Tuesday, 27 September 2016
The Trapeze Act is a beautifully lyrical novel about the search for meaning and identity in 1970s Australia. This is quite a task for Loretta—daughter of a loose-cannon ex-carnie mother...

Tuesday, 27 September 2016
The first book in a new crime series, The Unfortunate Victim follows Prussian detective Otto Berliner as he solves the murder of 17-year-old Maggie Stuart in 1860s Daylesford. This book...

Tuesday, 27 September 2016
Daniel, a 35-year-old Australian lawyer, leaves his LA base and girlfriend behind to return home upon hearing of the ill health of his mother Ruth. Upon arrival to the horse...

Tuesday, 27 September 2016
This is an intriguing collection of short stories where things are seldom what they seem and characters are preoccupied by their past actions. Shaped less by plot than by precise...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
The End of Patriarchy by US academic Robert Jensen is a summary explanation of how radical feminism informs politics, written for an audience of men. Readers should bring an entry-level...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Julia Baird’s excellent and sadly out-of-print first book, Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians, was an engrossing dissection of gender, politics and power with the pace and...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Linda Neil’s beguiling memoir All is Given deserves to be read by anyone with an ounce of adventure or romance in their soul, albeit with a touch of caution. As...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Massacres of Indigenous Australians were not unusual during the early colonial history of Australia. What sets the 1838 mass murder at Myall Creek in central New South Wales apart was...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
While many biographies have explored the story of Heide and its art community, M E McGuire takes a fresh look at that world and early 20th-century society through the eyes...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Colonial Australia was born with a drinking problem. Like a lot of the infant colony’s problems, alcohol addiction was inherited from the mother country. Many historical narratives of Australia, most...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Body language and relationship experts Allan and Barbara Pease have sold over 20 million copies worldwide of their previous titles Why Men Don’t Listen and Woman Can’t Read Road Maps...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
The Australian book industry voted Rachael Johns’ The Patterson Girls its 2015 General Fiction Book of the Year. Her new novel will also appeal to mainstream women’s fiction readers, as...

Thursday, 25 August 2016
Catherine de Saint Phalle’s first work of nonfiction, Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir, is an intricately woven narrative that centres on the author’s eccentric and charmingly flawed parents. Her...

Monday, 8 August 2016
Paul Cosentino was a 12-year-old boy with reading difficulties when he discovered a book on magic in his local library. With the support of his family, Paul’s fascination with magic...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
Carmel Bird is an incredibly distinctive writer who has earned a loyal following of fans in the literary community. In Family Skeleton, she mixes acidic authorial asides with an intimate...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
Septuagenarian Gwen and husband Eric are long-term residents of Green Valley Avenue, a quiet leafy corner in Sydney. When her beloved friend next-door dies, and her house is put on...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
Meticulously researched and historically compelling, Karen Brooks’ The Locksmith’s Daughter transports the reader to 16th-century London, at the height of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and into the tumultuous world of Mallory...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
In December 1926, Agatha Christie, already a well-known novelist, starred in her own mystery when she ‘disappeared’ for 11 days without a word to her husband or six-year-old daughter. The...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
A trained GP, Jacinta Halloran continues to draw on her medical knowledge in her third novel, The Science of Appearances, exploring genetics—and its controversial twin eugenics. The novel opens with...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
Bob Ellis was an Australian journalist, writer, filmmaker, and political observer, and this latest posthumous collection of his writing, In His Own Words, is a selection of his work chosen...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
According to the dominant narrative, the demise of Australia’s car industry is easy to explain: we just couldn’t compete with competitors in Asia. The imminent closure of the car factories...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
In her engaging debut, Fairfax columnist and feminist Clementine Ford surveys what it means to be a girl in the world today, covering topics from eating disorders and abortion, to...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
In 1971, South Africa under apartheid sent its last sporting team to Australia. It caused an intense polarisation of opinion, demonstrations at matches and even riots in the streets. Opposition...

Thursday, 28 July 2016
Women’s team sport is frequently overlooked when it comes to mainstream media, so it may come as a surprise then to find out that the Australian Diamonds Netball team are...

Friday, 8 July 2016
Tim Winton’s The Boy behind the Curtain is a collection of essays and reminiscences, some of it new and some previously published. Readers of Winton’s novels and stories will be...