by Olivia Williams
Find your next favourite read from this season’s new releases
After the Fall
Michael Delahaye
RRP $32.99
Allen & Unwin
It is 1998. After twenty-five years as a BBC TV reporter and producer, Michael Delahaye is sent to Russia as part of a UK/US programme to develop independent journalism in the former Soviet Union. With Boris Yeltsin in power, hopes are high of Russia, along with the other one-time Soviet republics, becoming functioning democracies.
Over the next five years, Delahaye and his fellow media missionaries will criss-cross the vast Russian Federation, south through Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan… and into Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Their brief is to bring enlightenment to countries where the very concept of journalism has been unknown for seven decades; to support – sometimes help create from scratch – television stations that will be independent, impartial and promote human rights.
What they find is the ruble in freefall, state assets being sold off, black BMWs cruising the streets and an ex-KGB officer tipped for promotion in Yeltsin’s administration … Vladimir Putin.
After the Fall, a foot-soldier’s story, charts Delahaye’s realisation of the challenges, both cultural and political, of transition; how, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the West has repeatedly over-estimated its power to recast other nations in its own image.
More or Less Maddy
Lisa Genova
RRP $39.95
Wakefield Press
From the bestselling author of Still Alice and Inside the O’Briens comes a breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally ‘normal’ life for a career in stand-up comedy.
Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out student at NYU. Between exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always been the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family.
But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on antidepressants. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.
Redbelly Crossing
Candice Fox
RRP $34.99
Penguin
Russell and Evan Powder are cops. The brothers haven’t spoken for five years, since a violent confrontation tore their family apart.
Now they are both assigned to the murder of a young journalist, Chloe Lutz, in the small town of Redbelly Crossing (population 205).
It’s the last thing Russell wants. This is supposed to be the week he repairs things with his teenage daughter Bridie. Now he’s had to drag her on a murderous ride-along to the middle of snake-infested nowhere.
But a big case like this is just what Evan needs after a terrible mistake nearly tanked his career. Then a dark discovery leaves Evan with only one way out; to bury the truth Russell is so determined to uncover…
The Fibre Factor
Joanna McMillan
RRP $36.99
Penguin
We didn’t mean to lose fibre – but between industrial food processing and convenience culture, it quietly disappeared from our plates . . . and our bodies have noticed.
Drawing on the latest science and nearly three decades of experience as a nutrition scientist and TV personality, Dr Joanna McMillan brings fibre back into focus – not as a dull dietary box to tick, but as one of the most deliciously powerful tools for health and longevity.
Whether you’re an omnivore, a plant lover or somewhere in between, The Fibre Factor will inspire you to rethink your diet and rediscover the missing nutrient your body – and mind – have been craving.
