TBR Thursday

TBR Thursday with She is Too Fond of Books is a meme to highlight all those hidden gems languishing in our out-of-control TBR piles.

They can be "books that I physically own, be it arc, bought, paperback or ebook.  It could have been there for months or just acquired it yesterday."

My little twist is to highlight one new release and one classic each week.

Over the next few weeks I will also focus on the Australian books lurking in my TBR in honour of AusReadingMonth.

Paving the New Road by Sulari Gentill is no. 4 in the Rowland Sinclair series. These books have become my go-to comfort read. Gentle crime at its gentlest - Sydney in the 1930's, Bohemian artists, political nasties - what's not to love!

It’s 1933, and the political landscape of Europe is darkening.

Eric Campbell, the man who would be Australia’s Führer, is on a fascist tour of the Continent, meeting dictators over cocktails and seeking allegiances in a common cause. Yet the Australian way of life is not undefended. Old enemies have united to undermine Campbell’s ambitions. The clandestine armies of the Establishment have once again mobilised to thwart any friendship with the Third Reich.

But when their man in Munich is killed, desperate measures are necessary.

Now Rowland Sinclair must travel to Germany to defend Australian democracy from the relentless march of Fascism. Amidst the goosestepping euphoria of a rising Nazi movement, Rowland encounters those who will change the course of history. In a world of spies, murderers and despotic madmen, he can trust no-one but an artist, a poet and a brazen sculptress.

Plots thicken, loyalties are tested and bedfellows become strange indeed.

The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser is from 1999 although it's only been in my collection for a couple of months.
De Kretser won the Miles Franklin award in 2013 for Questions of Travel, so when I spotted her name on this luscious looking book at a market stall in the beautiful hamlet of Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, my curiosity was piqued.

Reading the back cover though had me swooning with delight - roses, the French Revolution and love!
Now I just have to make time to read it.

On a cloudless summer afternoon in 1789, labourers working in the fields around Montsignac, a village in Gascony, saw a man fall out of the sky. 

The balloon had drifted over a wooded ridge and into their valley. The farm-workers, straightening up one by one, shaded their eyes against the dazzle of sun on crimson and blue silk. The thing hung in the sky - sumptuous, menacing - like a sign from God or the devil.
Then there was thunder and fire, and a man plummeting earthwards. 

It was the 14th of July. The world was about to change.

Are you familiar with either of these books or authors?