Trick of the Light (Laura Elvery, UQP)
Thursday, 25 January 2018
The 24 stories in Brisbane writer Laura Elvery’s debut collection Trick of the Light span countries and centuries, ranging stylistically from stark realism to light speculative fiction. Some are vignettes,...
The Ruin (Dervla McTiernan, HarperCollins)
Thursday, 25 January 2018
The Ruin is as much a morality tale as it is an incendiary page-turner. This superior, haunting novel of murder, deception and ethical dilemma is set in Galway, on Ireland’s...
Little Gods (Jenny Ackland, A&U)
Thursday, 25 January 2018
Jenny Ackland’s second novel, Little Gods, couldn’t be mistaken for anything but an Australian book. The Mallee countryside leaps off the page with its great hulking peppercorns and flattened brown-farmland....
Apple and Knife (Intan Paramaditha, trans by Stephen J Epstein, Brow Books)
Thursday, 25 January 2018
The universe within which Apple and Knife unfolds is both mythological and everyday—from office cubicles to rat-infested underground cities, sometimes in the same breath. Sydney-based Indonesian horror writer Intan Paramaditha’s...
Deadly Woman Blues (Clinton Walker, NewSouth)
Thursday, 25 January 2018
Spanning over 150 years and featuring more than 100 artists, Clinton Walker's Deadly Woman Blues explores how the intricacies of gender, race and genre shaped a musical history in Australia...
Write on: 2018 nonfiction preview
Thursday, 26 October 2017
Andrea Hanke reports on Australian publishers’ local nonfiction highlights for 2018. Click here for the full preview. Recently retired Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy will release his memoir with Black...
Write on: 2018 fiction preview
Thursday, 26 October 2017
New books by Ceridwen Dovey, Kristina Olsson, Melissa Lucashenko, Lloyd Jones and Gerald Murnane, and a number of highly anticipated debuts, are among Australian publishers’ local highlights for 2018, reports...
Flight of fantasy: Tracy Sorensen on ‘The Lucky Galah’
Thursday, 26 October 2017
Tracy Sorensen’s The Lucky Galah (Picador, March) recounts the lives of ordinary Australians from the 1960s until the 2000s, as narrated by a galah called Lucky. The conceit is handled...
Before I Let You Go (Kelly Rimmer, Hachette)
Monday, 23 October 2017
Successful physician Lexie receives a frantic call in the middle of the night—her younger sister Annie is addicted to heroin and heavily pregnant. Lexie rushes Annie to hospital, but the...
The Cage (Lloyd Jones, Text)
Monday, 23 October 2017
Two strangers appear in a generic town, both claiming to have survived a catastrophe. They are unable to explain what happened, where it happened or even who they are. They...
Cake at Midnight (Jessie L Star, S&S)
Monday, 23 October 2017
Gio (the baker), Declan (the brains) and Zoe (the beauty) have always been a trio, but a few thoughtless words from Declan force Gio to face the truth: he’ll never...
Dyschronia (Jennifer Mills, Picador)
Monday, 23 October 2017
In a remote, single-industry Australian town, a young girl, Sam, starts to suffer from migraines. The sharp pain is accompanied by visions of the future, which her sceptical mother warns...
The Earth Does Not Get Fat (Julia Prendergast, UWA Publishing)
Monday, 23 October 2017
Julia Prendergast’s first novel, The Earth Does Not Get Fat, is an almost verse-like narrative filled with poignantly described intimate thoughts and emotions. Teenager Chelsea has her hands full caring...
The Everlasting Sunday (Robert Lukins, UQP)
Monday, 23 October 2017
Coming-of-age boarding school stories have a special place in the literary world; the teenage experiences of angst, confusion and ambition, combined with the greater potential for violence in an all-male...
Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband (Barbara Toner, Bantam)
Monday, 23 October 2017
It’s 1919, the Great War is over and the Spanish Flu has ended. In rural New South Wales, four women find themselves beset with problems and with no men in...
Hangman (Jack Heath, A&U)
Monday, 23 October 2017
In the age of the anti-hero, morally ambiguous characters compel readers to empathise with and root for them, despite their troubled natures and character flaws. Enter Timothy Blake, the Hangman,...
The Lebs (Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Hachette)
Monday, 23 October 2017
Punchbowl Boys High, often dubbed ‘NSW’s most troubled school’, was the subject of a 2016 autobiographical essay by Michael Mohammed Ahmad. Now, that reminiscence of his alma mater has become...
The Lucky Galah (Tracy Sorensen, Picador)
Monday, 23 October 2017
It is testament to debut author Tracy Sorensen’s talent that, against all odds, choosing to have a galah narrate her novel never becomes gimmicky. Somehow the reader suspends disbelief and...
The Naturalist’s Daughter (Tea Cooper, HQ)
Monday, 23 October 2017
At the heart of Tea Cooper’s The Naturalist’s Daughter are the stories of two bold, inspirational women connected across history by a great scientific controversy—the classification of the platypus. This...
Spinifex and Sunflowers (Avan Judd Stallard, Fremantle Press)
Monday, 23 October 2017
This disturbing novel is based on the experiences of its author, who spent three months working at Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in Western Australia. His protagonist, a university dropout and...
The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Heather Morris, Echo)
Monday, 23 October 2017
This novel is based on an incredible true story of resilience, loss and survival—the result of years of interviews between Heather Morris and Holocaust survivor Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov. The Tattooist...
A Free Flame: Australian Women Writers and Vocation in the Twentieth Century (Ann-Marie Priest, UWA Publishing)
Monday, 23 October 2017
This book traces the creative vocations of four notable Australian women writers of the mid-20th century, hinging on the notion of writing as an urgent, privately held imperative. Ann-Marie Priest’s...
Border Districts (Gerald Murnane, Giramondo)
Thursday, 28 September 2017
In Border Districts, which is conceived as Gerald Murnane’s last work of fiction, the narrator has moved to a remote town, near the border of a neighbouring state, so that he...
Dissent (Sally Percival Wood, Scribe)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
Sally Percival Wood’s Dissent is a lively and accessible slice of Australian cultural history. Percival Wood revisits the tumultuous 1960s and reveals the extent to which an unlikely and often-forgotten...
A Timeline of Australian Food (Jan O’Connell, NewSouth)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
Jan O’Connell’s A Timeline of Australian Food is a worthy and useful addition to the small but growing canon of Australian food history writing. Spanning 1860 to 2010, the book...
The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson’s Cancer Con (Beau Donelly & Nick Toscano, Scribe)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
The now infamous story of how Belle Gibson gave false hope to cancer patients in a global health and wellness scam is a treasure trove of lies and complicit enabling....
My Life and Other Fictions (Michael Giacometti, Spineless Wonders)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
Bringing together 20 very different stories, My Life and Other Fictions is a bold debut from Michael Giacometti and a unique exercise in experimentation with form and voice. Initially it...
Into the World (Stephanie Parkyn, A&U)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
Inspired by true events in the 18th century, Into the World is the story of Marie-Louise Girardin, an unwed woman who must escape revolutionary France to save the life of...
Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation (Renate Klein, Spinifex)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
Renate Klein’s book on surrogacy is intended to be a feminist work focusing on the rights of the surrogate, donor and child. Klein sets out her oppositions to the practice by...
Tracker (Alexis Wright, Giramondo)
Wednesday, 27 September 2017
A biography can be written in a standard form: subject born, raised, educated, worked and died. And that will be fine for most people. But not Tracker Tilmouth. He was a polarising, intelligent, charismatic...
