Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.

Fiona Hardy is reading Shark Arm by Phillip Roope & Kevin Meagher

In 1935, a recently-caught tiger shark at the Coogee Aquarium vomited up a human arm in front of witnesses. The arm had on it a tattoo of two boxers facing off, and while the identity of its unfortunate owner was soon found, the killer was never definitively caught, and the Shark Arm Case became a grotesque part of Australia’s history. When two high school teachers first discovered the case in the early 80s, they found the story compelling, so much so that they never really stopped investigating it. In Shark Arm, they lay out a compelling case for what really happened to James Smith, and explore why the crime became so tangled in the telling.

Books and articles have been written on this case before, but none have captured the entire picture in the way Roope and Meagher have – including the entire eye-opening police file, procured in 2009 – and what they have built here is an incredible investigation into a notorious, gruesome death. Shark Arm, along with being the most to-the-point title of the 2020, is a well-researched and gripping work of true crime.

Bronte Coates is reading In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

I loved Carmen Maria Machado’s fiction debut, Her Body and Other Parties, which contains stories that I still think about today, and her memoir about a queer abusive relationship has been on my TBR pile for a while. I just finished it in almost one sitting over the weekend.

This is an incredibly exciting work – clever, moving, unsettling, beautiful, funny, raw, original, all-encompassing. As with her earlier stories, Machado demolishes the expected boundaries of literature, and forces the reader to engage with the work, questioning their own beliefs and behaviours. The kind of abuse she is describing (technically legal, largely hidden from the public, specifically queer) is usually minimised by society and one thing she is attempting to do here is provide material for an archive of queer domestic abuse. Quite simply, In the Dream House is one of the best books I’ve read in years, which is one of those grand sweeping phrases that hides how truly good this book is. Please read it!

Mike Shuttleworth is reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Maybe it’s the promise of the forthcoming film, or summer’s long days and nights, but this week I picked up David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It might seem odd to describe the story of an orphan sent to the workhouse before his tenth birthday as hugely entertaining – but Dickens makes it so.

Lian Hingee is reading Second Sight by Aoife Clifford

I’m on a bit of a crime binge at the moment, and after flirting with the idea of rereading my beloved Tana French novels (I have mixed feelings about the recent TV adaptation and want to revisit the originals) I decided to dive into my woefully neglected TBR pile instead and read something new(ish).

I ended up picking Aoife Clifford’s sophomore novel, Second Sight which just arrived on our shelves in a smaller format. Eliza Carmody is a defence lawyer about to face the biggest case in her career – defending a large corporation from a bushfire class action. The only problem? The town that has initiated the class action is Kinsale, where Eliza grew up, and it holds some painful memories for her. As her involvement in the case deepens Eliza is continually pulled back into the past, to one night where everything changed for her and her friends. Second Sight is very much a novel of our times – from the threat of bushfires and the slow decay of our country towns, to the epidemic of male violence and the way corporations can act outside the law. It’s a pacy, twisty read and I’m looking forward to what Clifford brings us next.