Thursday, 3 November 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...

Wednesday, 26 October 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...

Wednesday, 19 October 2016
‘Footy fans will love “The Selwood Boys”. The series kicks off with great characters and fast-paced game-play, making it the perfect suggestion for readers of Specky Magee and Crawf’s Kick...

Wednesday, 12 October 2016
‘This remarkable book is about an imaginary place: Terra Australis Incognita, the Unknown Southern Land. Avan Judd Stallard tells the story of a geographical obsession and how it developed in...

Wednesday, 5 October 2016
‘To succeed, microfiction must combine efficiency of text with immediacy of imagery and neat narrative twists, all in a space small enough for a single reading. It’s an artform that...

Wednesday, 28 September 2016
‘This deceptively simple story by author Maxine Beneba Clarke is beautifully written and incredibly powerful. It uses evocative language and onomatopoeia to flesh out a world so physically different from...

Wednesday, 21 September 2016
‘Hannah Kent’s much-anticipated second novel is a thoroughly atmospheric and involving read with beautifully turned descriptions that show off Kent’s craft’ … read Lindy Jones’ full review here.

Wednesday, 14 September 2016
‘Fight Like a Girl is fuelled by Ford’s clear-eyed defiance and refusal to compromise, and by her powerful combination of personal testimony and political polemic’ … read Veronica Sullivan’s full...

Wednesday, 7 September 2016
‘Taken as a whole, this collection comes across as a fragmentary memoir, a patchwork of memories and recollections. Winton narrates the audiobook himself, a recommendation in itself for Winton fans’...

Wednesday, 24 August 2016
‘It’s fitting that a reviewer once described Australian musician Holly Throsby as “a songstress with [the] literary depth of a novelist”, because Throsby is now writing fiction—and her debut, Goodwood,...

Wednesday, 17 August 2016
‘Highly recommended for fans of Trinity Doyle’s Pieces of Sky and Fiona Wood’s Cloudwish, this is a love letter to books and bookshops, to the ocean, to falling in love...

Wednesday, 10 August 2016
‘Paul Mitchell’s debut novel is the rare book that seems to both invite every clichéd description of new Australian writing—visceral, lyrical, “Wintonesque”—and somehow read as genuinely innovative’ … read Myles...

Wednesday, 27 July 2016
‘The Love of a Bad Man offers what feels like a genuinely fresh reading experience: a short-fiction collection that marries true crime with literary fiction. In each discrete story, Melbourne-based...

Wednesday, 20 July 2016
‘Marchetta doesn’t shy away from the authentic emotions of her characters, her writing capturing their joy and pain as they navigate this crime through the veil of Europe’s simmering anti-Muslim...

Wednesday, 13 July 2016
‘Maxine Beneba Clarke’s storytelling in The Hate Race has a heft to it that is at once steeped in history, and also exquisitely and playfully modern; it is lyrical, sincere...

Wednesday, 6 July 2016
‘Dan Disney and Kit Kelen suggest poetry can “offer us new ways to understand mundane injustices [and] new ways to speak out”. Grand claims, perhaps, but ones borne out by...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
‘We don’t see much formally innovative, experimental writing in Australian fiction—realist narratives tend to rule the roost. Also rare is genuinely fine comic writing. Enter then Ryan O’Neill, who, with...

Wednesday, 22 June 2016
‘How much history and science can a reader learn from a graphic novel? This new art-science offering from publisher Scale Free Network suggests quite a lot! The Invisible War is...

Thursday, 16 June 2016
‘The Island Will Sink follows other recent Australian literary novels exploring the “cinematic uncertainty” of climate change, such as James Bradley’s Clade and Mireille Juchau’s The World Without Us, though...

Wednesday, 8 June 2016
‘A good subject is important, and Brett Whiteley was a genius who occupied a unique place in Australian culture. He was creative, selfish and, in the end, destructive, pushing boundaries...

Wednesday, 1 June 2016
‘Griffiths sheds light on Australia’s historical tradition—the shifts of orthodoxy and vantage point, the upheavals of technology and societal change, the relevance and scope of its endeavour—and argues for its...

Wednesday, 25 May 2016
‘A beautifully rendered portrayal of grief, family and leaving things behind, The Other Side of Summer is a welcome addition to the shelves of Australian middle fiction’ ... read Bec...

Wednesday, 18 May 2016
‘This new book by Bruce Pascoe (Fox a Dog, Sea Horse) has plenty to satisfy any horse lover, but also deftly handles issues of race and privilege’ ... read Angela...

Wednesday, 11 May 2016
‘Combining memoir, research and interviews, Joosten sheds light on the crises facing the elderly, and interrogates the “invisible turning point where we begin to punish the old for existing rather...

Wednesday, 4 May 2016
‘It is with this grim setting that we are drawn into Jane Harper’s world, which, though thoroughly steeped in the lore of crime fiction, does its best to subvert expectations...

Thursday, 28 April 2016
‘Armed with an uncanny ability to capture the zeitgeist of the time, … Julie Koh’s darkly satirical and convulsively funny short-story collection Portable Curiosities is as unsettling as it is...

Wednesday, 20 April 2016
‘Georgia Blain’s Between a Wolf and a Dog explores the intricacies of modern family life with the emotional veracity you might expect of a book with a therapist as a...

Wednesday, 13 April 2016
‘Author and director Julia Leigh began IVF treatment at 38, knowing that the odds were stacked against her yet still hoping that she would be “one of the lucky ones”....