Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger ★★★★ ½

FLIGHT OF BEAUTIFUL FANCY

           My ten and twelve year old boys are, sadly, at an age where they don’t want me to read to them anymore.  In fact, thanks to iPads, X-boxes and cable TV, they don’t even want to read themselves anymore.

            However, they both expressed interest in me reading them “Raven Girl”.  In the end, my hubby sat in and for several nights our family eagerly anticipated the next reading.  Reading this book with them was a wonderful experience.  First they wanted to read it; then they didn’t want me to stop. They loved the story and wanted it read again.  A miracle.

           “Once there was a Postman who fell in love with a Raven.” 

           The opening line in this modern-day, dark, fairy tale begins a marvelous tale of a postman who “thought he had seen just about everything Her Majesty’s Postal Service could offer in the way of danger and difficulty, hilarity and boredom”.  When he rescues a baby raven, which has fallen from her nest, they fall in love and eventually have a baby raven girl who has human form but speaks in raven.  Like any child, the raven girl is not happy with herself and seeks to be transformed.

            Niffenegger has collaborated with Royal Ballet Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor to produce a ballet based on this book. It premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in May 2013.

                Audrey Niffenegger was on my list of beloved authors before this book.  Her first novel, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” was an international best-seller and her second book, a ghost story entitled “Her Fearful Symmetry”, is in my Top reads.

           Niffenegger puts words together from which spin magic.   She is also a talented artist. In “Raven Girl”, she not only wrote a charming tale, she also illustrated it beautifully using the 17th century technique of aquatint, which uses metal, acid, wax and rosin to achieve delicate tone and detailed images.

          Anyone, any age reading this will fall in love with the tale of the “Raven Girl”.  It is a book of exceptional beauty and one to treasure.

My review copy of RAVEN GIRL thanks to the hardworking people at RANDOM HOUSE Australia.

Release Dates: Australia and New Zealand: May 2013

Useful Links

For purchasing details and more information:   click here

Visit the official website for Audrey Niffenegger

Read a free chapter of RAVEN GIRL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Audrey Niffenegger is an exceptionally creative writer and visual artist who has achieved enormous success in both worlds. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, has sold more than seven million copies worldwide and has been translated into forty languages. A Richard & Judy book club choice in the UK, it has been a huge bestseller all round the world. In the Daily Telegraph's readers' poll of the 'Top 50 Books of All Time' it appeared at no. 11. Niffenegger is also the author of two 'novels-in-pictures', The Three Incestuous Sisters(2005) and The Adventuress (2006), both published by Cape. Her graphic novel The Night Bookmobile was serialized in the Guardian and published on the Cape Graphic list.
A Chicago native, Niffenegger received her MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Northwestern University. Her art has been widely exhibited in the United States and is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and Harvard University's Houghton Library.

PSYCHOS Anthology edited by John Skipp ★★★★★

(Serial Killers, Depraved Madman and the Criminally Insane)

THE SHORT STORY, ALIVE AND WELL

               Stephen King is arguably one of the master storytellers of our time.  Yet, even he felt he’d fallen out of touch with short story fiction in 2006 when invited to edit ‘The Best American Short Stories 2007’.

In an interview promoting his own collection, ‘Just After Sunset’, inspired by his editing of the volume, he said, “People have forgotten how to read the short story. They’ve fallen out of love with the short story.  People are too lazy to pick up a short story and start over and over again. It’s (too much of) a grab bag.’

John Skipp, editor of ‘Psychos-Serial Killers, Depraved Madman and the Criminally Insane’ certainly ensures it is not a grab bag.  He knows something about great short stories, with his first published short story in ‘The Twilight Zone’ Magazine in 1982.  He’s a New York Times Bestselling author and has co-authored over a dozen successful horror novels, ‘Psychos’ being  his third anthology with publisher Black Dog and Leventhal in the fantasy-horror genre.  So he has credibility in choosing a gripping yarn.

These stories will restore your faith in the short narrative.  Some will stick in your mind, even if you don’t want them there.  These are thirty-eight gems that will keep you reading like the addiction that follows that first black jelly-bean.  Your need for ‘just one more’ will keep you up into the psycho-prowling wee hours. 

You will meet perfectly normal people—you’ll think at first—that hide twisted, dark secrets. And you will meet normal people who don’t realise they have crossed evil’s pathway. Dark humour and light prose dance in perfect combination. Alongside, genre royalty of Neil Gaimin, Thomas Harris, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allen Poe, Skipp has included some astonishingly polished emerging authors.

The pleasure of reading a good story is that you don’t want it to end. The wonderful thing with ‘Psychos’, at over six hundred pages, there are plenty of beginnings.

My review copy of Psychos thanks to the lovable people at Murdoch Books and Allen and Unwin Australia

To buy or learn more visit Psychos
Release Dates: Australia and New Zealand: December, 2012  U.S.A.: October, 2012

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Skipp is a New York Times bestselling author and editor whose 23 books have sold millions of copies in a dozen languages worldwide. His first anthology, Book of the Dead, laid the foundation in 1989 for modern zombie literature. He later edited three more zombie anthologies, including Mondo Zombie, which won the Bram Stoker Award for best anthology. He is the editor of three books in Black Dog’s horror series: Zombies, Werewolves and Shapeshifters, and Demons, which also won the Bram Stoker Award. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

 

Penguin Specials by various authors

SHORT SHARP AND BEAUTIFULLY SWEET: Penguin Specials

 

 

You’ve just finished that mammoth five-hundred-page book, or if you are reading Stephen King that one-thousand-page door-stop and you’re not sure whether you can face meeting new characters and building a relationship.  You need a break.  It’s a big commitment starting a book and investing that time and trust with another author.

But you love to read, right?  If you’re like me, you enjoy just laying there at night for half an hour flitting off to another world before you close your eyes to sleep.  Or you want something for that commute to work or the lunch break or to have something so you know where your reading next.

Well for those eReader lovers, Penguin Books Australia has exactly what you need.  They’ve come up with an innovative series entitled “Penguin Specials” and have delved into their formidable treasure trove of essays and stories to provide a growing selection of shorts from “today's best and most exciting writers” at an affordable price and only available in digital format.  All the titles are compatible with a range of handheld reading devices. 

Discover or reacquaint yourself with fabulous Australian authors such as Elizabeth Jolley, Dorothy Hewett, Peter Goldsworth, Robert Drewe and Helen Garner, to name a few. You will never have the time to read books from every author but what a wonderful opportunity to sample the work of some our greatest literary minds.

Do check them out and for the price of coffee feed your reader and your mind.  I’ve already indulged myself with a few titles and here are some of my favourites.

Click here to view more PENGUIN SPECIALS

 

THE BODYSURFERS by Robert Drewe

PRICE:   $2.99

 

This is an evocative piece, beautifully written by prize winning author Robert Drewe, famous for his highly awarded memoir, "The Shark Net".  Here he has captured the very flavour of Australia.

Haunted by the brutal murder of a local couple, David heads to his weekend shack with his new lover, Lydia, and his children from his recently crumbled marriage. Together they find escape, if only briefly, in the ocean and the bush.

The Bodysurfers, the title story of Robert Drewe's classic first collection, is a vivid evocation of love, passion, terror and the beauty of the beach.

  

Click here for more information on "The Bodysurfers"

 

BEAUTY’S SISTER by James Bradley

PRICE:   $3.99

I loved this alternate tale to Rapunzel. It’s dark and imaginative and simply written; a bedtime story for young adults and adults. I hope Mr. Bradley reworks a few more fairy tales.

Juniper, living deep in the forest with her parents, is stunned to discover that the beautiful girl living isolated in a nearby tower is her sister. When the two girls meet, what begins as a fascination and a friendship ultimately develops into something truly sinister.

A story of jealousy, passion and power, Beauty's Sister is a dark and gripping reimagining of one of our oldest tales, Rapunzel...

Click here for more information on "Beauty's Sister"

 

 

SIX WOMEN OF LETTERS curated by Michaela McGuire and Marieke Hardy

PRICE:   $3.99

I cannot tell you how much I loved reading these letters.  Whilst I think we are all growing a little weary of the newspaper’s love affairs with a “letter to my sixteen-year-old self”. (Everywhere I turn somebody remotely famous is writing a letter to themselves.) 

However, these letters are of a different nature. They are thoughtful, beautifully conceived and written with heart. I particularly loved Ita Buttrose’s musings on the life she may have had.  Haven’t we all thought if I’d just walked that road instead of this...?  Here one of our most successful icons muses with great insight.

In homage to that most civilised of activities, letter writing, Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire created the literary afternoons of Women of Letters. Some of Australia's finest dames of stage, screen and page have delivered missives on a series of themes.

Published here for the first time are Deborah Conway writing about the ups and downs of being a dog owner in A Letter to the Best Decision I Ever Made; Ita Buttrose imagining an alternative life as an opera singer in A Letter to the Life I Could Have Lived; Tracee Hutchison writing A Complaint Letter to complaint letters; Pip Lincolne describing a magical childhood afternoon in A Letter to the Moment I Knew it Was Time to Go Home; A Love Letter from Kate Miller-Heidke aged twenty-nine to Kate Miller-Heidke aged twelve; and Helen Garner looking back on a teacher both terrifying and inspiring in A Letter to the Person I Misjudged

 

Click here for more information on "Six Women of Letters"

 

THE KISS by Peter Goldsworthy 
PRICE:   $2.99

           This story has a twist that bites.  Thank goodness I was reading it on my Kobo because my other hand was free to cover my mouth in horror.  How things can go so terribly wrong so easily. This is the quintessential Australian short story told by a master who knows how to grab you by the throat and squeeze until it hurts.

A short shot of brilliant storytelling – one of the most celebrated modern Australian short stories is now available to read by itself, wherever you are.

 Drunk, restless and excited, Kenny and Tom decide to continue their night with a swim in the local water tank. At first exuberant and elated, the teenagers' adventure takes a terrifying turn when they realise they are trapped in the tank with no way out.

 Dark and gripping, Peter Goldsworthy's The Kiss is a classic Australian short story from one of our masters of the form.

 

Click here for more information on "The Kiss"

 

 

THE DARKLING SISTERS by Dorothy Hewett

PRICE:   $2.99

Okay, I’m partial to a ghost story and there are ghosts here but handled in such beautiful literary prose I felt like an eavesdropper on a 1920’s Australian family.  Immensely evocative and entertaining, it was a doorway I enjoyed entering and I was sorry when I had to leave.

A classic short story from one Australia's most celebrated writers.  A big old Victorian terrace in Jersey Road, Woollahra, is thought to be haunted by the two Darkling sisters from the 1920s. When a young family moves in, dark images of these sisters, and of relationships closer to home, hang over them.

 Beautifully crafted and keenly observed, this story from Dorothy Hewett's acclaimed collection A Baker's Dozen is a stunning evocation of family, memories and neighbourhood.

Click here for more information on "The Darkling Sisters"

PENGUIN SPECIALS:       http://www.penguin.com.au/penguinspecials

PENGUIN EBOOKS:        

http://www.penguin.com.au/ebooks

 

           

          If you have read any of these Penguin Shorts or have some more that you have enjoyed from Penguin Shorts that you would like to recommend, please do leave us a comment.