What to read this winter

Dervla McTiernan’s gripping thriller What Happened to Nina? (Harper Collins), follows a mother on a desperate quest to find her missing daughter. Bright, beautiful 20-year-old Nina was last seen with boyfriend Simon at his family’s holiday home in Vermont. After her mysterious disappearance, the story goes viral, the media descends, and Simon’s powerful family closes ranks. Nina’s mother doesn’t know whom to trust but won’t stop until the truth is uncovered.

Investigative journalist Louise Milligan drew on her experience working in Australian crime for her brilliant debut novel Pheasants Nest (Allen & Unwin). It sees journalist Kate Delaney experience the horror she usually reports on firsthand when she’s assaulted and abducted after a night out with friends. At once a compulsive thriller and an exploration of the ripple effects of violent crime.

Food-themed fiction is having a moment with Asako Yuzuki’s brilliant bestseller Butter just one notable example. Another is Lottie Hazell’s taut tale of a woman on the brink, Piglet (Doubleday). It follows a woman whose seemingly perfect life is upended when her fiancé reveals a betrayal in the lead-up to their wedding. Determined not to let it ruin her life, she turns to food to repress her turmoil, but her growing rage cannot be contained. Simmering with suspense and culinary descriptions that leave you ravenous.

Shankari Chandran's powerful novel Safe Haven (Ultimo Press), is about the human toll of Australia’s mandatory detention centres. After fleeing the horrors of Sri Lanka’s civil war and surviving a near-death experience at sea, Fina is settled into the welcoming town of Hastings. However, when a couple of suspicious deaths have her speaking out about the abysmal conditions at the detention centre, a media storm follows, and she soon finds herself back in detention awaiting deportation. A heart-wrenching yet hopeful tale.

David Nicholls’ latest, You Are Here (Sceptre), is a delightful romance novel about midlife love. Geography teacher Michael is set to embark on a solitary Lake District hike to distract himself from the misery of his recent divorce. But his well-meaning friend Cleo has a bit of matchmaking in mind, and invites a few others along. Plans go awry when her single friend Marnie pursues the handsome pharmacist Conrad rather than kind and dependable Michael. However, as the walk progresses so do their affections.

In Miranda July’s saucy novel All Fours (Canongate) the unnamed narrator, an artist, leaves her husband and small child in Los Angeles and heads off on a road trip to New York for a taste of freedom and a creativity reboot. However, a chance meeting with a young man sees her checking into a dive motel in a nearby town, where a journey of self-discovery and sexual awakening begins.

Liam Pieper’s hilarious satire of the Australian art scene, Appreciation (Hamish Hamilton), follows enfant terrible Oliver Darling. The “queer artist from the country” is promoting his new exhibition on a live television panel while under the influence of drugs, when he veers dangerously off-script and ends up cancelled. Left floundering to redeem his reputation and career, Oli is finally forced to look within. Witty and razor-sharp, the author takes aim at prominent figures and well-known art institutions.