Bookgroup: Wimmera

Summary: In the long, hot summer of 1989, Ben and Fab are best friends. Growing up in a small country town, they spend their days playing cricket, yabbying in local dams, wanting a pair of Nike Air Maxes and not talking about how Fab's dad hits him, or how the sudden death of Ben's next-door neighbour unsettled him. Almost teenagers, they already know some things are better left unsaid.
Then a newcomer arrived in the Wimmera. Fab reckoned he was a secret agent and he and Ben staked him out. Up close, the man's shoulders were wide and the veins in his arms stuck out, blue and green. His hands were enormous, red and knotty. He looked strong. Maybe even stronger than Fab's dad. Neither realised the shadow this man would cast over both their lives. Twenty years later, Fab is still stuck in town, going nowhere but hoping for somewhere better. Then a body is found in the river, and Fab can't ignore the past any more.




What I Thought: Wow. Tough content (had to pause to gain my sanity). Brilliant read.

Book: Riverstone Ridge

Summary: After making a mistake that felt like the end of the world to her teenage self, Nina Jones fled the small town of Huntingvale. Now sixteen years later her beloved adoptive mother, Bea, has passed away, forcing Nina to return and decide whether to sell her family home, Riverstone Ridge. But even though Bea can't be there to help her through it all, she's left Nina five letters, one sent a week, to finally share the secrets she'd been unable to reveal in life.
For Logan Steele, Nina's return is the catalyst he's needed to finally move beyond his tragic past and start living again. But only if she stays. When mysterious and increasingly worrisome accidents start happening around the homestead, both Logan's cop instincts and his protective feelings toward Nina spur him to investigate. Will he be able to piece together the puzzle of the past in time?
And with dark family secrets emerging from Bea's last words rippling into the present day, how will Nina find the courage to be truthful to the one man who has always held her heart?


What I Thought: A enjoyable read with some surprises thrown in.

Book: Class A (CHERUB)

Summary: When CHERUB kids go undercover, no one suspects that they are trained professionals, working to infiltrate criminal organisations that have eluded MI5 and the police for years.

James Adams is on his biggest mission yet, working to nail Europe's most powerful cocaine dealer. He'll need all his specialist training if he's going to bring down the man at the top.

The reason for CHERUB's existence is simple: adults never suspect that children are spying on them.

For official purposes, these children do not exist.


What I Thought: Enjoyed this one - lots of action. Rather graphic considering the ages of the kids too. A bit advanced! Looking forward to the next in the series.

Book: Dark Lake

Summary: The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama.

As much as Rosalind's life was a mystery to Gemma when they were students together, her death presents even more of a puzzle. What made Rosalind quit her teaching job in Sydney and return to her hometown? Why did she live in a small, run-down apartment when her father was one of the town's richest men? And despite her many admirers, did anyone in the town truly know her?




What I Thought: Another great rural crime read. Loving these at the minute. Bring on book 2.

Book: Ali Cross

Summary: Ali Cross has always looked up to his father, former detective and FBI agent Alex Cross. While solving some of the nation's most challenging crimes, his father always kept his head and did the right thing. Can Ali have the same strength and resolve?
When Ali's best friend Abraham is reported missing, Ali is desperate to find him. At the same time, a string of burglaries targets his neighborhood---and even his own house. With his father on trial for a crime he didn't commit, it's up to Ali to search for clues and find his friend. But being a kid sleuth isn't easy---especially when your father warns you not to get involved!---and Ali soon learns that clues aren't always what they seem. Will his detective work lead to a break in Abraham's case or cause even more trouble for the Cross family?


What I Thought: Enjoyable but rather simplistic. Maybe it was setting the scene for the next one in  the series.

Book: Murder on the Orient Express

Summary: Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks.

The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer.

An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer - in case he or she decides to strike again.


What I Thought: A great mystery. Haven't read one of these in years! Also get to scratch it off my book poster!

Book: The Siege

Summary:  Tough enough? Smart enough? Max will require all his skills just to stay alive as a Special Forces Cadet...
A top-secret government programme needs a crack team of undercover military operators. They must have awesome levels of determination, endurance and fitness. They must be able to think on their feet.
The recruits undergo the most rigorous and testing selection process the modern military can devise. And in order to operate in circumstances where adult forces would be compromised, the recruits must be under sixteen.
Only a few are tough enough and smart enough to make it . . . And once out in the field, they will require all their skills just to stay alive. Which is what happens when Max Silver, Abby Asher, Lukas Channing and Sami Hakim are sent into an armed siege in an inner-city school . . .


What I thought: Another great teen series. Loving this secret spy stuff!

Book: Scrublands

Summary: In an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself.

A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported in an award-winning investigation. Martin can't ignore his doubts, nor the urgings of some locals to unearth the real reason behind the priest's deadly rampage.

Just as Martin believes he is making headway, a shocking new development rocks the town. The bodies of two backpackers - missing since the time of the church shootings - are found in a dam in the scrublands. It's the biggest story in Australia. The media descends on Riversend and Martin finds himself caught in the spotlight. His reasons for investigating the shooting have suddenly become very personal.

Wrestling with his own demons, Martin finds himself risking everything to discover a truth that becomes darker and more complex with every twist. But there are powerful forces determined to stop him, and he has no idea how far they will go to make sure the town's secrets stay buried.


What I Thought: Brilliant! Loving rural crime at the minute.

Book: The Recruit

Summary:  Jasmine Thomas may not be completely normal, but she's a pretty typical seventeen–year–old girl. She hates the rich mean kids, loves her best friends, and can't wait to get out of school each day. Her spare time is spent at The Ring – a boxing gym where she practically grew up – learning karate, boxing and street fighting. So, yeah, Jaz can kick some major butt. Life seems pretty normal until the day Ryan Fletcher enters her gym…mysterious and hot with heaps of bad boy charm. Sure, she checks him out. Who wouldn't? But what doesn't show on his gorgeous abs are secrets and lies that dominate his very grown–up world. Now Jaz has to figure out just how far she is willing to go to know more. Could Ryan really be offering the life–fulfilling life path she's always dreamed of?


What I Thought: Enjoyed this teen novel. Nice to have a female lead. Off to read the next in the series.

Book: The Woman in the Green Dress

Summary:


1853 Mogo Creek, NSW
Della Atterton, bereft at the loss of her parents, is holed up in the place she loves best: the beautiful Hawkesbury in New South Wales. Happiest following the trade her father taught her, taxidermy, Della has no wish to return to Sydney. But the unexpected arrival of Captain Stefan von Richter on a quest to retrieve what could be Australia's first opal, precipitates Della's return to Sydney and her Curio Shop of Wonders, where she discovers her enigmatic aunt, Cordelia, is selling more than curiosities to collectors. Strange things are afoot and Della, a fly in a spider's web, is caught up in events with unimaginable consequences…


1919 Sydney, NSW
When London teashop waitress Fleur Richards inherits land and wealth in Australia from her husband, Hugh, killed in the war, she wants nothing to do with it. After all, accepting it will mean Hugh really is dead. But Hugh's lawyer is insistent, and so she finds herself ensconced in the Berkeley Hotel on Bent St, Sydney, the reluctant owner of a Hawkesbury property and an old curio shop, now desolate and boarded up. 
As the real story of her inheritance unravels, Fleur finds herself in the company of a damaged returned soldier Kip, holding a thread that takes her deep into the past, a thread that could unravel a mystery surrounding an opal and a woman in a green dress; a green that is the colour of envy, the colour buried deep within an opal, the colour of poison…


What I Thought: First time reader of Tea Cooper. A bit slow to get going for me but otherwise I quite enjoyed this one.

Book: A Distant Journey

Summary: In 1962 Cindy drops out of college to impulsively marry an Australian grazier, moving from the glamorous world of Palm Springs, California, to an isolated sheep station on the sweeping plains of the Riverina in New South Wales.

Cindy's new life at Kingsley Downs station is not what she'd imagined as she is flung into a strange and challenging world. Natural disasters and the caprices of the wool industry shape her destiny and though she tries hard to fit in, she finds she is always the outsider.

Adjusting to her new life, Cindy discovers that her new family comes with secrets and a mystery that haunts them all. When Cindy uncovers the shocking truth, the consequences lead to tragedy and Cindy must fight to save her family.


What I Thought: This was ok. A bit disjointed for me and not her best piece of work.