The 2023 Better Reading Top 100

Showing all posts tagged: Christian White

The 2023 Better Reading Top 100

3 May 2023

The Wife and the Widow by Christian White, and The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, are among Australian titles I’ve read that make the 2023 Better Reading Top 100 list.

Other books by authors outside of Australia I’ve finished, include Normal People by Sally Rooney, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

A full list of all one hundred titles in PDF format can be found here. For those not in the know, Better Reading is a Sydney based Australian community of engaged book readers. Just the sort we like…

Anna Downes and Christian White discuss their novels

6 December 2021

Australian authors Anna Downes and Christian White discuss their novels The Shadow House, and Wild Place respectively, with Kate Mildenhall. I’ve previewed both titles, but am surprised at the commonalities the two novels share. Listen in on The Readings Podcast. There’s a few little glitches in the playback, but sit tight for a minute and all will be well.

On quitting the day jobs to become a published author like Christian White

16 November 2021

Golf buggy driver. Call centre operator. Editor of porn videos. These were some of the jobs Australian thriller writer Christian White worked on the way to becoming a published author. If you want to succeed, and have the requisite determination to succeed, you will succeed, says White, in an interview with Melbourne based journalist Kylie Northover.

White, 40, has wanted to be a writer since he was a teenager, having an “iron-clad plan” to be a best-selling author by 25. “That shifted because 25 came and went, so I changed it to 30, which also came and went,” he says. “When I went past 30 and there was still no career in sight, I made the decision to just focus on writing for the love it – I really do just love the craft.”

And then there’s this nugget of wisdom:

He also realised he’d be better off writing the kinds of books he’d like to read. “Early on I was going to write deep, thoughtful novels – it wasn’t until I started writing thrillers I went oh! Because I love reading thrillers,” he says.

Write what you like reading. I think it’s something many aspiring authors overlook in the burning desire to become a published author. White’s third novel Wild Place was published last month.

Wild Place, by Christian White

11 October 2021

Wild Place (published by Affirm Press, 26 October 2021), the third thriller novel of Melbourne based Australian writer Christian White, has I see from the socials, made it into the hands of a few fortunate advance readers. After reading both The Nowhere Child, and The Wife and the Widow, I can only say I’m eagerly anticipating getting hold of this title.

Set in suburban Melbourne during the late nineteen-eighties, with the world in the grips of satanic panic, Wild Place tells the story a school teacher, Tom Witter, who thinks he can help police investigating the disappearance of a local teenager. Unfortunately for Tom though, detectives are not interested in his assistance.

The missing teenager was last seen in an area known as the wild place, a forest area bordering Tom’s property, which also adds to his curiosity, and indeed concern, about the case. In the past the forest reserve had been popular with locals, but in recent years had developed a far less welcoming, and darker, reputation.

Keen to protect his own children, Tom teams up with the local neighbourhood watch group, and begins his own investigation into what happened. Needless to say, as with all stories set in White’s realms, nothing is as it seems, and doubtless readers can expect to be shepherded some way down a particular path before being stunned by one of White’s trademark twists. I cannot wait.