Media Bites September 2023

One Day We’re All Going to Die

Daisy and Kate MEREDITH APPLEYARD

Nineteen Steps MILLIE BOBBY BROWN Love blooms in the darkest days… London, 1942. Despite the raging war, spirited 18-year old Nellie Morris lives a quiet life in the tight-knit East End community of Bethnal Green. Her family and friends all tease that she will marry air raid warden Billy, the boy next door who’s always been sweet on her. The arrival of Ray, a handsome American airman stationed nearby, causes Nellie to question everything she thought she knew about her future.

The Witch Is Back SOPHIE H. MORGAN

ELISE ESTHER HEARST At 27, Naomi is just trying to be a normal person. A normal person who works at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, who cares for lost things, found things, sacred things and her family. A person who finds herself going on bad blind dates, having cringe-worthy sex, a tumultuous, toxic affair, and falling for a man called Moses. Being a normal person would be easy and fine if she didn’t bear the weight of the unspoken grief of Cookie, her Holocaust-survivor grandmother. It would all be fine if she just knew how to be, without feeling the pull of expectation,

Love is a hex of a thing. There’s nothing wrong with being a wallflower. Not to Emmaline Bluewater, anyway. Emma may have been born into witch society, but her days of trying to fit in where she doesn’t belong are over — they ended seven years ago, when the man she’d hoped to marry left town without a word. She’s much happier now, living a delightfully mundane human life in Chicago and running her bar, Toil and Trouble.

Friendship lost and found again. Jealousy destroyed their friendship decades ago, but now they need each other more than ever ... Once upon a time Daisy Miller and Kate Hannaford were the best of friends, sharing the woes of shift work and nursing, the delights of days off together in their small country town, and the joys of blossoming romances. They couldn’t imagine not being the best of friends. Until they weren’t.

Until Bastian Truenote walks through the door and announces that he wants her back.

Now bearing down on their 70s, life hasn’t gone the way either woman expected. Daisy is back in town, homeless and reduced to couch-surfing at her granddaughter’s place. Meanwhile, a recently widowed Kate is facing the harsh reality that the home and lifestyle she worked so hard for is hollow comfort when there’s no one to share it with.

Nellie’s newfound happiness is short-lived when a tragic accident occurs during an air raid. Even the closest family can’t escape the devastation of war, and as the secrets and truth about that fateful night become clear, they threaten to tear Nellie – and those dearest to her – apart.

the fear of disappointing others (men, friends, her parents, humanity), and that pesky problem of being attracted to all the wrong people (according to her parents, anyway).

sophiehmorgan.com.au

Released: 30/08/2023 BPB |368pp AU $22.99 NZ $24.99 Imprint: HQ

By endlessly trying to please everyone around her, Naomi can’t seem to figure out what she wants for herself, or how to get it. With echoes of the dead and dying all about her, in objects, in story, in her grandmother’s firm grasp, Naomi isn’t quite sure she knows how to be a normal person, but she is going to try.

Released: 30/08/23 TPB | 416pp AU $32.99 NZ $34.99 Imprint: HQ

meredithappleyard.com.

Inspired by the true events of her family history, Millie Bobby Brown’s dazzling

Released: 02/08/23 TPB | 384pp AU $32.99 NZ $34.99 Imprint: HQ

Released: 30/08/23 B+P | 320pp AU $29.99 NZ $32.99 Imprint: HQ

FICTION

FICTION