The 10 books to read in February

By Jason Steger

February releases include new books from Elizabeth Coleman, Salman Rushdie, Chris Wallace, Paul Dalgarno, Kevin Jared Hosein, Ronnie Scott, Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson and Sita Walker.

It’s February and like other businesses around the country, the book industry is cranking up for a new year. Next month sees a stack of enticing morsels coming our way.

The lazy days of holiday reading may be over, but there’s a great variety of books to get the rest of the year rolling.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.

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A Routine Infidelity, Elizabeth Coleman

Pantera Press, $29.99, February 1

You know you’re in for a cosy time when you learn the private investigator’s offsider is none other than Miss Marple … a miniature schnauzer. Screenwriter and playwright (Secret Bridesmaids’ Business) turned novelist Elizabeth Coleman has written for umpteen telly shows, including Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and The Secret Life of Us, but here Edwina – Ted to her chums – investigates the scamming of her sister and somehow stumbles on a really big fraud and more. I feel a series coming on.

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A Country of Eternal Light, Paul Dalgarno

Fourth Estate, $32.99, February 1

It’s big year for the former journalist. First up is his second novel – his first was Poly, as in polyamory – then comes Prudish Nation, in which he interrogates writers and thinkers about Australia’s attitude to non-conventional relationships. In the new novel, Margaret, proud of her legs and her figure, is dead, but that doesn’t stop her living to her best abilities and revisiting events, places and people from her life. Death is having a bit of a moment in fiction and Dalgarno adds to it with wit and poignancy.

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Cold People, Tom Rob Smith

Simon & Schuster, $32.99, February 1

In 2008, Tom Rob Smith’s first novel, Child 44, was the first thriller to be longlisted for the Booker Prize. It was a brilliant imagining of a committed communist cop on the track of a serial killer in the Soviet Union in the ’50s. Rob Smith once told me that he loves to write stories in any form he can, which is why he has written novels, plays, television, including the brilliant London Spy and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Cold People has a group of people desperately fleeing to Antarctica, the only safe place left after an alien force has seized the planet.

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The God of No Good, Sita Walker

Ultimo, $36.99, February 1

In the course of her memoir of family – stuffed with strong and wonderfully drawn women – divorce, growing up and love, Brisbane writer Sita Walker writes: “Love and pain are the two fangs of the same snake. You cannot be pierced by one without also being poisoned by the other.” But her memoir is about more than just love. As a member of the Bahai faith, there’s also her growing doubt and gradual move away from God. Jumping backwards and forwards in time, Walker makes her story readable, relatable and valuable.

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Hungry Ghosts, Kevin Jared Hosein

Bloomsbury, $32.99, February 7

The Trinidadian novelist has written a book of rich and poor, the exploiters and the vulnerable, of trauma and mystery, set on an island not entirely dissimilar to his own. Events are set in train when wealthy landowner Dalton Changoor vanishes and his wife Marlee is left in the dark. Tongues are set wagging when she gets a poor worker, Hans Saroop, to provide protection. Hosein creates a heady stew that has post-colonial and religious ingredients in the mix, not to mention a cast of vivid characters.

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MUP: A Centenary History, Stuart Kells

The Miegunyah Press, $60, February 7

Melbourne University Press was the first university publisher established in Australia and quickly gained a reputation for books with substance and quality, perhaps its best-known publication being Manning Clark’s six-volume History of Australia. Stuart Kells knows his way around the book world like the back of his hand and although published by an MUP imprint, he shows no aversion to delving into the various controversies that have dogged the publisher over the years such as Peter Ryan’s criticism of Clark and the end of Louise Adler’s time in charge.

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Shirley, Ronnie Scott

Hamish Hamilton, $32.99, February 7

The second novel from the founder of The Lifted Brow is very different from the male-focus of The Adversary. Narrated by the titular character and again firmly rooted in Melbourne, Shirley and David are navigating a relationship gradually fracturing as pressures, both internal and external, build up. Ronnie Scott inhabits his female character utterly convincingly and his picture of a fractious mother-daughter relationship is deftly handled.

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Victory City, Salman Rushdie

Jonathan Cape, $32.99, February 21

The best fillip for Salam Rushdie following last year’s brutal attack in which he was stabbed multiple times and lost an eye and the use of one hand must surely be publication of his 15th, effervescent novel. In 14th-century India, nine-year-old Pampa Kampana becomes the mouthpiece for the goddess Parvati and, during her 247-year-long life, the creator of Victory City. Rushdie’s magical realism has a strong female character at its heart and champions the power of stories, storytelling and words, “the only victors”. A message that lies close to his heart.

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Hollywood: The Oral History, Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson

Faber & Faber, $49.99, February 21

The two authors of this book have ploughed their way through the substantial archives of interviews done since 1969 for the American Film Institute to tell the story of the industry from the silent days to today’s big-budget blockbusters. You’ll hear testimony from almost everyone – 3000-plus actors, directors, producers, with a few notable absentees such as John Ford and Cary Grant – but importantly the likes of makeup artists and designers as well. It’s a monster of a book, nearly 800 pages, but it has a big story to tell.

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Political Lives, Chris Wallace

New South, $39.99, February

Not many authors would give up writing a biography that would undoubtedly have sold many copies because they didn’t want the destabilisation of a government on their conscience. But that’s what Chris Wallace did with her life of Julia Gillard. Perhaps this history of how biographers have treated their prime ministerial subjects and the consequences of their finished products is the upshot of that decision. It’s a sort of exegesis of political biography and biographers, and a fascinating look at Australian political life.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.

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