Split: True Stories of Leaving, Loss, and New Beginnings (ed by Lee Kofman, Ventura)
Friday, 26 April 2019
Author and editor Lee Kofman sent a callout for personal essays about breaking up. The essays could be about any kind of separation: with people, objects, whatever. Split: True Stories...
The White Girl (Tony Birch, UQP)
Friday, 26 April 2019
Tony Birch’s latest novel tells the story of Odette Brown and her granddaughter Sissy, who live on the fringe of Deane, a fictional town situated between the mountains and the...
The Nancys (R W R McDonald, A&U)
Friday, 26 April 2019
In the poky New Zealand town of Riverstone—home of bad interior design, dull news cycles and not much else—11-year-old Tippy Chan’s mother is about to go on holiday. Tippy’s flamboyant...
The Electric Hotel (Dominic Smith, A&U)
Friday, 26 April 2019
Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel is a sensory delight, retelling the life story of a former film director—known as ‘the Frenchman behind the viewfinder’—with the rich vocabulary of cinema. Claude...
Allegra in Three Parts (Suzanne Daniel, Macmillan)
Friday, 26 April 2019
In this impressive debut novel, 11-year-old Allegra finds herself torn between the three adults in her life: her two grandmothers and her father. They live on adjoining blocks and adore...
Fish Song (Caitlin Maling, Fremantle Press)
Friday, 26 April 2019
Fish Song is Caitlin Maling’s third full-length collection after her 2015 debut Conversations I've Never Had (shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award and in the WA Premier's Book Awards)...
Hitch (Kathryn Hind, Hamish Hamilton)
Friday, 26 April 2019
Kathryn Hind was the recipient of the inaugural Penguin Australia Literary Prize in 2018 for Hitch, a contemporary novel set in Australia. The protagonist, Amelia, is a naive young woman...
After She Left (Penelope Hanley, Ventura)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
After She Left is an exploration of feminism in relation to the arts, domestic life and the cultural ramifications of non-traditional motherhood. It spans six decades and the lives of...
A Lovely and Terrible Thing (Chris Womersley, Picador)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
A Lovely and Terrible Thing is novelist Chris Womersley’s debut short story collection, and his first book since 2017’s City of Crows. Of the 20 stories in the collection, 17...
Race, Islam and Power: Ethnic and Religious Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia (Andreas Harsono, Monash University Publishing)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
After the collapse of the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998, journalist Andreas Harsono spent almost three years travelling across Indonesia. Race, Islam and Power, which chronicles this journey, is a...
Daughter of Bad Times (Rohan Wilson, A&U)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Vogel Award-winning novelist Rohan Wilson is back with another gripping page-turner, this time in the form of a dystopian tale set 50 years in the future. Sea levels have risen,...
Room for a Stranger (Melanie Cheng, Text)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
After an attempted home invasion leaves her feeling unsafe, elderly Meg signs on with a homeshare agency: Andy, an international student from Hong Kong who’s come to Melbourne to study...
The Lost Arabs (Omar Sakr, UQP)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Omar Sakr’s second poetry collection is an assured and vibrant exploration of doubt and faith. Following on from his Kenneth Slessor Prize-nominated debut These Wild Houses, this collection explores the...
Attraction (Ruby Porter, Text)
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Auckland-based writer Ruby Porter’s debut novel Attraction, winner of the inaugural Michael Gifkins Prize for an unpublished novel, is a melancholic and haunting meditation on postcolonial guilt and the stories...
Unlikely heroes: R W R McDonald on ‘The Nancys’
Tuesday, 19 March 2019
R W R McDonald’s debut novel The Nancys (A&U in June) was highly commended in the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards unpublished manuscript prize. Reviewer Fiona Hardy spoke to the author...
Generational exchange: Melanie Cheng on ‘Room for a Stranger’
Tuesday, 19 March 2019
Melanie Cheng’s debut novel Room for a Stranger (Text, May) follows the unlikely friendship between an elderly Australian woman and an international student from Hong Kong. Reviewer Carody Culver spoke...
Fled (Meg Keneally, Echo)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Having co-written the ‘Monsarrat’ historical fiction series with her father, Meg Keneally makes her solo debut with the gripping tale of one extraordinary woman’s life-long battle for survival. Following an...
River of Salt (Dave Warner, Fremantle Press)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
After fronting a rock band in the late 1970s and later writing for film and TV, Dave Warner now taps a rich seam of character-driven crime novels. His 2015 book...
The Place on Dalhousie (Melina Marchetta, Viking)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Melina Marchetta writes masterfully about messy relationships, whether they are familial or romantic, and her new novel is no exception. When Rosie Gennaro meets Jimmy Hailler, the two enter into...
Unconditional Love: A Memoir of Filmmaking and Motherhood (Jocelyn Moorhouse, Text)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
When Jocelyn Moorhouse’s film Proof was released in 1991, it created excitement—here was a new Australian writer-director with a startlingly original eye. International success quickly followed, but then she disappeared...
Eight Lives (Susan Hurley, Affirm)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Former refugee David Tran has invented a wonder-drug that could transform immunology. With the first human trial about to take place, David, the new Golden Boy of Australian medical research,...
The Gift of Life (Josephine Moon, Michael Joseph)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
In her latest novel, Josephine Moon poses the question, ‘How much of the original donor travels with their donated organs?’ The story follows Gabby, the recent recipient of a heart...
The Colonial Fantasy: Why White Australia Can’t Solve Black Problems (Sarah Maddison, A&U)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Underpinned by denial, myth-making and blame-shifting, the settler rationale is prevalent throughout Australian history, justifying the frontier wars, dispossession and the Stolen Generations. The Colonial Fantasy by Melbourne University professor...
City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest (Sophie Cunningham, Text)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
In this poignant and timely collection of essays, Sophie Cunningham touches on matters private and political, historical and current, beautiful and terrifying—but always coming back to her obvious adoration of...
Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics (Troy Bramston, Scribe)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Journalist and former political advisor Troy Bramston’s new biography of Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving prime minister, aims to refocus the historical lens. Too often Menzies is written off as...
Growing up African in Australia (ed by Maxine Beneba Clarke, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Growing up African in Australia is a new anthology edited by Maxine Beneba Clarke with Ahmed Yussef and Magan Magan. The anthology is a mixture of experienced and emerging writers’...
Exploded View (Carrie Tiffany, Text)
Friday, 1 February 2019
The name of Carrie Tiffany’s third book, Exploded View, refers to the type of diagram found in technical manuals that shows the spaces between each individual part and how they...
Hare’s Fur (Trevor Shearston, Scribe)
Friday, 1 February 2019
Russell Bass is a professional potter in his seventies, leading a quiet and solitary life in the Blue Mountains following the death of his wife. While gathering basalt for his...
Black is the New White (Nakkiah Lui, A&U)
Friday, 1 February 2019
Black is the New White is the play script of a contemporary romantic comedy written for the stage by Gamillaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman Nakkiah Lui. Young couple Charlotte...
Stranger Country (Monica Tan, A&U)
Friday, 1 February 2019
At first it’s hard to know how to interpret Monica Tan’s intention to discover ‘the Australia lying beyond her hometown’ and to ‘learn about Aboriginal Australia’ as she travels on...
