Plum Wine by Angela Davis - Gardiner

 The book is set in Japan during the 1960s and the two main characters are Barbara, an American, and Seiji, Japanese. There's a kind of mystery in that Barbara inherits a chest full of bottles of plum wine, each one bottled and labeled in a different year, from the 1930s onward. 

She meets Seijei, a potter, who volunteers to translate the papers wrapped around the bottles of plum wine.  Through the translated papers she discovers the life of Michi, a friend and fellow teacher, who left her the chest.  She finds out that Michi survived the bombing of Hiroshima, as did Seijei.

She falls in love with Seijei and has an affair with him. Something forbidden both by the school at which Barbara is a guest teacher and by Japanese culture.

I didn't like Seijei. He was weak, deceitful and manipulative.  The story was excellent. A masterfully told tale of love and loss.

The Last Girl by Michael Adams

It is Christmas day and instead of lolling around in a diabetic haze of too much food, too much alcohol and way more lollies than is healthy the world as we know it comes to an end. In a split second all humans become telepathic, the desire to be connected via smart phones and the internet has resulted in a massed mind meld. Instantly a person can hear what everyone else if thinking – what your husband really thinks of his gifts, your boyfriend is actually gay, the man flying your plane once trained as a suicide bomber and your wife is having an affair with your neighbour. But not just one person’s thought invade your mind, thousands of thoughts invade and you can’t shut them out, they can’t be turned off or put into sleep mode. You now experience car crashes, train derailments and plane crashes as well as the utter chaos and violence that break out around you. In a snap the whole world changes and information overload takes on a whole new meaning. Eventually the overload is too much and one by one people become catatonic, they go into shut down mode. But who wakes these people up before they starve to death, die of dehydration? There are survivors – people like Danby who can hear people – but can’t be heard. She is not alone, but not everyone is pure of heart, some survivors have an ulterior motive.

The Last Girl  is a 'end of the world as we know it' scenario the end of the world is not caused by nuclear holocaust, global warming, alien invasion or zombie/mysterious virus - it is our increasing reliance on computers and social networks that does us all in!

It was set in Sydney and the Blue Mountains.  

A really good read. I am glad I started it on a weekend as I had a hard time putting it down. 

Late Nights On Air by Elizabeth Hay

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined.

Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land. 

 Character and place driven story of a group of people who come together and share an experience.  I loved the descriptions of the Canadian wilderness.

A quiet, contemplative read. 

The Ocean at the End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond this world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. 

His only defence is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

Part fantasy, part horror and part coming-of-age tale, this bewitching story is a beautifully written adult fairytale. 

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

 Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret.

Werner is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father’s life, until he discovers a knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on suffering.

At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.

Beautifully written story about 2 people during a war rather than a war story. Marie Laure protected and cherished since birth, was taught to cope in a dark and frightening world. Werner, an orphan, struggled to find his own way and not to succumb to the evil he was exposed to.

Not the ending I had hoped for, but a more realistic outcome. 

Picture Me Dead by Heather Graham

Ashley Montague is a rookie cop who discovers a body on the side of the highway in Miami. Her investigation leads her to Detective Jack Dilessio, an arrogant Veteran who is determined to exact revenge for a murder that happened years earlier. Together they're dragged into the dangerous world of drug trafficking, only to find that they're now fighting for their lives...and for each other. 

Twists, turns and red herrings abound.  I prefer her ghost hunter stories to her murder mysteries.

diamonds in the mud by Joy Dettman

Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories is the complete collection of Joy Dettman's exquisite short stories.
We meet an old coot in a rusty ute who picks up a hitchhiker, a neighbour reaches across the language divide to lend a helping hand, a grave digger might just have saved a young man's life, an exhausted farmer's wife lusts after a china cup, Granny Jordan is losing her marbles and an author is troubled by rats under the floorboards. 

 I loved all of these stories. It was very hard to pick my favourite. I have narrowed it down to;
The Khaki Flannel Dress  - a young girl takes the opportunity offered by a flood to get rid of her hated khaki flannel dress

Scattered Cinders - a man who has lost  everything finds hope

Her Name Is Karli - a story with a lovely sweet ending

Summer Pink - a 100 year old lady gets the last laugh on her greedy descendants

Two Gifts For Annie - a really nice story about a deaf girl and the teacher who had faith in ner

Like a Lady  - a boy goes to buy a dog and is told the story of how the old man selling the pups found his original dog back in the depression