Reviewed by Rachael Parsons.

In Horror and suspense fiction and cinema, the 'haunted house' is a recognisable and a constantly recurring element that acts as more than a location for plot and action to occur. Instead, the dark and shadowed places where evil resides in film—be it a cob webbed castle or modern frat house—act as central figures or characters through which people’s fears are realised and heightened. As Barry Curtis explores in Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film, theses spaces can function as tangential devices that heighten the overall sense of terror, such as Count Orlock’s castle in Nosferatu (1922,) where “the remote gothic menace invades and contaminates the space of the home” (83). Alternatively, the haunted structure can in itself be the source and protagonist of a films horror, as is the case in the hotel in The Shinning (1980) or the house in the Amityville Horror (1979), where the characters are “claimed by the building” (173). In either case, the presence of the haunted house is an established literary and cinematic convention that has taken many divergent forms, and been continually evolved, updated, recycled, and re-imagined to connect and embody the dark crevices of the human psyche.

Reviewed by Maree Boyce

 

Sit ye down and hear the storyteller’s tale; more likely, you’ll race through the pages of Raven: Blood Eye, impatient to find out what happens next in this ninth-century England adventure thriller. The mythical raven, flies you through the chapters like the deathly messenger of Odin, the all-father Norse god, alongside a 'wolfpack' of Vikings, English and the Welsh. Reel from the experience of the blood eagle sacrifice; walk among the superstitious; and discover why waterfront real estate is a relatively modern phenomenon. This novel is consistent with the contemporary conjecture of current medieval scholars, but this is not just a history lesson. 

Reviewed by Nikita Vanderbyl

In 2006 I went to China, and even though it was a short stay, something of the people’s passionate nature and the power of their government came across strongly. This same dynamic is apparent in China Power: Art now after Mao. In the words of director Pia Getty, “China has huge momentum, a confidant growing global power whose voice is being heard more and more on the international stage. Her industry is on the rise, her military is a global player and now she has flexed her sporting muscle with the Olympics”.

Reviewed by Jack Vening

As Bastardy opens up, we are treated to perhaps the most confronting and prevalent image within the film: an old man—the film’s centrepiece—casually shooting up in a council flat. He says, “This is what a fella lives for.” It’s an unsettling way to open a documentary. It’s also an amazing way to immediately hook the audience into a persistent theme within the film: addiction, and the awareness of addiction. From the start, we’re thrown in the deep-end. What’s most unsettling is that there seems so little a chance of climbing out.

Reviewed by Donald Lawie

Michael Caulfield only claims editorship of War Behind the Wire, but he has done far more than a normal editorial job. He has compiled a book based on excerpts from  the “Australians at War Film Archives Interviews”. There, ex-prisoners of war spoke openly of their experiences, and Caulfield neatly pastes their words onto a cohesive 357-pages that expose the depths of human passion. Fifty-nine men and women—soldiers, sailors, airmen, nurses and civilians—are brought to life by Caulfield’s technique, setting the scene for each reminiscence so that the reader can comprehend—as much as anyone could who was not there—what the prisoners endured.

Reviewed by Susan Currie

 

A Fork in the Road is the memoir of Andre Brink, one of South Africa’s best-known writers and critics of apartheid. Unlike many of those critics, Brink grew up in a conventional Calvinist, Afrikaner household, the son of a Magistrate who supported the apartheid regime. His 1974 novel, Looking on Darkness was the first Afrikaans novel to be banned in South Africa. As well as novels, Brink has written plays and political essays in both Afrikaans and English. Now at the age of 74, he is a disappointed critic of the current regime.

Reviewed by Claire-Louise Perrers

At only one and a half millimetres tall, Toby Lolness is small for his thirteen years.  But what he lacks in size, he makes up for with courage in the classic adventure story that is Toby Alone.  Set within a great oak tree, the story introduces the reader to diverse landscapes, including lakes formed at the intersection of branches, forests of green moss, hanging jungles full of strange fruit, and deep canyons and gorges formed by mountainous bark.  A whole community of tiny people spread from the summit to the lower branches and beyond to the grasslands that surround the tree.  Despite this idyllic setting, Toby's is a world beset with problems, and the reader is quick to discover a major crisis has occurred.

Reviewed by Claire-Louise Perrers

The extraordinary story of Toby Alone continues in Toby and the Secrets of the Tree, a sequel that will not disappoint readers left dangling from the cliffhanger at the conclusion of the first book.  The pace here is fast, as the reader is reintroduced to the dramas that have befallen the great oak tree and those within it.  Joe Mitch and his henchmen return as evil as ever, and continue wreaking havoc on the tree with mining and development.  Forced labour camps made up of captured grass people and the tree’s intellectuals provide the manpower for Joe Mitch’s mining operations.  The tyrant Leo Blue returns as the master of the tree, and it is clear his fear of the grass people continues to fuel his tyranny.  Our young hero, Toby returns to fight back for the freedom of his parents, their friends, the grass people, and his dearest friend, Elisha.  In his quest, Toby learns of the tree’s devastation as a result of greed and hatred.  

Reviewed by Adam Dodd

As an avid reader of contemporary critical animal studies, Vanessa Lemm's Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being instantly appealed to me. This addition to the Perspectives in Continental Philosophy series published by Fordham University Press contributes significantly to that body of work and to the wider project of understanding how it is we have come to understand the animal itself. Drawing out Nietzsche’s surprisingly extensive meditations on animality, the human being, civilization and culture, Vanessa Lemm, Associate Professor at the School for Political Science and the Institute of Humanities at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, has produced a fascinating piece of work that brings Nietzsche directly to the heart of critical animal studies itself.

Reviewed by George Ivanoff

Fleur is a young girl living a quiet life in Cornwall in 1692 with her inn-keeper father, John Morgan. But one night, her world is shattered as the inn is attacked by ruthless pirates. Moments before he is murdered, her father reveals to Fleur a terrible secret. His real name is Henry Hart, the feared pirate known as Henry the Heartless. Pirating is in the Hart blood and in the family, who have been pirates for generations. But Henry had retired, giving it all up when his daughter was born. Now his past has caught up with him… and his daughter. Hidden away, Fleur watches helplessly as her father is murdered and she becomes an orphan. With the arrival of her pirate uncle, William Hart, Fleur embarks on a sea-faring adventure in pursuit of her father’s killers and the Hart staff which they have stolen. The Dread Pirate Fleur and the Ruby Heart is a fast-paced adventure that should enthral readers from about ten-years and up. Sara Starbuck's adventure is filled with action, fights, mutiny, revenge, a mysterious prophecy, and lots of piratical doings. But it also has character development, moments of pathos, and real heart.