young novice monk in a Buddhist monastery, Tao’s life is simple, ordered and inward looking. All that changes when Kai enters his life. Kai is a young dragon whose arrival spells disruption and adventure for Tao, whom he has sought out because he believes...

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The ugly face of war

May 12, 2015
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The ugly face of war

Reconstructing Faces: The Art and Wartime Surgery of Gillies, Pickerill, McIndoe and Mowlem, by Murray C Meikle (Otago University Press, RRP $60): While the horrors of war are something we would all rather avoid, sometimes it is through those horrors that great things emerge. During World War I, surgeons had a new challenge: That...

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Riveting morality study

May 2, 2015
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Riveting morality study

  Kiss Me First, by Lottie Moggach (Macmillan, RRP $38): The internet is an easy place to hide, to lie and to be completely absorbed by. It can be a place where you trust someone so completely that you can hand over your life to a complete stranger. Lottie Moggach tackles these disturbing realities...

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