Devil Mountain

Image credit: Simon & Schuster Australia

Mysteries and thrillers are an exhilarating but tricky genre. When you’ve got a good one, the compulsion and speed with which you turn pages and consume chapters is unrivalled. A frenzied need to keep reading absolutely takes over and before you know it, 2 days have passed in a blur. When you’ve got a bad one, the dejection and disappointment that can come from plot predictability, cliches, bad prose, or uninteresting characters is so acute it’s almost painful. But I rather enjoy thrillers that are middle of the road; that follow a formula, chronicle a recognisable narrative, but feature a little something that makes them stand out. Inessa Jackson’s debut novel, Devil Mountain for example.

When Detective Sergeant Anastasia Brown is assigned to investigate a grisly murder in the small town of Stony Creek, she welcomes it as a chance to re-establish her reputation and get away from the heartbreak and humiliation that she faces in her Sydney office. But upon arriving at the crime scene, she quickly discovers that this is no ordinary murder. The body of a popular local GP has been found on the mountain, chained to a housing development, burnt beyond recognition, and with strange, arcane symbols carved into his feet. Not only this, but the boy who found the body also reported seeing a ghost at the scene. As the investigation goes on, it raises more questions than answers and when a teenaged girl disappears, it becomes a race against time to find out what the Hell is happening on that mountain.

I want to first say thank you to Inessa Jackson for signing my copy of Devil Mountain. Her inscription reads, I hope you find a tiny bit of magic, and Inessa, I did find magic in your story so thank you.

The plot of Devil Mountain is a recognisable and formulaic narrative that weaves a different shape about itself by manifesting the central themes of sexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity within certain jobs as characters who then work to help or hinder the plot. We learn relatively early on that Ana is the victim of workplace harassment that goes unpunished due to the tragic truth that if you have a dick to swing, people will pay attention. These themes colour the entire investigation in the book, working to both further and fight the flow. The ‘tiny bit of magic’ that shines through is Jackson’s depiction of her female/Other characters and how they interact with one another. We see the Wiccan ideals of sisterhood slowly spread into the skeptical personalities of the unsuperstitious characters, inspiring them to fight, fly, and band together in hopeless situations where dicks reign supreme. This gentle, almost unnoticeable trickle of positivity makes the ending all more the satisfying.

Image credit: Redlands, Mark Bond Photography

There’s a rule in mystery writing that you take your chosen clues and then scatter them, muddying the connecting threads so that readers can have that experience of trying to solve the mystery before the hero does. In Devil Mountain Jackson employs the manipulative power of character and narrative cliches as well as the red herring to achieve this goal. Where the reading experience is slightly different to say, a Sherlock Holmes story, is in the fact that you are not particularly inspired to try to solve the mystery first. Ana is the type of protagonist that compels you to follow her and the thrill that comes from the book is getting to experience the twists and turns exactly when she does, even though you both know that something is off or about to turn sideways. This parallel journey of the reader and the character is not new, but it is just as compelling as that healthy reader/character race to find the answer first.

I found Devil Mountain to be a very enjoyable debut novel. There’s a healthy helping of drama, mystery, suspense, and emotional payoff that keeps you turning pages. If I didn’t have to work, eat, or do other things to ensure that I remain upright and functioning, then I would have knocked this over in no time.

Author: Inessa Jackson, 2026

Published: Affirm Press, a Simon & Schuster Pty Limited Company, Australia, 2026

Tender is the Night

Image credit: The Book Lover's Wiki

The tricky thing about hitting a reading stride and identifying what has shifted in your reading habits to flare it up, is that it’s then difficult to actively keep that fire going. After finishing The Hiding Place, I was positively feverish with wanting to keep this reading-run going but also conscious that it would probably stall if I went back to fantasy. I’d already done cosy, Japanese fiction, non-fiction, and dark drama, where do you go next? I decided to try and go back to the 1001 project and add another classic to my repertoire and went with F. Scott Fitzgerald. But this proved to be a risky move, as the feverish desire to constantly be reading started to sputter. My partner bringing home our next bookclub book was a saving act and for a week I had 2 books on the go and the fever flared. It just goes to show that a healthy reading diet works best (at least for me) when there is variety and the habits are subject to a shakeup.

Having powered through The Thornbacks, finishing it just in time to have it signed by the author at the Headland Writer’s Festival over the weekend, I was then able to dive back into Tender is the Night with renewed vigour and, a week later, I have closed the cover on it.

Young and beautiful film actress Rosemary Hoyt is holidaying in the French Riviera with her mother where she meets American psychologist Doctor Dick Diver and his wealthy wife Nicole, also a patient of his. Rosemary quickly falls in love with Dick when she is brought into the couple’s circle of wealth, high society, intellect, and excess, and he falls in love with her. But in the fast-paced era of the 1920’s while one can have it all, it does not last forever, and disaster strikes when a friend of the Divers’ kills a man in a drunk-driving accident and Nicole has a nervous breakdown. As the harsh realities of war, post-traumatic stress, and socioeconomic divides hammer at Rosemary and the Divers over the years, it becomes apparent that even the American Dream is one that will eventually be woken from.

I have determined that I have not read enough Fitzgerald, nor read it deeply enough to absorb everything in his books in a singular reading. But the wonderful thing about his works is that they do inspire the odd revisit. Tender is the Night is semi-autobiographical with the Divers being based on a true couple that Scott and Zelda knew, as well as the expensive psychological treatments being ones that Zelda sought in Switzerland.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Like The Great Gatsby, the book plunges readers into this vibrant and excessive world of the Roaring ‘20s where money and social standing entitled people, particularly Americans, to engage in the most terrible behaviour. The book explores absolutely everything from loss of innocence to the degradation of morality, to the shifting nature of relationships, to finally leaving the reader with the deliciously melancholy thought that true happiness, while attainable, is not meant to last forever.

Fitzgerald’s prose tells a lot but hides even more and the book really is like being caught in this insanely glamorous yet turbulent whirlwind of bacchanal, drama, and ambition. And while extravagant and over-stimulating, it’s a beautiful, sad, and compelling story filled with characters that inspire complicated reader-character relationships. I was certainly swept away by it.

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934

Published, C. Schribner’s Sones, New York, 1934

The Thornbacks

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

Because there is so much content consistently being poured into the world for us to consume, more often than not it’s tricky to find a book that leaves you confused or bewildered. It’s a nice surprise when a story comes along in which you can’t predict where it’s going, or what the agenda is, or even if there is an agenda. This month’s book for Bookclub gave me this fascinating reading experience: The Thornbacks by Chloe Wilson.

Gertie and Tabitha are two unassuming and scrupulous morticians who are very good at their job. By day they are pumping bodies with formaldehyde, sculpting faces, reattaching limbs, and applying makeup. By Friday night – date night- they are spiking the drinks of their chosen dating-app catfish victims. It’s a perfectly serviceable routine that they are content to live their lives by, but unfortunately even the most stalwart routines can fracture, leaving you to wonder how in control of your life you really are.

A dark and spikily clever debut novel, The Thornbacks explores a myriad of themes and ideas about relationships, how the online wold and the world of flesh coexist, the safety and danger of being sensible or plain, and gendered battles for control.

Wilson’s prose is simple, but she has done a clever thing in writing in the voice of both the heroines simultaneously. Like the twins from The Shining or the strange sisters from Gormenghast, Gertie and Tabitha are very similar if not identical and their conversational tones that colour the narrative as they recount events to the reader is a surprise at first, but then very quickly adjusted to. They are fascinating and enigmatically blank characters who are neither adorable nor malicious, indeed the emotional motive behind their questionable actions is what compels you to read on: you really can’t fathom what’s lurking, shifting, and roiling underneath and inside.

But while the book’s protagonists are enthrallingly unfathomable, the gender battles are not: exploring mistreatment of both sexes dressed up in a variety of outfits such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, gaslighting, harassment, and appearance-shaming. There is a macabre satisfaction hearing these accounts and events throughout the story and finding that no one seems to get the upper hand: neither heroines nor villains come out on top.

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

The Thornbacks is a dark and funny iceberg of a story: there’s not a lot on the surface but underneath there is an entire hidden cave network of drama, social commentary, gender battles, and unease. It’s a truly compelling and fascinating book.

Author: Chloe Wilson, 2026

Published: Hamish Hamilton, part of Penguin Random House, Australia, 2026

The Catcher in the Rye

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Jumping back onto the 1001 bandwagon after a brief interlude, I have to admit that the ride proved to be rather bumpy with this week’s chosen book in the driver’s seat. I was taken to a disturbingly (and sometimes hilariously) fragile place –the interior of an American teen’s mind- as we navigated the ‘phony’ world of the white middle and upper class in The Catcher in the Rye.

Universally hailed as the quintessential book of teenage angst –so much so that it was graphically referenced in that ‘Emo Kid’ song from about a decade ago- The Catcher in the Rye is a mock autobiography written from the point of view of American teenager, Holden Caulfield, whom has just been expelled from another prep school. Running away to New York to kill some time before facing his folks, Holden flits from place to place on a seemingly impulsive and completely direction-less path that ends up leading right back to where he started.

I can absolutely understand why this book is a part of the classic literature canon. There are many things about it that make it hugely memorable and provocative. The first person register and the fact that it’s written in a very nonchalant, colloquial voice gives us a real sense of character -reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange- whilst simultaneously highlighting Salinger’s satirical streak.

My guess is that this book is canonical because of the many ways in which you can interpret it, especially the narrator. Whilst it’s not even two hundred pages long, The Catcher in the Rye is a veritable rollercoaster of compulsion and confusion, especially regarding the narrator. On more than one occasion, I found myself questioning whether Holden was clinically depressed, suffering from PTSD, or just off his tits the entire time. Is he really smoking cigarettes or ‘cigarettes’ for two days, is the world really as phony as he believes, or is he just another classic unreliable narrator like those from Poe? These questions don’t really get answered –or if they do it’s more or less hand-waved aside- and it’s this trick that establishes the book’s unique reading experience.

Image credit: The Guardian

What’s even more fascinating is that Salinger doesn’t seem to have any love for his protagonist and the little mishaps that happen to him on his journey serve as a nice slice of ‘serves you right’ cake. It’s very hard to like Holden, mainly because of the fact that you’re on your toes about how much of what he tells you is true. Heck, even Holden doesn’t hold himself in high regard! The book is filled with various self-deprecations and even apocalyptic anxieties/fantasies, perfectly communicating those lost, directionless, and rebellious feels of adolescence. While I don’t believe that all teenagers go through that heavy level of angst, it’s certainly something that we can all identify and empathise with.

The Catcher in the Rye is certainly a significant piece of literature, one that although I didn’t necessarily adore, I definitely appreciated. Having now finally read it I can better understand its references and allusion in popular culture and appreciate the many interpretations that people have of it.

Author: J. D. Salinger, 1945-46

Published: First published by Little Brown & Co. (Boston) in 1951

The Hiding Place

Image credit: Simon & Schuster Australia

Thinking back over some of the more modern books that I have read this year, a lot of them being Australian fiction, it’s fascinating to see that there is something about the way that they are written that causes you to visualise the narrative in terms of stage or screen – and this quite often is what makes them compelling. The Empress Murders definitely felt like a fast-paced farcical stage play to me while Unbury the Dead could have absolutely been an ABC miniseries. The next book that had me reading this way was Kate Mildenhall’s The Hiding Place, which I have just closed the cover on and am still reeling from.

When Lou sees an ad for an abandoned mining town up for sale, she is quick to convince her sister and lifelong friends to chip in and make it their own. An idyllic bushland paradise where the four families can come together on camping trips, get back in touch with nature, and escape from the pressures of their lives for a while. As they set off for their first weekend at Willow Creek, excitement and romantic dreams are high, only marred a little bit by a deer running a trailer off the road, a confrontation with the neighbour about incorrectly placed fences, and some squatters camped down by the river. But these problems pale in comparison to the fact that by the end of the first night, someone is dead.

An absolutely rollicking thriller set against the harshness and majesty of the Australian bush, The Hiding Place is a fantastic novel that follows a central cast of delightfully distasteful people who you cannot wait to see get their comeuppance. It reminded me of The Slap a little bit: a bunch of characters, each with their own dirty little secrets that they try desperately to keep and justify to themselves, put in a situation that causes everything to chaotically unravel.

Told in short chapters that follow the various characters, it delightfully depicts these long-lived friendships that have reached a point where the darker side of human nature has gone to seed. Rivalry, judgment of parenting techniques and lifestyle, self-righteousness, misogyny, and victim plays run rampant throughout the pages, bookended by wickedly funny opening and closing scenes of the general store where the locals are discussing those city folk who bought Willow Creek – and painting a wickedly apt picture of the type of people they are.

It’s a delightfully dirty book, one that encourages its readers to let their nastier sides wash over them, make sadistic little judgements about these characters, and then relish in the mentally, socially, and emotionally macabre way their lives spiral into the ground. You know it’s bad, but oh it’s so good. Salty-sweet like peanut butter and chocolate.

Image credit: Simon & Schuster Australia

And the readers are not the only ones enjoying making harsh judgements. Devilish comments on the moral degradation caused by capitalism, the pretentious farce that is glamping, and the difference between knowledge read and knowledge lived bring extra layers of drama, depth, and black comedy to the story.

Filled with drama, tension, and characters you love to hate, The Hiding Place is a wickedly fun thriller that I could not put down.

Author: Kate Mildenhall, 2025

Published: Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Ltd, Sydney, 2025

Tales From the Cafe

Image credit: Goodreads

Still well and truly entrenched in this wondrous new reading groove, this week I have gone back to fiction and revisited a charming little café in Tokyo that allows you to travel through time. A bittersweet cosy novel, Tales From the Café is the second book in Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series.

Hidden away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo is a tiny little café that allows you to travel through time. There are a number of rules and caveats attached, but even so people who hear the urban legend find their way there to travel to the past and perform one deed that could change their future. Like Gohtaro who goes back 22 years to record a wedding message for his adopted daughter from her real father. Or Yukio or travels to see his dead mother before she is hospitalised. Katsuki visits the future see if the lover he left behind is happy, and Kiyoshi travels thirty years back to give his dead wife a birthday present. These people can’t change the dark events that inspired these meetings, they have just enough time to do one act or have one conversation that can change their outlook on the future; help them find and inspire happiness with each new day.

Similar to the first book: Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales From the Café is a collection of five little stories that deal with sad themes of loss, bereavement, death, and post-traumatic stress and sees the characters put themselves in a unique situation in an attempt to find emotional clarity and happiness. Usually, the protagonist travels through time with a plan and often that plan gets upended by something the visited party says or does that shifts the hero’s mindset. There are four stories told in four chapters, with an overarching story of the café’s staff running parallel.

Kawaguchi’s simple prose is immersive and transportive, and inspires readers to put themselves in the heroes’ shoes and ask what would I do or say if I was going to meet with the dead? The unique, science-fiction quirk of the novel’s setting is discussed in such a delightful, nonchalant way that makes the true message about the beauty of life and everyone’s deserving happiness really shine through.

Image credit: Pan Macmillan

It’s been a few years since I read the first novel and so I did worry that my reading experience would be smudged a little but my memory trying to dredge up the ins and outs of the setting and its inhabitants, but I was able to pick up Tales From the Café and immediately fall into pace with it, no mental jogging required. Filled with grief, compassion, and love, it’s a lovely afternoon read.

Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi, 2017

Translated by Geoffre Trousselot, 2020

Published: Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, 2020.

Tales From the Cafe is the second book in Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold series.

Phosphorescence

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After the profound and intense way that On Not Climbing Mountains made me feel, I was keen to keep that feeling of self-awareness and emotional clarity going. So, I plucked Phosphorescence off the shelf: a book that I have been meaning to read for ages but have never seemed to be in the right mood or headspace for. Until now.

It’s hard to articulate just how good it feels to get into a good reading groove. While I haven’t stopped reading at any real point, I realised only recently that there was this underlying feeling of stagnation that was accompanying my bouts of reading. But now it feels like I have broken the surface of a body of water I didn’t know I was submerged in. When I read right now, I experience relief and liberation. I’ve been trying to identify the catalyst that stirred up these feelings and it finally came to me this morning. It’s a universal fact that is so obvious we constantly forget about it, take it for granted, and render it invisible. Variety. Up until maybe a month ago, I was on a total fantasy kick and by the time I finished Throne in the Dark I was so burnt out on fantasy that I didn’t even realise. Then I switched tracks with some slice-of-life novels and the Claire Thomas one for bookclub and suddenly my brain was reacting differently. We all know that the occasional break in routine or ‘spicing things up’ is good for revitalising you, but I don’t think we ever really realise just how much a small change can affect brain activity until we mentally catch ourselves in the action of changing it up. It’s remarkable and, aptly, the theme of Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence, which I absolutely adored!

Julia Baird is a renowned author, award-winning journalist, mother, and cancer survivor devoted to finding awe and helping her readers find it too. As humans, we are complex, erratic, and chaotic masses of organic matter and thoughts, living lives that are often made dark by depression, trauma, anxiety, illness, bad luck, poor choices, loss, grief, and a Pandora’s box of et cetera. But we live in a world that provides resources for coping with all of this. Whether it be the natural wonders of hearing birdsong while watching the sun rise, or seeing the ocean light up at night with its bioluminescent inhabitants, or the ones that we shape ourselves: art, relationships, community, religion, there is awe to be found everywhere and it’s important for us to stop for a moment or two every day, find these awe pockets, and take the time to admire and appreciate them. We might be surprised at just how much it changes the course of our day.

Phosphorescence is an exploration and celebration of a whole mass of stuff. Part autobiography and part explorative essay, it’s written with a voice that is intelligent, curious, and down to earth, instantly making it relatable and engaging: like having a long conversation with a creative critical thinker. Baird shares her own experiences of darkness and celebrates the memorable moments in nature, with friends, within communities that helped light her way through them. It’s a book that tells us stuff we technically know but then backs it up with statistics and personal scenarios that really hammer home the point, inspiring moments for us to look back at our own dark times and feel the dawning of realisation spread though us as we recall going through the same mental and emotional phases she describes.

Image credit: Penguin Random House

It’s tricky to articulate why it’s so stirring and profound because, similar to Thomas’ On Not Climbing Mountains, it tells a lot of different stories about a lot of different things in a voice that is reporting with feeling. What I can say with certainty is that this book made me feel wonderful: it’s its own little pocket of awe that I am so glad that I took the time to enjoy. Praise for Julia Baird!

Author: Julia Baird, 2020

Published: Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia, 2020