Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Black Spring is a dark, gothic tale inspired by Wuthering Heights. In this fantasy version of 19th-century England, some people are born with magical powers. However, only the male babies...

Tuesday, 21 August 2012
This is a heartfelt and moving collection of short stories that cuts right to the emotional centre of everyday life. With her trademark evocative prose, Cate Kennedy exposes the almost...

Tuesday, 14 August 2012
In The Happiness Show, Australian comedian and writer Catherine Deveny turns her hand to fiction for the first time. The result is a lively, if a little predictable, blend of...

Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Raised in a fundamentalist family of Pentecostals, where sin is an ever-prevalent danger, 13-year-old Ruth must reconcile her faith with reality as dark family secrets unravel over the course of...

Tuesday, 31 July 2012
S.C.U.M. (Students Combined Underground Movement—the name Tom gives his group of misfit buddies) takes the reader on a day in the life of 14-year-old Tom Zurbo-Goldblatt, facing school bullies, his...

Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Judd Bell is a NASA astronaut who has lost his mojo. Ever since his best friend was killed in a shuttle disaster, he’s been doubting himself, and the strain is...

Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Sixteen-year-old Sadie is growing tired of spending her summer days lounging on the beach with her tedious cousins and her wants-to-be-more-than-a-friend Tom. She can’t wait to bid farewell to her...

Wednesday, 11 July 2012
The Rise of the Fifth Estate is a well-researched and engaging look at the world of social media and blogging in the context of the Australian political system, and author...

Wednesday, 4 July 2012
We first meet the Westaway family through the character of young Kip, brother to Francis and Connie, son to a grieving mother Jean and a recently deceased father. It is...

Wednesday, 27 June 2012
South Sudanese refugee Majok Tulba’s brutal, poetic debut views the monstrousness of war through the innocent eyes of a young boy. Beneath the Darkening Sky tells the harrowing tale of...

Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Fishing for Tigers is Emily Maguire’s fourth novel, and a departure from the darkness of the most recent Smoke in the Room. Maguire’s exploration of unconventional relationships ... is central...

Thursday, 14 June 2012
Roberta ‘Bertie’ Lightfoot suffers from polio as a child, and is helped through it by her tough-minded mother, along with the paper and pencils given to her by her father....

Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Aden wakes up in a blood-filled bathtub in a strange place. He knows he has killed himself, but remembers only fragments of his life. As he explores his surroundings he...

Wednesday, 30 May 2012
You may know of Susan Johnson for her brave memoir of motherhood, A Better Woman, or her novel about writer Charmian Clift, The Broken Book, among other titles. Her seventh...

Tuesday, 22 May 2012
'Although The Rest is Weight spans seven years of Mills’ short fiction, it has a graceful coherence of style and theme. With crisp, vivid prose, Mills inhabits the inner lives...