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Interview

Brisbane authors p2

Good book recommendations for sci-fi, romance and non-fiction books, given by authors Margaret McGuigan and Delia Strange...

Bent Lillies is the story of two sisters who run a café in inner city Melbourne in the 1950s. They fence jewelry, sell sly grog and run a starting price bookmaking agency. But when the café becomes a burden due to a number of reasons, they turn to arson and flee to Brisbane. Author Margaret McGuigan liked Carole Matthews’The Cake Shop in the Garden, in which Fay Merryweather runs a cake shop in a beautiful garden by an English canal. She looks after the cake shop, the garden and her mother, and loses herself somewhat along the way. Then Danny Wilde enters her life and she has to make some decisions.
Margaret McGuigan also liked The Little Flower Shop in Cornwall by Ali McNamara who is the author of From Notting Hill with Love, Actually. Another favorite was The Dandelion Years by Erica James which was about Bletchley House. Saskia is a book restorer living in a cottage on the edge of a Suffolk village. She finds a hidden notebook with a tale of war-time romance. Another favorite was Honeymoon Dive, a non-fiction book about the suspicious death of a diver on her honeymoon, by Lindsay Simpson co-written with Jennifer Cooke. Other favorite authors included Kate Morton.
Delia Strange is the co author of Axiom which is the first novel in a series of eight called Wanderer of Worlds. Ms Strange and co-author Linda Conlon had planned all eight books of the story. They planned to publish one every six months. She said planning was essential because they had co-written the stories. The books are a contemporary paranormal fantasy about three wanderers travelling between worlds while trying to evade authorities. Ms Strange liked Breakers, which is book one of The Breakers series by Edward D. Robertson. In the first three books in the series, humanity faces a lethal pandemic, then a war against the creators of the virus. Ms Strange said this author was getting a slow following which is a mark of a good writer because he gets passed around by word of mouth.
Robin Hobb’s The Assassin’s Apprentice was another favorite. And she also liked the author of The Martian, Andy Weir. Red Rising by Pierce Brown was another sci-fi novel she liked.