Campaign Ruby

by Jessica Rudd

The Text Publishing Company. Australian, Political, Romance. Paperback rrp $32.95

Reviewed by Barbara Brown

Ruby Stanhope is a British investment banker who gets sacked by email. She replies with an angry email that goes viral throughout the internet and the world of banking. Ruby finds that her life as an investment banker anywhere in the world may now be cut short thanks to her erroneous yet brilliant reply email.

Ruby goes home to drink a very nice bottle or three of Australian peanut noise and in her drunken state finds she has booked a ticket to Australia on a tourist visa in the search of the peanut noise and some quiet time.

Next thing Ruby finds herself in Australia with a job as a political adviser to the Leader of the Opposition (LOO), Max Masters. Everything Ruby does from the moment she clicked SEND, to the night of the Australian Federal Election and losing her boss’s Blackberry, is unbelievably funny. But everything happens for a reason. Whenever Ruby trips over her Louboutin-clad feet and lands smack into another problem, she picks herself up with as much decorum as one can, dusts herself off and gets on with the job in hand.

Max and his group of devoted employees find that Ruby can not only can get them out of some pretty hot problems but that she has a great Toolkit that has everything in it from shaver and shaving cream to double sided tape and shower in a can. She may just save the political career of Max Masters if she doesn’t stuff up her life in the meantime.

Ruby has a To-Do list that grows with each passing day and each day that list seems to make Ruby see what a wonderful life she has fallen into. Having trouble with the language, the fashion, the political stance and entrances/exits out of hotel rooms and bathrooms, Ruby spends an incredible month travelling around Australia, seeing the people but never seeing the places. Life on the campaign trail isn’t easy.

Campaign Ruby is a funny but great read and brings the humorous side to life of a politician and his/her road to becoming/or losing Prime Minister of Australia without making it trivial.

Marrying Ameera

For better … or for worse

by Rosanne Hawke

Angus and Robertson. Australian, Young Adult. Paperback rrp $16.99

Ameera Hassan is 17 years-of-age, has just finished high school and is looking forward to going to university. She is a good Australian born, Pakistani daughter who knows that one day she will marry a man whom her father chooses for her but one she hopes she has a say in.

She has found that one of her friend’s older brother, Tariq, could be the right one. Can she talk her father into agreeing with her choice? When her father finds out she has gone to a mixed-sex party he feels he is losing control over his precious daughter and sends her to his brother in Pakistan on the pretence that she will attend her cousin Jamila’s wedding.

When Ameera arrives alone in Pakistan she soon finds out the truth. For years, her father has organised and planned her marriage. She slowly realises that she has been kidnapped by her own family. Will she ever be able to escape a country set in strict old customs, where she is treated as a second class citizen?

Marrying Ameera may be a fictional story but there are many truths woven throughout that it is hard to believe that Ameera is just words on a page. A story I couldn’t finish without a few tears and a sense of horror that it can happen even in Australia.

In 2005 a dozen Australian girls under the age of 18 sought help from the Australian Consulate in Beirut after being forced to marry. Britain saves over 300 people from forced marriages in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and beyond each year with one third under 18 years-of-age and 15% involving young men. For further information visit http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/when-things-go-wrong/forced-marriage.

http://www.rosannehawke.com/

Surf for Your Life

Grommets’ Edition

Mick Fanning and Tim Baker

Random House Australia. Australian, Children’s Non-Fiction, Autobiographical. Paperback rrp $19.95

Mick Fanning has a wonderful life of doing what he does best – surfing. And in a follow-up book to his popular Surf for Your Life, he has produced the Grommets’ Edition (a Grommet is a child surfer).

In the Grommets’ Edition you can read up on all the tips and tricks of becoming a world champion surfer, from choosing your board to doing exercises to build the right muscles. It’s also an autobiographical view of Fanning’s rise from being a Grommet to mastering the waves and the tour circuit.

Mick Fanning has had his share of ups and downs and he talks openly about his life, his family, his friends and his favourites – board, waves, surfers, movies.

Fabulous photos throughout the book with a poster included. An ideal gift for any hard-to-buy grommet/surfer.

The Reading Stack reviewed Mick Fanning and Tim Baker’s Surf for Your Life in January 2010 and Tim Baker’s High Surf in January 2007.

http://www.bytimbaker.com/
http://www.mickfanning.com.au/

Trash

by Andy Mulligan

dfb books. Young adult. Paperback rrp $24.95

Reviewed by Barbara Brown

Trash had me enthralled from beginning to end. Two boys, Raphael and Gardo, are friends and the main narrators in this wonderful fascinating tale. Both boys, aged around 13 years, live on a dumpsite. Their lives are spent sorting the trash, living the trash, breathing the trash, and ultimately, dying with it.

The dumpsite is where the city’s trash ends up. The unnamed city of millions is poor and the majority of the trash is human waste. An unhealthy living for the poorest of the poor, but Raphael and Gardo have each other and a few friends. Everyone who lives on the dumpsite always hopes for a treasure within the garbage and when Raphael finds a small leather bag, he thinks his life has turned for the best.


Then police and politicians are paying handsomely for the return of the bag. What is in this bag? With Gardo, Raphael gets the assistance of another trash boy, Rat, to help solve the riddle of the contents of the bag. The next thing these three boys are on the run - running to find answers to a mystery that even the top policemen can’t solve. Can three uneducated, gutter living children outwit and outsmart them?

Trash is a book that will make you look at the world a lot differently. One’s man trash is another’s treasure has new meaning in this brilliant story.

http://www.andymulliganbooks.com/

The Kooky 3D Kid’s Cookbook

Hardie Grant Books. Non-Fiction Cookbook. Hardcover rrp $24.99


If you are on a diet – beware! The Kooky 3D Kid’s Cookbook is not to be looked at by hungry readers, you may just find while trying to grab a Superstar Sundae or a Chicken Coleslaw Burger that you end up with thin air. Take the 3D glasses off and the craving will, hopefully, abate long enough for you or your kids to cook up a storm.

The Kooky 3D Kid’s Cookbook is a wonderful and quirky addition to the bookshelf of any budding Masterchef. Not only are there some healthy, easy meals and desserts for children to cook (or eat), but each recipe is individually displayed in 3D and the preparations are laid out in easy steps some with helpful hints at the bottom.

This is a cookbook that kids will be fighting over to decide who wears the glasses. A great holiday treat for the children. Look out for the poor Shortbread Person who has lost his arm. I did say quirky!

An Exclusive Love

by Johanna Adorján. Translated from German by Anthea Bell

The Text Publishing Company. Biography. Paperback rrp $27.95.

Johanna Adorján’s grandparents, Vera and István, decided that Sunday, 13th October 1991 would be the day they went to sleep forever.

Vera and István were both Hungarian Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. István had spent years in a labour camp whilst Vera gave birth and looked after two children on forged documents. When the war finished the two found each other again and moved to Denmark to start their life afresh.

Both Vera and István lived for each other, raised a family and then settled into a domestic and comfortable life as grandparents and retirees. They rarely spoke of their former life in Hungary.

Now István has heart trouble and the doctors have only given him a few months to live. Vera could never see herself alone without her István. So they decide to leave this world together, holding hands.

An Exclusive Love is a wonderful story of the lives of two ordinary but still very extraordinary people. Johanna Adorján has created a wonderful book. Although the subject is sad and upsetting, Adorján has also brought to it some uplifting and funny stories of how two people can go about their lives with a very dark idea in the back of their minds. Brilliant.

Firespell

A novel of the dark elite

by Chloe Neill

Hachette Australia. Young Adult. Paperback rrp $22.99

Lily Parker has been sent to a very elite boarding school in Chicago. Not quite sixteen, her parents have accepted an ‘amazing opportunity’ to work in Germany for two years. They will be too busy to oversee Lily’s upbringing so she has been shipped from her public education in New York to the snooty, rich lifestyle of the elite, but abandoned children of the rich.

From day one at St. Sophia’s School for Girls, Lily finds that she doesn’t fit in. From the brat pack to her strange roommate Scout, Lily has trouble seeing past the differences in human personalities.

Scout and Lily become friends and Scout helps Lily adjust to the rules and regulations of St. Sophia and the sights of Chicago. But Lily feels that Scout is doing something dangerous and because of their new found friendship, feels bound to save Scout from whatever it is that is taking her out all night. Then Lily starts hearing noises, seeing strange things and noticing that Scout has a different agenda then the rest of St. Sophia’s students.

When the brat pack lures Lily down into the school basements, she is confronted with a new terror. And then Scout goes missing and her room is trashed, it is up to Lily to help find her and save her. But what is she saving her from and will Lily be in just as much danger?

Firespell is a book about magic and demons, demons could be your best friend and sucking the life out of you. The next time you feel lonely and tired check out who is standing next to you. Firespell is the first book in the Dark Elite series.

http://www.chloeneill.com/