Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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The new issue has landed!

Well, the shiny new issue of Bookseller+Publisher has landed, with a big fat 20 on the cover—that’d be Allen & Unwin, who are celebrating 20 years of independent publishing this year. Happy Birthday A&U!

The July issue is full of news, profiles, author interviews and of course, reviews. There are several titles that earned five stars this time around, including The Good Daughter (Honey Brown, Viking, July), which Kate Summers at Riverbend Books says ‘carries the same dark, atmospheric weight of Sonya Harnett’s books, with an authenticity that will resonate with teenage, as well as adult readers’; Jon Bauer’s Rocks in the Belly (Scribe, August)—anybody who reads this book and isn’t instantly a fan probably wasn’t paying close enough attention’, says B Owen Baxter—and Kindling (Darren Groth, Hachette, July), which Toni Whitmont of online bookshop Booktopia says ‘is an absolute stunner’, with ‘shades of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time‘, and ‘in parts, of Scot Gardner’s Burning Eddy‘.

Tony Wilson’s Making News (Pier 9, July) impressed Riverbend Bookshop’s Lee McGowan, who calls the novel ‘a scathing commentary on tabloid journalism’s gorge on the greasy spoon of contemporary celebrity’—’a fast-paced, near-realist melodrama sliced through with box-cutter blade humour’.

Fashion-lovers are sure to share Bookseller+Publisher columnist Jo Simpson’s view of the new Thames & Hudson title Fashion: Australian and New Zealand Designers (Mitchell Oakley Smith, August)—’at once a useful reference, a handy directory of designers and some very attractive eye candy’. Eye candy of a different kind can be found in Rare & Curious: The Secret History of Governor Macquarie’s Collectors Chest (Miegunyah Press, August), which is ‘lavishly illustrated with photographs of the chests, their contents and period paintings’ and ‘will appeal to readers with an interest in colonial history’, according to Chris Harrington of Melbourne’s Books in Print bookstore.

These books are among the dozens of forthcoming Australian and New Zealand titles reviewed in the July issue. Subscribers, look out for your copy, winging its way to you as we type. Non-subscribers, you’ll find a list of places good enough to stock the magazine here, as well as details on how to subscribe. (Or, you can sign up to our free fortnightly email here.)

 

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Category: Fancy Goods Reviews