In my skin: a memoir by Kate Holden

The first words in the prologue are "What do I remember of being a prostitute?". The last ones are "The smile that I give when I talk about it now is, I can feel, nostalgic, provocative. A brightness comes into my eyes. And, I'm told, a hard look."
In my skin explores all the "in-between" of the life of Kate Holden, born in the 1970's, in a "nice" suburb of Melbourne. It is the story of a young girls fall into drugs and prostitution, her family's torment, and her eventual recovery.
A very frank, honest and sometimes shocking real life account of how peer pressure and the desire to "fit in" nearly destroyed a life. Kate came from a normal, loving home, had a good job and a bright future, but her boyfriend's drug use eventually bought on the "I'll just try it once" line. After getting fired from her job for theft to support her new found "habit, she turns to prostitution. Eventually she survives, turns her life around and wrote this amazing story.
This book takes you to a place many of us really don't want to visit. It is certainly not a "light-hearted" leisure read, but it DOES leave you, hopefully, with a new perspective on your own life and the life and glamour?? of an inner-city brothel.
Even though, at times, I found this poignant "adventure" a bit slow and "colourful", it is still a fantastic first-hand insight into a world most know little about.
Tracie

The memory keeper's daugter by Kim Edwards

This is one of the best books that I have read. It kept me interested right from the start and I found the storyline very realistic.
The story begins in 1964, and on one fateful night Dr David Henry makes a split-second decision that will impact upon the rest of his life.
Dr Henry’s wife goes into labor and he delivers his own twins, however he becomes distraught when he realises that one of his children is born with Down syndrome.
The decision to tell his wife that the child was stillborn and ask his nurse to take the baby away to an institution will have consequences that will change numerous lives forever.
This book makes you think about many different things, especially about the consequences of your actions and how secrets can have a devastating impact on the ones you love.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed ‘My Sisters Keeper’ by Jodi Picoult.
Kim.

The senator's wife by Sue Miller

This book focuses on US Senator’s wife Delia Naughton and her various relationships. The relationship with her husband Senator Tom Naughton, her three children, Nancy, Evan and Brad, and most importantly with her new young neighbours Meri and Nathan.
Meri and Delia are complete opposites and strike up an unlikely friendship. Delia is a private, elegant and poised older lady, while Meri is a tomboy, a modern new wife and expectant first time mother.
This is a love story but it focuses on the issues of infidelity and betrayed trust. It is a book about consequences and what keeps people together, through good times and bad.
I liked this book as I felt it dealt with real life situations and showed that things may not always be as perfect as they first appear.
Cathy.

Street Kid by Judy Westwater

Street Kid is a moving and heartfelt recount of a girls’ struggle throughout her childhood. From suffering sexual assault and eating off the street to even being abducted by her own father and taken to Africa. This inspirational book has allowed readers to fulfill their dreams, just as Judy did by becoming “…one of the Australian Air Aces.” Furthermore, this recount makes us come to the realisation of some of the various crimes which go unheard …until now.
Sara

Our horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben

Not long after World War 1 has ended, Griselda Romney, the widow of a British Naval Commander, gets the news that her beloved horse Philomena may still be alive. The horse had been requisitioned along with thousands of others and sent to the Middle East to serve as cavalry horses. After the war ended, the horses were left behind.
Griselda leaves her young son in the care of relatives and sets off with her daughter and nanny in tow to Egypt to find her horse and bring it back to England.
The novel is well researched and is so accurate it almost feels as though you are reading a biography or non-fiction, and in some ways you are. The chapters alternate between the present and Griselda’s search for her horse, and then into the past when you see the horrors of war through the eyes of Philomena and the men she serves. The story is written in such a way that it makes history come alive, and makes it more personal. The only criticism I would have is that the story sometimes overstepped the mark by becoming a little too bogged down in facts and detail but it was a great read nevertheless.
Chris

I am a self-confessed lover of technology, loving it as an externalisation and extension of the brilliance that is the human mind. I came across Neal Stephenson's name in an information science related discussion list. The book was Snowcrash, referring to the way computer screens would white out as they crashed. My beloved library didn't have Snowcrash but it did have the tome-like and hard to pronounce Cryptonomicon.
Cryptonomicon is an Indiana Jones epic for technology and cryptography junkies. Two threads, one set during WWII highlighting codes and their breaking, looted Nazi and Japanese gold, and one set in present day around the development of an uncrackable data haven free from government or commercial interference (A Swiss banking system for data if you will). The two central characters in the present are the grandchildren of two significant characters in the WWII time. And of course, the stories and lives converge to a suitable and satisfying climax.
Like all my favourite authors, Stephenson blurs fact and fiction, and historical characters are deliberately painted larger than life. Blending Alan Turing (one of the fathers of modern computing) with a genius US Navy code breaker and Douglas Macarthur, General of the US Army, hated by US Marines, but fearless in the face of combat with a Marine hero responsible for a "black ops" group whose role was to ensure the Germans and Japanese did not suspect their transmission codes had been cracked. And that is just one of the threads.
As much a vision into an intelligent, lucid and creative American mind, Cryptonomicon is an expose of the world of codes, their makers and breakers, the consequences of broken and unbroken codes during times of war and the possibility that in today's World Wide Web world security of data will be of greater value than gold.
I did need to renew the book two times (isn't online renewal great) to cover the 900+ pages. And my eyes did glaze at some of the explanation of some of the codes and statistical methods for code hiding and breaking.
But the writing style was crisp and wry, the storyline intriguing. Language and concepts make the book more suitable for open minded adults, rather than children or people locked in patriotic or unexamined views of reality.
Andy Carnahan

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon. Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 2007

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon is an engrossing historical novel which juxtaposes London’s comfortable middle class world of the 1850s and the horror and suffering of the Russian battlefields of the Crimean War.

Mariella Lingwood is an accomplished young middle class woman who wants nothing more than to marry her fiancé Henry, who is a respected London surgeon and public health expert, and to spend her married life in pursuits acceptable to her social circle.
Mariella’s conventional and comfortable world is turned upside down when in the winter of 1854 Henry leaves for the bloody battlefields of Balaclava and Sebastopol to tend the injured, sick and dying of the Crimean war.
Henry is followed soon after by Mariella’s headstrong and unconventional cousin, Rosa who, unlike Mariella, wants more from life than Victorian convention allows women. Rosa travels to the Crimea determined, despite the appalling conditions, to nurse and save as many sick and injured as possible.

As she waits patiently at home, the war for Mariella is contained within the pages of her scrapbook, in her London sewing circle, and in the letters she receives from Henry. This all changes when the news that Henry is gravely ill with typhoid fever reaches her.
Accompanied by her maid, she hurries to Henry’s sickbed in Italy and there she discovers Henry is no longer the man she thought she knew and that Rosa has gone missing.
Mariella is driven to find Rosa so sets off to the carnage which were the battlefields of the Crimean war to search for her. Rosa’s possible whereabouts are surrounded by mystery and hearsay and in her quest Mariella ends up discovering more than she ever thought she would.
This novel is compelling and recommended reading for those who love romance and historical fiction with an edge. The description of battle and disease is not for the squeamish but for anyone interested in the world and society of England in the 1850’s it conveys that world in telling detail.
Roxanne