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Hot on the heels of news that Australian author Liane Moriarty’s 2013 novel The Husband’s Secret will be made into a film directed by Kat Coiro, comes word Tasmanian novelist Kyle Perry’s 2020 debut book The Bluffs, has been optioned by Australian entertainment company First Option Pictures for a limited TV series.

What a great week for Australian fiction.

Dani Vee, Sydney based host of literary podcast Words and Nerds, writes about being a single parent at Ramona Magazine. If you only read one paragraph of the article, make sure it’s this one:

The next time you hear anyone talking about single mothers, start by replacing words like lonely, stressed, frazzled, broke and struggling with ‘you mean that independent-solution-focused-resilient-kick ass woman with the electric lawnmower?’

Also lookout for her debut picture book My EXTRAordinary Mum, featuring illustrations by Alexandra Colombo.

What would you do if an email intended for another person, made its way to your inbox? Would you delete it forthwith? Or would you, without blinking at it, inform the sender by return, of their error? Or might you feel that’d be tantamount to admitting you’d read the message? Might you think you were therefore exposing yourself to possible retribution, by making yourself known to the sender?

Or might you be like Bee, a London dress maker, who having received, and read, an incorrectly addressed email, decides to send a considered reply to the sender, because she found the contents intriguing? And would you believe for a second that such a response could be the beginning of a friendship, or perhaps something more?

This is exactly what happens in Impossible (published by HarperCollins Publishers, March 2022), by Sarah Lotz, the eighth novel by the British novelist and screenwriter. Nick, who is struggling personally and professionally, is surprised when Bee, a stranger, replies to his misdirected rant, but is delighted as their correspondence becomes regular and more intimate.

After all, who doesn’t like a meeting a new friend? But when Bee and Nick realise there is more to their exchanges than cordial banter, they decide to take the next step. Nick jumps on a train from Leeds, while Bee makes her way to London’s Euston station to meet him. But is it that simple? Can something come of what they have? Could it? Or is there too much they don’t know about each other to make that possible?

Megan Albany, whose debut novel The Very Last List of Vivian Walker, I wrote about the week before last, will be in conversation with Dora Papas, editor of Better Homes and Gardens, as part of the Books & Bubbles series of virtual events, this Wednesday, 23 February 2022, at 6:30PM (ADST).

Sydney based Australian author Liane Moriarty’s 2013 novel The Husband’s Secret is headed for the big screen. American filmmaker Kat Coiro whose credits include L!fe Happens and Marry Me will direct the adaptation.

Dave Grohl and the Foo fighters move into a nice old house in the country to record their tenth album, in Studio 666 (trailer), a film directed by BJ McDonnell. But things don’t quite go to plan. Grohl begins to lose his mind, and it turns out the house is a conduit, allowing maligned spiritual entities to cross from their world into ours. Ah, the trials and tribulations of the difficult tenth album…

Global Grey, the project of London based book aficionado Julie, is a repository of novels in electronic format, with about three thousand titles currently on the catalogue.

Melbourne based Australian author Sophie Cunningham is set to publish This Devastating Fever, her first novel in fifteen years in September 2022, according to Ultimo Press. In addition to her writing and teaching work, Cunningham is also one of the founders of the Stella Prize, an award honouring the work of Australian women writers.

The New York Times, now the owner of Wordle, have confirmed they have not made the ever-popular word game more difficult. Anyone playing recently — game 242 anyone? — might’ve had cause to suspect as much though. No, apparently the game retains the same “solution set”, being some two thousand five hundred words, added by creator Josh Wardle last October. The New York Times has however confirmed the removal of “potentially offensive” words from the original solution set.

The main change that the Times made was to remove some words: the game’s new owners have removed some offensive language both from the list of valid guesses for the game (specifically, offensive language and slurs) and from Wardle’s solutions, in addition to removing some more difficult words from the original set (like “AGORA” and “PUPAL”).

If anything then, they’ve made the game easier, though Agora would not be too difficult for me, after seeing the 2009 film of the same name.

Sydney based Australian author John Bryson died earlier this month, at the age of 86. Bryson, a former lawyer, wrote several books, including Evil Angels: The Case of Lindy Chamberlain in 1987, a title that proved instrumental in exonerating Lindy Chamberlain, who had been wrongly convicted of murdering her baby daughter in 1980.