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One of my most vivid memories of a great summer read is of lying on a banana lounge in my back garden over the Christmas break of 1996/7. I was immersed in Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. I lay there imagining myself in the glorious Italian countryside, feeling green with envy – until I looked up from the book and gazed around me at my leafy garden basking under the blaze of a Sydney sun in a cerulean sky. I sipped some more of my lovely Aussie wine and acknowledged to myself how lucky I was to be here!
Escapist fiction and crime novels are the perfect summer reads. Two more evocative books set in the Italian countryside are The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim and The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson. Two crime novels set in Melbourne caught my fancy this year. If you like your crime dark and bloody, try The Shadow Maker by Robert Sims, a debut novel which lifts the lid on the seamy underbelly of Melbourne and introduces sassy criminal profiler Marita Van Hassel. Another great female lead is Cornelia Finnigan, who stars in the much lighter, fun-filled crime fiction debut of true crime queen Robin Bowles, The Curse of the Golden Yo-yo.
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