Dippy’s Big Day Out (Jackie French, illus by Bruce Whatley & Ben Smith Whatley, HarperCollins)
Monday, 7 January 2019
The creators of the much-loved picture book Diary of a Wombat, are back with a new book that is set centuries back in time. Dippy, short for Diprotodon, is the...
Into the Fire (Sonia Orchard, Affirm Press)
Thursday, 29 November 2018
Sonia Orchard’s second work of literary fiction, Into the Fire, is a distinctly Australian novel. Descriptions of smoky blue-green gums that paint a vivid picture of rural Victoria are balanced...
Fridays with My Folks (Amal Awad, Vintage)
Thursday, 29 November 2018
In her fifth nonfiction book, journalist Amal Awad investigates ageing in Australia from her perspective as an adult daughter grappling with a parent’s decline. Woven into her analysis is the...
Self-published picture book series wins global pitching competition
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Australian children’s book creators Yves Stening and Nigel Buchanan have won a pitching competition at the world’s biggest children’s entertainment industry event MIPJunior for their self-published picture book series ‘Dinner...
Introducing the picture book ‘Little Bird’s Day’
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Little Bird’s Day is the first picture book to be published through Magabala Books’ Kestin Indigenous Illustrator Award, teaming artist Johnny Warrkatja Malibirr with renowned author and illustrator Sally Morgan....
‘I Had Such Friends’ tops Australian YA bestsellers chart
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Australian YA bestsellers: October Debut author and high school teacher Meg Gatland-Veness is at the top of the Australian YA bestsellers chart for October with her novel I Had Such...
Introducing children’s book creator Aaron Blabey
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Aaron Blabey is the creator of the bestselling children’s book series ‘Pig the Pug’ and ‘The Bad Guys’ (Scholastic Australia), which have been sold into numerous territories around the world....
Lester wins Melbourne Prize for Literature
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Children’s author and illustrator Alison Lester has won the Melbourne Prize for Literature, presented every three years to a Victorian author ‘whose body of published work has made an outstanding...
Australian fashion designer to create two picture books for Berbay
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Berbay Publishing has acquired world rights to two picture books by one of Australia’s most celebrated fashion designers Collette Dinnigan. Berbay publishing director Alexandra Yatomi-Clarke said Dinnigan’s ‘fashion collections have...
‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ and ‘The Barefoot Investor for Families’ top Australian charts
Thursday, 15 November 2018
Liane Moriarty’s latest novel Nine Perfect Strangers has debuted at number one in the Australian fiction bestsellers chart, while three of her previous titles—The Husband’s Secret, Big Little Lies and...
Rising stars
Thursday, 15 November 2018
Australian debut novelists Kirsten Alexander and Holly Ringland may not be familiar names in international publishing circles yet, but they soon will be. Alexander’s Half Moon Lake has just sold...
Debut novel ‘Half Moon Lake’ sold to US, Canada
Thursday, 15 November 2018
US and Canadian rights to Kirsten Alexander’s debut novel Half Moon Lake (Penguin Random House Australia, January 2019) have been sold to Hachette Book Group’s Grand Central imprint. The novel...
Samuel Wagan Watson wins Patrick White Literary Award
Thursday, 15 November 2018
Poet, essayist, scriptwriter and performer Samuel Wagan Watson has won the Patrick White Literary Award, which is traditionally presented to authors who ‘have made a significant but inadequately recognised contribution...
Book-to-screen
Wednesday, 14 November 2018
Australian producer Bruna Papandrea’s company Made Up Stories—best known for co-producing the TV adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies—has acquired screen rights to Holly Ringland’s bestselling debut novel The...
Introducing Madeleine St John’s ‘The Women in Black’
Wednesday, 14 November 2018
Madeleine St John’s The Women in Black was in hot demand at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year after Text Publishing recently acquired translation rights. The coming-of-age story set in...
Stella the Unstoppable: The Talent Show Fiasco (Richard Newsome, Affirm)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Richard Newsome is known for action-packed adventure tales like his Text Prize-winning ‘Billionaire’ series, but his newest series, ‘Stella the Unstoppable’, is a little bit of a departure. Aimed at...
Fish Kid and the Lizard Ninja (Kylie Howarth, Walker Books)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Bodhi is a boy who travels the world with his parents (a scientist and a photographer) as they study marine environments, in this case the Galapagos Islands. He would much...
Gorski’s Bitemare (Robert Favretto, illus by Danny Willis, Ford St)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Gorski Dragonovski lives with his mum and dad and his sister Drusella. Their home is a castle outside of town and they sleep all day, in coffins. Gorski and his...
Tilly Maguire and the Royal Wedding Mess (Emma Grey, HarperCollins)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Author Emma Grey declares this gloriously soapy book an ‘unapologetic fairytale’. Grey has fun with classic fairytale elements as well as modern pop culture: indeed, the book features run-ins with...
Melody Trumpet (Gabrielle Tozer, HarperCollins)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Melody’s parents are world-famous musicians (and narcissistic bores) who expect their only daughter to have inherited their incredible talent, but poor Melody can’t play any instruments and sounds like a...
The Day We Built the Bridge (Samantha Tidy, illus by Fiona Burrows, MidnightSun)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Samantha Tidy and Fiona Burrows take the creation of a national icon, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and strip it back to a streamlined, succinct story of a need, an idea...
Fusion (Kate Richards, Hamish Hamilton)
Thursday, 1 November 2018
Kate Richards burst onto the literary scene in 2013 with her award-winning Madness: A Memoir, which described her decade of living with psychosis. She returns now with her first novel,...
A Season on Earth (Gerald Murnane, Text)
Thursday, 1 November 2018
In 1976 William Heinemann published Gerald Murnane’s second novel, A Lifetime on Clouds. In the book’s originally published two parts, the protagonist Adrian Sherd, a student at a Catholic high...
Yahoo Creek (Tohby Riddle, A&U)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
In this imaginative work, Tohby Riddle delves into the mystery of the yahoo (or the yowie, as it is commonly known today). Reported sightings of these large, hairy beasts were...
Queen Celine (Matt Shanks, Walker Books)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
Matt Shanks’ latest picture book introduces us to Celine Beaufort. Celine lives a fairly ordinary life, doing ordinary things, but sometimes she gets to be the queen of a very...
Mallee Sky (Jodi Toering, illus by Tannya Harricks, Walker Books)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
The Australia of Mallee Sky is a familiar one—wide, red-brown, drought-stricken, unforgiving, yet strikingly beautiful—but never a cliche. The book avoids patronising children, instead welcoming them into a mature literary...
47 Degrees (Justin D’Ath, Puffin)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
Author Justin D’Ath lost his home in Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires, and the story of that harrowing day forms the basis for his new novel, 47 Degrees. The morning of...
Call Me Evie (J P Pomare, Hachette)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
What do you do when you can’t remember the incident that changed your life? Seventeen-year-old Kate—now using the alias ‘Evie’ to protect her identity—is being held captive in a remote...
Half Moon Lake (Kirsten Alexander, Bantam)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
In July of 1913 Sonny Davenport, the four-year-old son of a prominent family in America’s Deep South, goes missing. The father puts his political ambitions on hold to chase up...
Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook (Jacqueline Kent, UQP)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
On the face of it, Jacqueline Kent’s memoir feels like a simple story, a May to December romance between editor Kent and author Kenneth Cook. Like most of us, Kent...
