By George Meredith. Designed and Edited with an Introduction by Colin Heston.

Sandra Belloni, first published in 1864 under the title Emilia in England, occupies a distinctive place in the literary corpus of George Meredith. It represents one of his earliest extended efforts to merge the comic novel with a more pointed social critique, a technique that would become a hallmark of his mature style. This novel, rich in subtle irony and psychological insight, grapples with the tensions between individuality and conformity, art and social convention, and the constraints of class and gender in Victorian England. At its heart, it is a narrative about a young woman of Italian descent, Emilia Belloni, whose musical gifts and unorthodox spirit clash with the expectations of the rigid English society into which she is thrust.

Meredith uses Emilia’s character not merely as a protagonist but as a symbolic figure—an embodiment of passionate sincerity, artistic freedom, and the disruptive power of the outsider. Emilia’s foreignness is not just ethnic; it is deeply cultural and emotional. Her instincts are governed by feeling and a commitment to truth, which repeatedly brings her into conflict with the carefully cultivated hypocrisies and social facades of the English middle and upper classes. Through her, Meredith examines the ways in which English society suppresses emotional authenticity in favor of propriety and self-interest.

In reading Sandra Belloni today, one encounters not only a portrait of Victorian society in all its contradictions but also an enduring exploration of the universal struggle between the self and society, between the voice that seeks to sing freely and the forces that would silence it. It is a novel that resonates beyond its historical moment, inviting readers to reflect on the costs and necessities of remaining true to oneself in the face of overwhelming pressure to conform.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 318p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

by J. P. Pomare

When private investigator Reid is sent to look into a suspicious car crash, he finds himself in the one place he swore he'd never go back to - the town where he grew up.

Returning to Manson brings back traumatic memories that Reid has spent a decade burying; and keeping his past separate from the investigation is futile. People remember what he did all those years ago.

As rumours swirl about the couple involved in the crash, Reid's line of questioning is taken in a new direction when the Chief of Police's daughter goes missing. Was the car crash just an isolated tragic accident, or is there something darker beating at the heart of this small town? Can Reid escape Manson again, or will it finally swallow him whole?

AUSTRALIA. HATCHETTE. 2022. 327p.

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By Susan Hill

A woman vanishes in the fog up on 'the Hill', an area locally known for its tranquility and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man and even a dog disappear no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town. Young policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case, she's new to the job, compassionate, inquisitive, dedicated and needs to know - perhaps too much. She and the enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler have the task of unraveling the mystery behind this gruesome sequence of events. From the passages revealing the killer's mind to the final heart-stopping twist, "The Various Haunts of Men" is an astounding and masterly crime debut and is the first in a magnificent series featuring Simon Serrailler.

NY. Vintage. 2004. 557p.

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By Kathy Reichs

From bestselling author, forensic anthropologist, and producer of the Fox television hit "Bones" comes Kathy Reichs's most compelling mystery yet, pitting Temperance Brennan against an enigma out of her own past.

Temperance Brennan, like her creator Kathy Reichs, is a brilliant, sexy forensic anthropologist called on tosolve the toughest cases. But for Tempe, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another assignment. vangline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, vangline wasthe most exotic person in Tempe'seight-year-old world. When vangline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was "dangerous."

Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl?

Meanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Three girls dead. Four missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.

WILLIAM HEINEMANN : LONDON. 2007. 301p.

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Minette Walters

CRIME & MYSTERY. In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his grandmother the one person who understood and protected him. Less than three years later he is dead, driven to suicide by isolation and despair. A fate befitting a murderer, perhaps, but what if he were innocent? Thirty years on, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotyping, comes across the case by accident. He finds alarming disparities in the evidence and has little doubt that Stamp's conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice. But how far is he prepared to go in the search for justice? Is the forgotten story of one friendless young man compelling enough to make him leave his books and face his own demons? And with what result? If Stamp didn't murder Grace Jeffries then somebody else did, which means there's a dangerous killer still at large.

Crows Nest, Australia. ALLEN & UNWIN. 2003. 408p.

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By Tea Cooper

In The Talented Mrs. Greenway, readers are invited into the mysterious world of Agatha Greenway, a renowned painter with a shadowy past. As her intricate and captivating artwork takes the art world by storm, whispers of her enigmatic life story begin to spread.

Set against the backdrop of the bustling art scene in New York City, this gripping novel explores the boundaries between art and reality, fame and anonymity, and the price of hidden truths. As Agatha's carefully constructed facade starts to crumble, readers are taken on a journey that blurs the lines between perception and deception.

With masterful storytelling and a keen eye for detail, The Talented Mrs. Greenway is a compelling exploration of artistry, ambition, and the secrets that lie beneath the surface. Dive into this mesmerizing tale and uncover the hidden layers of Agatha Greenway's world.

Discover the truth behind the talent in The Talented Mrs. Greenway.

Australia. HQ fiction. 2023. 378p.

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STUART MACBRIDE

A new Logan McRae thriller from the bestselling author of 'Cold Granite' and 'Dying Light', set in gritty Aberdeen. In the pale grey light of a chilly February, Aberdeen is not at its best... There's a rapist prowling the city's cold granite streets, leaving a string of tortured women behind. But while DS Logan McRae's girlfriend is out acting as bait, he's dealing with the blood-drenched body of an unidentified male, dumped outside Accident and Emergency. When a stash of explicit films turn up, all featuring the victim, it looks as if someone in the local bondage community has developed a taste for violent death, and Logan gets dragged into the twilight world of pornographers, sex-shops and S&M. To make matters worse, when they finally arrest the Granite City Rapist, Grampian Police are forced by the courts to let him go: Aberdeen Football Club's star striker has an alibi for every attack. Could they really have got it so badly wrong? Logan thinks so, but the trick will be getting anyone to listen before the real rapist strikes again. Especially as his girlfriend, PC Jackie 'Ball Breaker' Watson, is convinced the footballer is guilty and she's hell-bent on a conviction at any cost...

LONDON. HARPER. COLLINS. 2007. 571p

By Viktor Lowenfeld

This book is written for art teachers- teachers who teach art, teachers and kindergarten teachers, and all who want not only to appreciate the creative production of children merely from an aesthetic viewpoint but would like to look behind the doors to see the sources from which their creative activity springs. It is written for those who want to understand the mental and emotional development of children. The idealistic concept of the child as an innate artist who has simply to get material and nothing else in order to create has done as much harm to art education as the neglect of the child's creative impulse. Books that are written from an idealistic view discourage teachers who are unable to produce the same easy and "beautiful" responses described by the writers of such books. Much of the literature in art education deals with results achieved under ideal conditions rather than with the outcomes which may be reasonably expected in the average classroom.

Macmillan. 1957. 572p.

By Albert Camus

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger—Camus's masterpiece—gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.

Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. 

“The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” –from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie.

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in English in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.

London. Knopf. 1946. 77p.

By Paula Hawkins

An addictive novel of psychological suspense from the author of #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning.

“Hawkins is at the forefront of a group of female authors . . who have reinvigorated the literary suspense novel by tapping a rich vein of psychological menace and social unease… there’s a certain solace to a dark escape, in the promise of submerged truths coming to light.” —Vogue

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
 
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
 
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.

London. Transworld. Penguin. 2017. 357p.