The First Fleet: The Real Story is a companion volume to Alan Frost’s earlier book, Botany Bay: The Real Story. It deals with the same subject as David Hill’s 1788, but unlike Hill, Frost is an academic historian, and it shows in his work—his argument is scholarly and his research and documentation is rigorous. As in Botany Bay, Frost seeks to explode some of the myths around Australia’s founding—myths perpetuated over decades in Australian writing. He achieves this goal admirably, but the text is dense, closely argued and not always easy reading. Frost demonstrates that the First Fleet was well planned, well funded and remarkably well executed by Captain Philip, who shines through as the hero of the story. By going back to original British government documents, Frost debunks the furphy that Australia’s colonisation was a half-baked plan to dump convicts as far away from Britain as possible. The intention was to found a viable, strategic foothold in a hitherto unexplored region, he argues. This is revisionist history at its best, immaculately researched and written, which will appeal to specialists as well as general readers interested in early Australian history.
Dave Martus of Paperchain Bookstore in Canberra has 15 years’ experience as a bookshop manager and buyer in London and Sydney. This review first appeared in the May issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.
Craig Sherborne’s novel 
After two weeks at the top of the 
The July issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine has landed! Here are some of the forthcoming releases that impressed our reviewers this issue:
When Holly Love decides to hunt down Andrew McNish, the fiancé who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and took all of her savings with him, she doesn’t realise that it’s the first step on a madcap ride that will lead her to an eccentric little town in the Blue Mountains, or that she will end up accidentally posing as a private investigator while sharing living space with a psychic, a sweet-natured elderly phone s-x worker and a parrot. Or that her hunt for Andrew might turn into a real murder investigation. Holly’s out of her depth—or, just possibly, she’s finally finding her feet. Jennifer Rowe’s previous mysteries include the Verity Birdwood series, and she is also the author of children’s fiction under the names Emily Rodda and Mary-Anne Dickinson. 
After winning the Man Booker Prize with The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga’s new novel 
I read this novel in one gulp, loving every moment of the narrator’s voice and the strangeness of her impoverished life. When Mim loses a package of happy pills that her drug-dealer mother has asked her to pick up, it begins a train of events that gives her the shove from fate she’s been waiting for all her life. Mim has lived her young life by a set of rules, which she believes will help her escape her mother’s fate. But then a new friend’s support gives her the bravery to stick to her guns, and the phone-s-x worker next door, who is studying to be a nurse, teaches her not to judge by outward appearances. Mim’s neighbourhood is peopled with bizarre characters who bring this teen novel to life with warmth and humour. The rules Mim lives by turn out to be useful only as each one is broken. Though Mim makes mistakes, and plenty of them, this novel contains none. 
