First Tuesday Book Club October 2025, with guest authors!

We hope you'll be there for our First Tuesday Book Club meeting for OCTOBER 2025

Tickets are $40 each and include entry, a welcome drink, and a selection of canapes served prior to the presentation. Plus, a FREE reading copy from our free book selection, as donated to us by our lovely publishers.

'A rom-com so sweet and humorous, and with such a perfectly plotted enemies-to-lovers romance, that it almost made me care about football.' Patrick Lenton

After the Siren is a romantic comedy about inconvenient attraction, second chances and the joys of AFL.

A firecracker bookworm. A Neanderthal surfer. One unforgettable summer.

Seventeen-year-old Cat Kelty should be spending her last summer before year 12 buried in books, prepping for the future shes determined to claim. Instead, shes trapped in a house with rowdy brothers, mortifyingly affectionate parents, and a cantankerous Nonna. Then, to make things worse, Paul GD Lightwooda walking surfer god, King of the Neanderthals, all abs and an infuriatingly disarming smileshows up to work for her father. Cats plan is simple: escape this testosterone-fueled town and never look back. But lifeand Paulhave other ideas. Salty hot chips, beach parties, swimming beyond the breakersSummer, in Between is a funny, heartwarming story about first love, family, and finding where you belong.

Holly Cardamone is a Melbourne-based author and communications specialist. Her writing has appeared in publications as diverse as bridal tomes and in fashion magazines, in trade publications and in the large dailies. Her debut novel, Summer, in Between was the 2024 winner of the Hawkeye Publishing Manuscript Development Prize.

She’s a mother of two, wife to a devilishly handsome Carlton Football Club tragic and slave to the most beautiful boy in the world, Buddy the Australian Shepherd. She’s also a voracious reader who has been known to mumble ‘just one more page’ on more than a handful of occasions.

Rebecca, a super-smart consultant, is determined to defy the family marriage curse, which claims no woman marries their first fiance, and prove that Matt is The One.

Although the wedding planning lurches from one disaster to the next and she has to steer a major work project before the big day, Rebecca is sure she can stay on top of things. That is until Alex – the ex who dramatically broke her heart at Oxford University – reappears in the boardroom as her new client. How dare he still be as infuriatingly clever and hot as before? And since when did he start wearing shirts with collars?

As Rebecca's past and present collide, she realises her choices can't be resolved with a trusty pros and cons list. Before she makes it down the aisle, she'll have to finally come to terms with the age-old question: head or heart?

Steph Vizard is an Australian writer and lawyer. After studying literature at Oxford University, she worked in publishing in London. Her debut romantic comedy, The Love Contract, won the 2022 HarperCollins Banjo Prize and has been optioned for a TV series by a major UK production company. She is a connoisseur of salt and vinegar chips and lives with her family in Melbourne.

In Pain Bleeds Crime, she shares twenty-three gripping true stories from her decades working in maximum-security prisons, courts, and forensic hospitals. The crimes are shocking—M**der, rape, paedophilia, assault, fetishism, bestiality, and more—but what lies beneath is often even more confronting.

Each offender, whether male, female or transgender, reveals a hidden world shaped by trauma, pain, and silence. Pamela enters these inner worlds to feel and then to have revealed the internal crime scenes, to see what made them break—mentally, emotionally, morally. These aren’t excuses. They’re revelations.

Pamela Nathan, clinical and forensic psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, uncovers the inner worlds of society’s most dangerous and broken—whether behind bars or hidden in plain sight.

In this compelling account of a forgotten war, the vital yet largely overlooked contribution of Royal Australian Air Force aircrew during the Burma campaign of 1942–1945 is brought to life in the first detailed history of their service and sacrifice.

More than 1,700 Australian airmen were engaged in the air war across the Southeast Asian theatre. Integrated into Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons centred on the Burma campaign, they were joined by other Australians serving directly within the RAF. These airmen flew a wide range of aircraft—fighters, bombers, flying boats, dive bombers, medical evacuation planes, and transports—across one of the most challenging and diverse combat environments of the war.

Resolute, researched and written by Andrew Kilsby and Daryl Moran—both sons of World War Two RAAF veterans, and following the success of their edited volume In the Fight: Australians and the War in Burma 1942–1945—reveals the triumphs and tragedies of Australia's forgotten air war in the Burma theatre

Georgina and her two sisters are boarding a police truck in front of their family home. Their life in Uganda has been wrapped up in mere hours, since their Baba's words this morning.

"We are leaving. We are leaving tonight..."

Fleeing the threat of Idi Amin's army, the girls and their Baba are making the treacherous journey of a lifetime. But little does Georgina know that the danger that she leaves behind is only a precursor to the twists and turns of the life journey to come...

This sweeping story, both heart-wrenching and joyful in turn, traverses events of historical magnitude, such as the HIV epidemic in Africa and the Kenyan boycott of the Olympic Games, explored through eyes and experiences of Georgina. Despite numerous and significant challenges, Georgina's faith, resilience, and humanity continue to draw her forwards to a purposeful life. The course of her life events ultimately leads to another story: a lifelong friendship and charitable partnership that will go on to change the lives of Georgina's community forever.

Melanie Haley is a physiotherapist, PhD student, charity coordinator and mother of two from Melbourne. Girl Child is her first foray into writing a novel. Melanie has three first-author scientific publications and two second-author scientific publications from her role as a physiotherapist clinician researcher and her scientific publications have been cited over 190 times.

Melanie met Georgina (the "girl child" from this novel) during a volunteer trip to Kenya in 2007. On her return to Australia, she partnered with her sister, Leanne, and Georgina to build the Hope Katolo Nursery School. Today, approximately 90 children attend the nursery school every year, giving them the opportunity to succeed in primary school and the hope that they may rise from a cycle of poverty.

Dymocks Tooronga

• Email: dG9vcm9uZ2EgfCBkeW1vY2tzICEgY29tICEgYXU=
• Phone: (03) 9045 9845

There will be no door sales, so please secure your tickets early to avoid disappointment. Book with confidence, knowing that a full refund will be provided if we need to postpone or cancel the event for any reason. (Unless the event is cancelled, refund requests are only available until 24 hours before the event. Tickets are not transferable to later dates.)

Sign-in will start 6.15pm, for everyone to be seated by 7pm for the author presentations to start.

We look forward to seeing you at the Rivoli Cinemas.

Also check out other Arts events in Hawthorn, Literary Art events in Hawthorn, Sports events in Hawthorn.