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.

Lian Hingee is reading The Trees by Percival Everett

The title of Percival Everett's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Trees doesn't give much away, but crack the cover on this extraordinary book, and you're in for a wild, wild ride. Deep in Trump country a brutal murder has taken place. At the crime scene, the body of a badly beaten Black man is discovered. An eerily familiar Black man, whose body soon disappears from the morgue - only to reappear at a second brutal murder. MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) detectives Ed and Jim are dispatched to discover what's going on, only to find themselves in the middle of a massive country-wide spate of mysterious deaths, apparently targeted specifically at the perpetrators of White America's horrifying violence against Black people and people of colour.

Part police procedural, part supernatural thriller, The Trees is a shocking, gruesome, wildly comedic book that I read faster than anything I've read in years. It's begging to be turned into a film. A film specifically directed by Jordan Peele.

Gabrielle Williams is currently reading Trust by Hernan Diaz

This book is wonderfully strange and difficult to describe. It contains four books within the one volume, and I'm currently reading the second. What first starts out as a standard novel about a wealthy financial mogul in New York in the 1920s called Benjamin Rask, then morphs into a second book, which begins turning everything we just read on its head, calling into question exactly what's real and what's made up (including everything down to the names of the main characters).

This is a difficult to categorise book, but that's part of what's making it so compelling. 

Chris Gordon is reading Lune by Kate Reid

Over the last week I learnt a VERY valuable lesson. I learnt that $6.60 is not too much money for a croissant. It turns out, that $6.60 is actually cheap when you factor in the hours of work (as in days of work), the mess in the kitchen, my heightened anxiety levels and the rock solid result of making your own. As in literally rock solid.

I’m very taken with the gorgeous new cookbook Lune (which I've been fortunate to have a little preview of). Firstly, it looks amazing and it is written in such a fashion that everything in there seems possible. And I’m sure if my hands were not sweaty with pure fear, and the weather was not so steamy and wet and the butter had not over heated, then everything would have turned out just like the pictures in the cookbook. Because this is a great cookbook from an excellent communicator. As a side note of interest; Kate Reid, pastry queen, wasn’t always a baker.  She studied Aerospace Engineering at university, (thus the name Lune)  and then became an aerodynamicist for Formula car racing. But she always liked cooking and so she came back to Melbourne and started doing just that. She now employs 120 people over several Australian locations.

With that wonderous kind Kate Reid by my side helping, and by reading every word of the recipe , I will persevere.  But for the love of a sunny day, I will never ever complain again about the cost of a croissant. Do give Lune a go if you want to extend your skills in the kitchen – there are even ideas for dinner in there. The book is a piece of art – and dare I say it will now be part of the Melbourne landscape. And TBH, I will not let a croissant take me down.