The Hunted (Gabriel Bergmoser, HarperCollins)
24 May 2020
On a lonely highway in outback Australia sits a solitary service station run by the equally solitary Frank, whose teenage granddaughter has been sent to stay with him for some...
In our nature: Robbie Arnott on ‘The Rain Heron’
1 April 2020
The Rain Heron (Text, June), Robbie Arnott's follow-up to his 2018 debut Flames, blurs the line between reality and myth as its isolated protagonist is drawn to a soldier on...
We’re changing the way we deliver reviews
26 March 2020
Welcome to what will be the final Books+Publishing Reviews newsletter. Pre-publication book reviews continue to be a vital part of what we do, but we’re changing the way they are...
Father of the Lost Boys (Yuot A Alaak, Fremantle Press)
26 March 2020
This shocking story should be better known: the attempt of more than 20,000 orphaned boys and thousands more refugee followers to survive amid the terrifying atrocities of the Second Sudanse...
Sticks and Stones (Katherine Firkin, Bantam)
26 March 2020
Detective senior constable Emmett Corban works for Missing Persons, a department under threat of downsizing: most of the people they’re looking for don’t want to be found. When a man...
Rise & Shine (Patrick Allington, Scribe)
26 March 2020
Patrick Allington’s second novel takes place in an allegorical dystopia following an ambiguous apocalypse. The cities of Rise and Shine have emerged from these ashes thanks to the efforts of...
The Drop-Off (Fiona Harris & Mike McLeish, Echo)
28 February 2020
The Drop-Off is a cheerful depiction of parenting culture, told through the alternating points-of-view of three parents and set in a middle-class primary school in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne....
Fathoms: The world in the whale (Rebecca Giggs, Scribe)
28 February 2020
Rebecca Giggs’ nonfiction debut is a lyrical, wide-ranging meditation on whales and their complex relationship with humanity. Meticulously researched and full of fascinating information, Fathoms is not just limited to...
Night Lessons in Little Jerusalem (Rick Held, Hachette)
28 February 2020
Night Lessons in Little Jerusalem is an impressive and gripping debut that blurs the line between memoir and fiction. Based on the wartime diaries of the author’s father, the novel tells...
Ghost Species (James Bradley, Hamish Hamilton)
28 February 2020
James Bradley’s latest novel tells the story of Eve, a genetically engineered Neanderthal brought into life as part of a scheme for mitigating the environmental degradation of climate change. In...
Untethered (Hayley Katzen, Ventura)
28 February 2020
In 1989 academic Hayley Katzen moved from apartheid South Africa to Australia. In Sydney she taught and worked in law and enjoyed the comparative safety and community of the city...
The Animals in That Country (Laura Jean McKay, Scribe)
3 February 2020
Laura Jean McKay’s debut novel concerns itself with the apocalypse, but an entirely different one to that fixated upon in cli-fi narratives. In McKay’s doomsday tale, humans contract a highly...
The Adversary (Ronnie Scott, Hamish Hamilton)
3 February 2020
Ronnie Scott’s debut novel The Adversary is set during what appears to be an uneventful Melbourne summer but actually sees a lot happening to its protagonist. Languishing in emotional and...
Stone Sky Gold Mountain (Mirandi Riwoe, UQP)
3 February 2020
In goldrush-era Australia the landscape is harsh, the law basically non-existent and discrimination bluntly and unashamedly informs every facet of life. Siblings Ying and Lai Yue are trying to scrape...
Sheerwater (Leah Swann, HarperCollins)
3 February 2020
Sheerwater begins when a plane falls out of the sky. The accident—a light aircraft crash-landing in a field off the Great Ocean Road—is witnessed by Ava, a young woman on...
Below Deck (Sophie Hardcastle, A&U)
3 February 2020
In Below Deck, 21-year-old Oli gives up a high-flying internship to work on the ocean after meeting an enigmatic older couple and sailing with them to the Coral Sea. Four...
Come (Rita Therese, A&U)
3 February 2020
Twenty-five-year-old sex worker Rita Therese’s debut memoir is dark, funny and extremely candid—but her unsanitised tales of the sex industry are not for the faint-hearted. Come invites the reader into...
The Salt Madonna (Catherine Noske, Picador)
3 February 2020
Set on a remote fictional island off the coast of Western Australia, Catherine Noske’s debut novel grapples with questions of familial obligation, complicity, remorse and the fallibility of memory. Noske...
Small Mercies (Richard Anderson, Scribe)
3 February 2020
Dimple and Ruthie Travers are farmers in a tough time. Drought has seen them reduce their cattle herd and hold off sowing crops. Money is tight, rain is always forecast...
Torched (Kimberley Starr, Pantera)
3 February 2020
In Torched, the town of Brunton, Victoria is devastated by a bushfire with the force and malevolence of Black Saturday, and in turn Phoebe Wharton’s life is destroyed by the...
Almost a Mirror (Kirsten Krauth, Transit Lounge)
3 February 2020
Kirsten Krauth’s Almost a Mirror is about the relationship between music and memory, and the unexpected directions that family and romantic life can take. Mona is in her late 30s...
Fourteen (Shannon Molloy, S&S)
3 February 2020
Fourteen is the factual account of one year in the life of a gay high-schooler in the small central Queensland town of Yeppoon. Journalist Shannon Molloy uses clear, concise language...
The Brisbane Line (J P Powell, Xoum)
3 February 2020
J P Powell’s debut novel—named for an alleged WWII-era government plan to abandon Northern Australia in the event of a Japanese invasion—is an exploration of tension and corruption amid the...
Spheres of influence: Ronnie Scott on ‘The Adversary’
3 February 2020
Ronnie Scott’s debut novel The Adversary (Hamish Hamilton) follows an unnamed protagonist as he navigates gay friendship and wrestles with self-doubt over the course of a hot Melbourne summer. Scott spoke...
After the Count: The death of Davey Browne (Stephanie Convery, Viking)
30 January 2020
When young and fit professional boxer Davey Browne died in the ring, pummelled to death in front of his family and friends, it was the result of a perfect storm...
Desire Lines (Felicity Volk, Hachette)
15 January 2020
Desire Lines is a heartrending love story between a man struggling to overcome the struggles of a deeply traumatic childhood and a woman who, frankly, deserves better. At a market...
A Year in the Mud and the Toast and the Tears: My (semi) rural kind of life (Georgie Brooks, Bad Apple Press)
31 October 2019
In the middle of another stifling summer in suburbia and in desperate need of a ‘tree change’ Georgie Brooks and her young family decide to make the bold move to...
Among the animals: Donna Mazza on ‘Fauna’
31 October 2019
Donna Mazza’s novel Fauna (A&U, February) is set in a near-future in which a woman is enticed into an experimental program that mixes her embryo with genetically edited cells. Reviewer...
No Neat Endings: Stories (Dominic Carew, MidnightSun)
31 October 2019
Dominic Carew sketches masculinity faltering or in crisis in his short story collection No Neat Endings. In these snapshots of manhood, Carew depicts male kinship and identity fraught with the...
Shark Arm: A shark, a tattooed arm and two unsolved murders (Phillip Roope & Kevin Meagher, A&U)
31 October 2019
Shark Arm is an offbeat true crime book that begins with a shark throwing up a man’s tattooed arm in front of onlookers at a Coogee aquarium in 1935. The...