Giinagay Juluum, Hello Mountains (Melissa Greenwood, ABC Books)
Tuesday, 13 August 2024
Following the success of Miimi Marraal, Mother Earth, and Miimi and Buwaarr, Mother and Baby, the latest picture book by Melissa Greenwood (Giinagay Gaagal, Hello Ocean) is a vivid storytelling...
No One Will Know (Rose Carlyle, Text)
Tuesday, 13 August 2024
Pregnant, homeless, and alone, 24-year-old Eve Sylvester is faced with a desperate future when a meeting at her dead fiancé’s gravesite offers a chance too glorious to refuse: nannying for...
Dusk (Robbie Arnott, Picador)
Tuesday, 6 August 2024
In his fourth novel, Dusk, Robbie Arnott returns to familiar terrain. ‘Dusk’ is the name the highland graziers have given to a puma who has begun to ‘take’ shepherds and...
Shapeshifting (ed by Jeanine Leane & Ellen van Neerven, UQP)
Tuesday, 6 August 2024
In UQP’s new First Nations anthology, Shapeshifting, Daniel Browning meditates on the significance of the fact that there is no Bundjalung word for queer; Alison Whittaker intimately dissects the shifting...
The Ledge (Christian White, Affirm)
Tuesday, 6 August 2024
When reading author and screenwriter Christian White’s fourth novel, The Ledge, it’s worth remembering the adage: ‘When you assume, you make an ass of u and me.’ As a seasoned...
Zoom (Dannika Patterson, illus Ross Morgan, Ford St)
Tuesday, 30 July 2024
Dannika Patterson’s Zoom is a touching story about a boy named Tom. After a bad day at school, Tom comes home upset and withdrawn. Although he initially shuts his mum...
rock flight (Hasib Hourani, Giramondo)
Tuesday, 30 July 2024
Hasib Hourani’s debut, rock flight, is a structurally experimental long-form poem of grief, rage and resistance against the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hourani’s voice is assertive, demanding attention from...
Sarah Evans (Bernice Barry, Echo)
Tuesday, 30 July 2024
Sarah Evans is a richly imagined and meticulously researched historical fiction novel based on a true story. The tale begins in grimly Dickensian early 19th-century Clerkenwell, London, where powerful men...
Inheritance (Genevieve Gannon, Pantera)
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
Inheritance is the latest novel by Genevieve Gannon, bestselling author of The Mothers. In the not-too-distant future, scientists use eugenics to protect the next generation against viruses and diseases. At the same...
Cockatoo (Kaye Baillie, illus Max Hamilton, Windy Hollow)
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
Cockatoo is the new Australian wildlife picture book from Kaye Baillie and Max Hamilton, the team behind the CBCA-shortlisted title When the Waterhole Dries Up. In this story, Baillie has followed her...
Cherrywood (Jock Serong, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
Jock Serong’s Cherrywood obscures time and place, braiding together the fates of his characters through extraordinary ventures and chance meetings. In his latest novel, Serong (The Burning Island, On the...
Warra Warra Wai (Darren Rix & Craig Cormick, S&S)
Tuesday, 16 July 2024
Warra Warra Wai visits the sites that James Cook’s crew irrevocably changed by hand, flag, pen or presence. Gazing at the Endeavour from the land and vice versa, Darren Rix...
Escape from Cuttlefish Cove (Rachel Jackson, Riveted Press)
Tuesday, 16 July 2024
Debut author Rachel Jackson knocks it out of the park with Escape from Cuttlefish Cove, a choose-your-own-adventure story where the reader is the main character. Imagine waking up on an...
The Wedding Forecast (Nina Kenwood, Text)
Tuesday, 16 July 2024
Nina Kenwood’s new adult romantic comedy, The Wedding Forecast, is sexy, fun and hard to put down. Kenwood, who previously wrote for young adults (It Sounded Better in My Head,...
White Noise (Raelke Grimmer, UWA Publishing)
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
White Noise is the captivating debut YA novel by Darwin-based author Raelke Grimmer. Fifteen-year-old Emma’s mum died three years ago, and she and her emergency-doctor father survive in a monotonous,...
Jilya (Tracy Westerman, UQP)
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
Jilya means ‘my child’ in Nyamal language, and it is evident on every page of her hybrid memoir/cultural study that leading psychologist and Nyamal woman Tracy Westerman is committed to...
The Degenerates (Raeden Richardson, Text)
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
The Degenerates is a bold, layered work of experimental literary fiction that follows the linked storylines of Maha, Titch and Ginny, three Melbournians who have found themselves lost in their...
Anomaly (Emma Lord, Affirm)
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
Anomaly, the debut YA novel by Emma Lord, is fast-paced, compelling and confidently plotted. In 2020, Piper Manning awakens 52 days after a virus has wiped out her town—and perhaps...
Protecting Indigenous Art (Colin Golvan, MUP)
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
Scepticism is probably reasonable, at first, reading a book about Indigenous art written by a non-Indigenous person. Colin Golvan, however, has earned his bona fides by working as a barrister...
Jasper Cliff (Josh Kemp, Fremantle)
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
Western Australian author Josh Kemp’s debut novel, Banjawarn, won several prestigious awards, including the Dorothy Hewett Award, a Ned Kelly Award, and a Western Australian Premier’s Prize. For his second...
Translations (Jumaana Abdu, Vintage)
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Translations is a powerful, character-driven debut novel by Jumaana Abdu. It follows young mother Aliyah and her daughter, Sakina, who leave Sydney for a property in the Northern Rivers region...
Dragonfire: 18,000 Holes in the Universe (Adam Wallace & Lisa Foley, illus James Hart, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Tee off into the surreal world of Dragonfire: 18,000 Holes in the Universe, the first book in a new graphic novel series by Adam Wallace and Lisa Foley, with imaginative...
Chae: Korean slow food for a better life (Jung Eun Chae, Hardie Grant)
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, chef Jung Eun Chae worked in the renowned Melbourne restaurant Cutler & Co before opening her cosy six-seater restaurant, Chae, in her Brunswick apartment. Her...
Bird (Courtney Collins, Hachette)
Tuesday, 25 June 2024
Following the success of her first novel, The Burial, Courtney Collins’s new dual-narrative novel, Bird, centres on the titular 14-year-old girl. The story is told in alternating chapters differentiated by...
How to Break a World Record and Survive Grade Five (Carla Fitzgerald, UQP)
Tuesday, 18 June 2024
How to Break a World Record and Survive Grade Five is the new novel from Carla Fitzgerald, author of the popular middle-grade title How to Be Prime Minister and Survive...
Voyagers: Our journey into the Anthropocene (Lauren Fuge, Text)
Tuesday, 18 June 2024
The Anthropocene—the geological period dominated by humanity’s activity on the planet—is increasingly seen by scientists and academics as an era of devastation wrought by overconsumption and insatiable industrialisation. In Voyagers,...
Love Unleashed (Melanie Saward, Michael Joseph)
Tuesday, 11 June 2024
Melanie Saward’s Love Unleashed is a bingeable, warm and soulful romantic comedy. Saward (whose debut novel, Burn, was released in 2023) draws on her own experience in New York to...
Sky Country (Aunty Patsy Cameron & Lisa Kennedy, Magabala)
Tuesday, 11 June 2024
Grandmother takes her young grandchildren on a walk up a mountain in Trouwerner (Tasmania). As they walk together, Grandmother retells an ancient story of creation, sky, and the First Peoples...
Slick: Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil (Royce Kurmelovs, UQP)
Tuesday, 11 June 2024
As citizens of the global West, we are learning that sitting with discomfort is necessary to create change. Slick, by journalist Royce Kurmelovs (Just Money, The Death of Holden), is...
Woo Woo (Ella Baxter, A&U)
Tuesday, 4 June 2024
In Woo Woo, Ella Baxter’s raucous second novel after New Animal, art is terrible, a living spell, a parasite, a trick, and all there is. ‘Art is life,’ writes protagonist...




