It’s the strange floating period between seasonal get-togethers. The pumpkin-spiced candle of Halloween has guttered and gone out, yet the pine forest candle of Christmas has yet to adorn the mantelpiece. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll start preparations to eat an entire prehistoric bird and yell at people you love. Meanwhile, here in Australia, we fill the time by walking around the supermarket and malls, moaning that the decorations are up too early. But it’s a dead period. Any empty ghost-filled wasteland. A seasonal void, if you will, and the size of the birds we eat during it do nothing to fill it.

There is one way to fill that yawning chasm of time, and that is with a book. A book about friendship. A book about triumph. A book about a spider, a bouncy castle, and an overly large juice box.

That’s right! For November, our free book is Juicebox. A book so silly and strange that one review asked, “Why is there a giant juice box in this?” to which I say, it’s the title of the book, so why wouldn’t there be? (Although, in all fairness, it was a lovely review, it is just an absurd story, and that can be a hurdle, which I fully appreciate.)

Anyway, that’s it. Please read it. Or send it to someone you know who might want to read it. Or better yet, buy it for Christmas and then read it when it arrives in the mail. Possibly to your post-person? They will be simultaneously amused, annoyed, worried and perplexed at such behaviour, doubly if you make them sit on your knee. But, it’s a post-covid world; how else are you supposed to make new friends?