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Something wundrous: Jessica Townsend on ‘Nevermoor’

Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Queensland author Jessica Townsend’s debut Nevermoor (Hachette, October) is a middle-grade fantasy about a cursed 11-year-old girl ‘that will hook readers aged 10 and up with intricate imaginative detail and...

Book blogger spotlight: Half Deserted Streets

Wednesday, 2 August 2017
For blogger Danielle Carey, Instagram ‘feels like the most enthusiastic and inviting place to flail about books online’. Her Instagram-based microblog, Half Deserted Streets, reaches 11,000 followers, but she also...

Dungzilla (James Foley, Fremantle Press) 

Tuesday, 1 August 2017
Sally Tinker is an inventor—the world’s foremost inventor under the age of 11, to be precise—and her latest invention is a doozy. The Resizenator can shrink anything to microscopic size...

Bestsellers this week 

Monday, 31 July 2017
The top 10 bestsellers chart has a new number one, with Michael Connelly’s The Late Show (A&U) taking out the top spot in its second week in the charts, followed...

The Trauma Cleaner (Sarah Krasnostein, Text) 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Sandra Pankhurst was adopted through the Catholic Church in the 1950s by a Melbourne couple who would prove to be horrendously abusive parents. Driven out of home by the age...

Force of Nature (Jane Harper, Macmillan) 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Jane Harper’s follow-up to her 2016 bestseller The Dry is another well-written, pacey crime thriller. Force of Nature is set after the events of The Dry but can be read...

Suburbia (Jeremy Chambers, Text) 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Melbourne author Jeremy Chambers’ second novel is a nostalgic coming-of-age story set in the unglamorous outer-eastern suburbs of Melbourne in the 1980s. The book’s protagonist Roland is a bookish outsider...

The Book of Thistles (Noëlle Janaczewska, UWA Publishing) 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
This debut from Windham-Campbell prize-winning playwright Noëlle Janaczewska is a genre-bending mash-up that incorporates memoir, popular science, history and food writing. Janaczewska uses her lifelong personal interest in the thistle...

Soon (Lois Murphy, Transit Lounge)

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Five four-wheel drives with tinted windows roll slowly, mysteriously, through a small Australian town during a winter solstice. Their purpose is unknown, their arrival an ominous portent. When they depart,...

Drawing Sybylla (Odette Kelada, UWA Publishing) 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Drawing Sybylla is an ambitious piece of writing that shines a spotlight on the injustices and inequalities faced by women writers in Australia throughout history. The winner of the 2016...

Bird Country (Claire Aman, Text) 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Claire Aman has regularly referred to Grafton, her northern New South Wales hometown, as ‘an inspiring town’. This inspiration is realised in Bird Country, a suite of quietly beautiful short...

On tour: Reni Eddo-Lodge

Thursday, 27 July 2017
British journalist and activist Reni Eddo-Lodge is the author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury) and will be one of the international guests at...

Counter narratives: Vanessa Berry on ‘Mirror Sydney’ 

Thursday, 27 July 2017
Since 2012, Vanessa Berry has been conducting deep dives into the mysterious local histories around Sydney on her blog, and her book Mirror Sydney (Giramondo, October) continues that exploration. ‘Beautifully...

Book blogger spotlight: Bec’s Books

Wednesday, 26 July 2017
Rebecca Gough is a self-described ‘perpetual internet presence’ who blogs about YA and middle-grade titles, with a focus on fantasy and sci-fi. After realising that Instagram’s space for captions was...

Untidy Towns (Kate O’Donnell, UQP) 

Monday, 24 July 2017
Seventeen-year-old Adelaide Longley has had enough. After five years of striving for success at her expensive boarding school, she’s done with trying to be the person her teachers and family...

Bestsellers this week 

Monday, 24 July 2017
Three new crime novels have debuted in the top 10 bestsellers chart this week. The highest new entry The Late Show (Michael Connelly, A&U) has debuted in third spot, while...

Book blogger spotlight: My Cup and Chaucer

Wednesday, 19 July 2017
Tonile Wortley started a crime fiction blog in 2011, but she now blogs about a broader selection of adult fiction at My Cup and Chaucer. Her day job—digital and community...

Call of the Reed Warbler (Charles Massy, UQP) 

Tuesday, 18 July 2017
Farmer and author Charles Massy has been thinking intensely about the environment and our relationship to it for most of his life. Brought up in the industrial farming tradition, with...

The Life to Come (Michelle de Kretser, A&U) 

Monday, 17 July 2017
The Life to Come is Michelle de Kretser’s first novel since her Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning Questions of Travel in 2012, and it affirms her as a writer of great...