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.

Mark Rubbo is reading Consolation by Garry Disher

For a bit of escapism, I’ve been reading the new crime novel from Garry Disher. Consolation is the third in his series featuring Constable Paul Hirschhausen as he investigates crimes in the dusty, remote town of Tiverton. This new novel seems him having to solve a number of linked cases that range from the theft of an elderly women’s underwear to large-scale embezzlement, not to mention look into a couple of farmers who seem to have gone feral. This is bush crime at its best!

Lian Hingee is reading The Searcher by Tana French

I was planning to save the new Tana French for my holidays as a reward for getting through 2020, but I only lasted about three days before devouring the whole thing in one gulp. Described as French’s take on the Western, The Searcher is a standalone novel that not only sits apart from her wonderful Dublin Murder Squad series, but features an American protagonist. I wasn’t sure how I’d go with it, but I shouldn’t have worried: I was in very safe hands.

Leaving behind a failed marriage, his disillusionment over the Chicago police force, and an estranged daughter, Cal Hooper has escaped to a small village in rural Ireland where he hopes to spend his retirement fishing, hunting and restoring the decrepit cottage he’s made his home. But Cal’s tranquillity is shattered when thirteen-year-old Trey appears at his door asking for help to track down a missing brother.

The Searcher is a sinister, slow-moving tale that ratchets up the tension as Cal attempts to uncover the dark secrets that lie just under the surface of this bucolic Irish village. French has done her usual remarkable job of plunging the reader deep into the world that she’s created, and I can still feel the creeping sense of being watched.

Bronte Coates is reading Nganajungu Yagu by Charmaine Papertalk Green

I picked up this slim work of poetry last week on a friend’s recommendation. A visual artist, poet, writer, independent curator and social sciences researcher, Charmaine Papertalk Green is a member of the Wajarri, Badimaya and Nhanagardi cultural groups from the Yamaji Nation of Western Australia. Nganajungu Yagu has already won two awards this year, the ALS Gold Medal and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry 2020, and just yesterday, it was shortlisted for another, the Small Press Network Book of the Year Award.

A blend of poetry and memoir, the work is inspired by letters Papertalk Green exchanged with her mother in the 1970s and it makes for an astonishingly immersive and intimate reading experience. I read it in a single sitting and cried more than once. Papertalk Green’s use of Wajarri and Badimaya languages is elegant and powerful, and as well as poems, she includes selected transcripts from her mother’s original letters, along with her responses to them years later, and snippets extracted from government files. Nganajungu Yagu is a gorgeous evocation of maternal love, but also a snapshot into the past, a moving affirmation of ancestral connections, and a fierce rejection of whitewashed Australian history. It’s a stunning achievement.