In Moonland (Miles Allinson, Scribe)
Wednesday, 21 July 2021
Miles Allinson’s accomplished second novel—the follow-up to his moving and deeply personal 2015 debut Fever of Animals—is an ambitious and gripping story of parenthood, utopias and environmental collapse, told across several interconnected narratives. The narrator of...
The First Time I Thought I Was Dying (Sarah Walker, UQP)
Tuesday, 8 June 2021
This is an essay collection in which the most difficult and abject parts of being a human in a body are examined with full and unflinching frankness, from our unacknowledged...
Small Joys of Real Life (Allee Richards, Hachette)
Tuesday, 8 June 2021
Small Joys of Real Life begins at a house party in Northcote, Melbourne, where the narrator, actress Eva McMillan, meets a cute guy, Pat. Two weeks later, they meet again...
The Mother Wound (Amani Haydar, Macmillan)
Tuesday, 25 May 2021
Like her own mother before her, Amani Haydar lost her mother young. In 2006 Haydar’s grandmother was killed in the 2006 Israeli–Lebanese conflict. In 2015 Haydar’s mother was murdered by...
The Shut Ins (Katherine Brabon, A&U)
Tuesday, 11 May 2021
When Mai Takeda runs into an old acquaintance at a train station in Nagoya, it begins a narrative that weaves the lives of four people together in unexpected ways. Mai,...
The Brilliant Boy: Doc Evatt and the great Australian dissent (Gideon Haigh, Scribner)
Tuesday, 11 May 2021
If Herbert Vere 'Doc' Evatt is thought of at all today, it’s usually in terms of his nearly decade-long failure as Labor leader to combat Menzies’ conservative stranglehold. Gideon Haigh...
Catch Us the Foxes (Nicola West, S&S)
Tuesday, 4 May 2021
Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson is an ambitious young journalist given the job of covering the annual show for the local paper. When Lo discovers the body of her friend, reigning showgirl...
The Other Half of You (Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Hachette)
Wednesday, 28 April 2021
Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s latest novel continues the story of Bani Adam, a young Lebanese Muslim man growing up in Sydney. Bani, the protagonist of Ahmad’s 2018 novel The Lebs, now...
Echo in the Memory (Cameron Nunn, Walker Books)
Tuesday, 27 April 2021
Cameron Nunn presents an ambitious work of historical fiction in his latest novel Echo in the Memory. Seamlessly telling the stories of two adolescents existing almost 200 years apart, the...
We Were Not Men (Campbell Mattinson, Fourth Estate)
Tuesday, 20 April 2021
Campbell Mattinson’s We Were Not Men charts the story of twin brothers Jon and Eden in an episodic exploration of male kinship. Told from Jon’s perspective, the book begins with the...
One Hundred Days (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 8 April 2021
Is there a right way to love? Karuna feels suffocated by her mother—and her entrapment multiplies when her dad leaves and she’s forced to move away from private school and...
Gunk Baby (Jamie Marina Lau, Hachette)
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
Leen has opened up a massage and ear cleaning studio in the suburban wastelands of Par Mars. Her shop is housed in the second-best shopping mall in the district—Topic Heights....
New Animal (Ella Baxter, A&U)
Thursday, 28 January 2021
Amelia is numb. Ever since a heartbreaking event a year ago, unable to let go of the tragedy, she finds herself stuck in place. Struggling to find connection, she absorbs...
Dropbear (Evelyn Araluen, UQP)
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
When I was in primary school, on the occasion that foreign travellers or tourists would come to visit, our conversation would inevitably turn to Australia's famous fauna and flora—to snakes...
A Room Called Earth (Madeleine Ryan, Scribe)
Wednesday, 13 January 2021
In the light of a full moon on a sweltering December night—Christmas Eve eve—a nameless young woman drapes herself in a silk kimono and goes to a party, alone. Singularly...
Eating With My Mouth Open (Sam van Zweden, NewSouth)
Wednesday, 9 December 2020
Sam van Zweden’s Eating With My Mouth Open is at once an expressive memoir and a cultural commentary on the role of food in our lives. It’s part vulnerable and...
Coming of Age in the War on Terror (Randa Abdel-Fattah, NewSouth)
Wednesday, 18 November 2020
‘I’ve always had this almost pre-conceived guilt attached to who I was.’ — Jena (18, Lebanese–Australian, South West Sydney) On September 11 2001, two planes smashed into the World Trade...
Growing Up Disabled in Australia (ed by Carly Findlay, Black Inc.)
Wednesday, 11 November 2020
Growing up Disabled in Australia, edited by Carly Findlay, is the latest anthology in Black Inc.’s ‘Growing Up’ series. Like the previous anthologies, it features both emerging and established writers....
Songlines: The power and promise (Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly, Thames & Hudson)
Wednesday, 9 September 2020
The first in a series of six books introducing Indigenous knowledges, Songlines: The power and promise explains the use of mnemonics, or memory systems, in Aboriginal culture. Songlines archive knowledge...
I Shot The Devil (Ruth McIver, Hachette)
Wednesday, 29 April 2020
Richell Prize-winner Ruth McIver’s debut crime thriller is a powder-keg with a slow burning fuse that has you racing to figure out which of the shadowy, unreliable suspects ‘did it’—and...
