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What We All Saw
Mike Lucas
Penguin, $19.99

An honest introduction to Stephen King-style horror for early secondary readers, Mike Lucas’ What We All Saw focuses on 4 buddies – Shell, Gray, Charlie and the narrator – who, we’re instructed from the outset, cowl up a toddler’s loss of life. They have all heard the rumours about Hag’s Drop, an imposing cliff from which, it’s mentioned, witches had been thrown to their deaths way back. They say the place remains to be haunted by the spirit of a vengeful witch, and when the youngsters tempt destiny by investigating, issues take a lethal flip as a nightmare comes alive. I notably loved the character of Shell, a vigorous vision-impaired woman who appears essentially the most weak to hazard however who can be the wisest, the one who sees what others don’t. The novel stays age-appropriate – there’s nothing too eye-meltingly horrific – and is actually a well-turned buddy story clothed within the pressure of psychological and supernatural horror.

NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
A Dolphin Called Jock
Melody Horrill
Allen & Unwin, $32.99

Melody Horrill grew up holding her breath, fearfully ready for the following violent eruption between her mother and father. It was a childhood that left her disconnected from the world and the folks round her. Serendipity within the type of an encounter with a broken dolphin referred to as Jock opened her “to the possibility of belonging, of love in its raw, unfiltered form”. Woven into the darkish story of her background is the sunshine that Jock delivered to her life when she began working as a volunteer, monitoring river dolphins within the waters of Port Adelaide. The belief that the solitary dolphin confirmed her, his unbridled expressions of pleasure in her firm and his starvation for connection reworked her. The poignant arc of their story has the satisfying high quality of a up to date fairytale with an pressing message in regards to the fragile but profound bond between people and the pure world.

The Word Hord
Hana Videen
Princeton University Press, $27.99

When the time period “wordhord” seems in Old English literature, it’s often paired with “unlock” – which is precisely what this pleasant e book does. It unlocks the 1000-year-old treasure trove of Old English phrases that inflect our language and understanding of the world. While some Old English phrases reminiscent of “bliss”, “cild” (youngster), “wis” (smart), “craeft” (craft) and “englisc” (English) dwell on nearly unchanged, others seep into our consciousness surreptitiously. “Dom” has been changed by ‘judgment’ – from the French after the Norman invasion – however persists in “doom”. The earthiness of a lot Old English makes it ripe for revival. Take “end-woerc” for “pain in the buttocks” or “torn word” for a phrase that causes grief or misery. And what a disgrace we will’t give COVID the more impressed identify of “Oelf-siden” (elf-enchantment): an unknown affliction accompanied by fever.

Nothing however the Truth
The Secret Barrister
Picador, $34.99

When this nameless British barrister began out, they held sturdy convictions that “bleeding-heart sob stories do not absolve you of your part in the social contract”. Exposure to the world of prison legislation modified them completely. The Secret Barrister opens with legislation faculty and the hyper-competitive “brown-nosing race to the bottom” to get pupillage with an skilled barrister, constructing to the second when it dawned on them that individuals caught up within the prison justice system could possibly be genuinely harmless. As the years go, there are the hazards of publicity to harrowing circumstances and ugly photos, and how this will depart one veering between flippancy and paranoia. While it could sound grim, this journey by means of the underworld of the prison courts is written with a understanding lightness of contact, a seasoned wit and a honed appreciation of the messy complexity of human affairs.

The Internet is Not What You Think It Is
Justin E. H. Smith
Princeton University Press, $34.99

Early on, as he grapples with the place the web has landed us, thinker Justin Smith prices it with being “anti-human”. Yet, simply because the web shouldn’t be what you suppose it’s, neither is that this e book. While Smith addresses what’s unsuitable with the net – particularly compelling is his exploration of the way it impacts our consideration and the way it encourages us to commerce our sense of self for “an algorithmically plottable profile” – he’s additionally providing a giant image imaginative and prescient of this machine-assisted communication as an extension of all types of communication in nature. In phrases of human historical past, he argues, the web’s evolution “is only the latest twist in a much longer history of reflection on the connectedness and unity of all things”. So, at the same time as he reveals how the net is warping us, he stays alert to the weft of the entire cloth and to the constructive potential it holds. This is a demanding learn however effectively definitely worth the effort.