Joss: A History (Grace Yee, Giramondo)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Grace Yee’s Joss: A History uncovers the lives of Chinese immigrants in Australia during the 19th and 20th centuries through a powerful blend of archival research and poetry. Viewing White...
Clunes Booktown 2025 – books, bands, and breaking records
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Under blue skies and a hot sun, Clunes transformed into Booktown during the weekend of 22–23 March, welcoming about 10,000 visitors and a record 135 booksellers. Books+Publishing publishing director Kate...
The Book of Guilt (Catherine Chidgey, Penguin)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Welcome to an alternative version of the UK in the 1970s. In Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt, Hitler is assassinated in 1943. After a purge of senior Nazis and...
The Letter Writer (Binny Talib, Windy Hollow)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
The Letter Writer by author and illustrator Binny Talib (Sloths Love Parties) opens with stunning endpapers – a delightful collage of envelopes adorned with scribbles and doodles that immediately draws...
Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family (Micaela Sahhar, NewSouth)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Several generations into the Palestinian diaspora in Australia, Micaela Sahhar explores the complexities of being disconnected from her ancestral land in Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of...
Too Many Dogs (Maura Finn, illus Lucinda Gifford, Affirm)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Too Many Dogs is a charming and light-hearted picture book from the creative pairing behind Too Many Cats that explores what it means to be top dog. In their new collaboration,...
Nightingale (Laura Elvery, UQP)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Grounded in history and buoyed by Laura Elvery’s elegant, moving prose, Nightingale is a fictional reimagining of the near-mythic figure of Florence Nightingale, told in three parts. The first and...
Viet Kieu: Recipes Remembered from Vietnam (Thi Le, Murdoch)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
‘Viet Kieu’ is a Vietnamese term used for people of Vietnamese heritage who were raised and are living in the diaspora. In Viet Kieu: Recipes remembered from Vietnam, Thi Le,...
Vale Jeannine Fowler
Monday, 17 March 2025
Jeannine Fowler, former publicity director at Pan Macmillan Australia, has died. Pan Macmillan publicity and marketing director Tracey Cheetham writes: Pan Macmillan Australia is profoundly saddened to advise of the...
The Surface Trials (HM Waugh, A&U Children’s)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Starquest Academy is an elite school for exceptional students from around the galaxy. Notoriously difficult to enter, Starquest requires prospects to undergo a three-day televised challenge on an unknown planet....
Wandering Wild (Lynette Noni, Penguin)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Wandering Wild, the latest novel from Lynette Noni (The Prison Healer), is the perfect cosy romance read. The dual-perspective narrative follows Zander, a Hollywood ‘bad boy’ desperate to rebuild his...
Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated (Joseph Earp, Pantera)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated is both surprisingly tender and hilariously acerbic, with Joseph Earp’s writing effortlessly drawing the reader in. The novel follows Ellie Robertson, an artist...
Orpheus Nine (Chris Flynn, Hachette)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
When a boys’ soccer game in the regional town of Gattan is interrupted by a grotesque supernatural event that ushers in a new world order, residents of the town –...
The Confidence Woman (Sophie Quick, A&U)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Christina Swales is a single mum, a business coach – and a blackmailer. Using incriminating information gleaned from her one-on-one online coaching sessions, Christina blackmails her clients to save enough...
Community, persistence key to ‘alchemy’ at 2025 GenreCon
Monday, 3 March 2025
This past weekend, Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) held its annual GenreCon (28 February to 2 March), dedicated to the craft and industry of writing in the five major genres of...
Quarks, Sparks and Quantum Mysteries: A Cosmic Guide to the Building Blocks of our Universe (Lisa Harvey-Smith, illus Aidan Ryan, T&H)
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Astrophysicist professor Lisa Harvey-Smith has created another brilliant book as part of her mission to open up science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to children at a time when they...
The Passenger Seat (Vijay Khurana, Ultimo)
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Beginning mid-jump and barely letting up the tension, Vijay Khurana’s debut novel, The Passenger Seat, is an unusual and deftly written literary thriller. It follows the uneasy friendship between two...
When She Was Gone (Sara Foster, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Sara Foster’s When She Was Gone stands out in a crowded thriller market for its unique blend of suspense, character depth and emotional resonance. Set in the fictional town of...
Peninsula Records and Books opens on the Yorke Peninsula
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Peninsula Records and Books has opened a shopfront in Stansbury on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, with a selection of books ‘exclusively focused on Australian authors, supporting both iconic...
The Paperbark Tree Committee (Karys McEwen, Text)
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
The Paperbark Tree Committee, Karys McEwen’s second middle grade novel following All the Little Tricky Things, is a tender, compassionate story about navigating transitions and finding support in unexpected places....
Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective (Kelly Gardiner & Sharmini Kumar, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Miss Caroline Bingley, the spurned love interest of Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Darcy, turns her prodigious mind to the problem of a missing maid, uncovering a murder and a dastardly...
Consider Yourself Kissed (Jessica Stanley, Text)
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Consider Yourself Kissed is a romance set in London against the backdrop of the UK’s escalating political crises of the 21st century: Tory leadership struggles and re-election and Brexit, culminating...
Desert Tracks (Marly Wells & Linda Wells, Magabala)
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Desert Tracks is a young adult time travel novel set in central Australia and written by daughter-mother duo Marly Wells, a proud woman of Warlpiri and white Australian descent, and...
The Sun Was Electric Light (Rachel Morton, UQP)
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Haunted by a pervasive sense of unreality, Ruth leaves her life in New York to return to the last place she loved: a lake in southern Guatemala. In the small...
An Invisible Tattoo (Suellen Dainty, Echo)
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Suellen Dainty (The Housekeeper, After Everything) deftly transforms her literary novel An Invisible Tattoo into a gripping mystery, social exposé and moral dilemma by skilfully concealing then revealing how a...
How to Be Normal (Ange Crawford, Walker)
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Ange Crawford’s debut novel, How to Be Normal, is a visceral and compelling read. It centres on Astrid, who is returning to high school after five years of homeschooling. She...
Unbury the Dead (Fiona Hardy, Affirm)
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Fiona Hardy’s Unbury the Dead is a masterful blend of fast-paced crime and Australian noir, balancing grit and dry humour with effortless skill. Set against the vivid backdrops of rural...
The Food of Bharat: A Chef’s Journey Through India’s Rich Culinary History (Helly Raichura, Hardie Grant Books)
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Self-taught chef Helly Raichura started her career in 2018, hosting a supper club called Enter Via Laundry out of her Melbourne home, and she quickly gained national popularity. Raichura set...
First Name Second Name (Steve MinOn, UQP)
Tuesday, 28 January 2025
In Steve MinOn’s debut novel, First Name Second Name, the story spans four generations of the Chinese Australian Bolin family, whose roots in Australia date back to the late 19th...
This Stays Between Us (Margot McGovern, Penguin)
Tuesday, 28 January 2025
Margot McGovern’s second young adult novel, This Stays Between Us, may have taken seven years, but it’s worth the wait. This gripping thriller, set in the year 2000, is a...
