If You Only Read One Book This Year ....

If you only read one book this year, it probably shouldn’t be mine!

Not because I doubt what I’ve written — but because the books that matter don’t arrive because they’re promoted. They arrive because something in the reader is ready. They unsettle. They resist tidy answers. They leave a mark.

Those are the kinds of stories I’m interested in writing.

I don’t write “easy” books. Not because I want to be difficult — but because life, history, and truth rarely wrap themselves up neatly.

The questions that drive my work are simple, but uncomfortable:

• What happens when the truth arrives too late to change anything — but still refuses to stay silent?

• What happens when corrupt leaders come to power, and there is no one — and no power — to constrain them?

• What happens when a country on the edge tries to improve its future, only to find the future is as bad as, or worse than, the past?

Those questions became three novels.

Each stands alone. They can be read in any order. None asks to be rushed.

One is set in rural South Australia and follows the long shadow of a single night and a single decision. It’s a story about responsibility — moral, professional, human — and how consequences echo long after the moment has passed.

Another moves across continents and decades, tracing the collapse of a country and the personal reckonings left behind. It’s about loyalty, silence, and the fantasy of believing history happens to other people.

The third is quieter, but no less confronting — a story about what happens when attempts to amend historical wrongs are made in a vacuum, with no clear end point.

These books aren’t written to flatter the reader. Some people won’t like them. That’s fine. They’re written for readers who don’t mind pausing, re-reading, or sitting with discomfort a little longer than feels polite.

A fourth book is coming later this year. It asks different questions, but it comes from the same place — a world where decisions are made quietly, and consequences are rarely clean.

So if you only read one book this year, choose carefully.

Choose something that doesn’t hurry you.

Choose something that lingers.

Choose something that leaves a trace.

And if one of mine does that — then it found you at the right time.

If you want to find out more about me and my books, click here.