Signal Erased (Adele Jones, Rhiza Edge)
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
Signal Erased is the latest YA near-science-fiction novel by Adele Jones. The story follows Anna Faraday, a high schooler with a remarkable singing voice and a traumatic past. While occupied with...
Audrey’s Gone AWOL (Annie de Monchaux, Ultimo)
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
Annie de Monchaux’s debut novel, Audrey’s Gone AWOL, is a beautifully crafted and witty coming-of-middle-age tale that explores womanhood, motherhood, life, death, marriage and betrayal. Audrey has devoted her life...
The Pinchers and the Diamond Heist (Anders Sparring, illus Per Gustavsson, Gecko Press)
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
Anders Sparring’s The Pinchers and the Diamond Heist is a first-in-series chapter book that ticks many boxes young primary school children love: comedy, crime, and fun family connections. Opening with...
Alice™: The biggest untold story in the history of money (Stuart Kells, MUP)
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
An Australian inventor patented the future of world finance. An Australian journalist saw what finance had become and told the world. Business and finance writer Stuart Kells (The Library: A...
The Cave (Victor Kelleher, Eagle Books)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
In Victor Kelleher’s upper-middle-grade prehistoric adventure novel The Cave, young Irian—one of the few survivors after the Beast (a sabre-toothed tiger) attacks the cave where he lives—is traumatised into muteness...
How to Knit a Human (Anna Jacobson, NewSouth)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
The contents of Anna Jacobson’s memoir How to Knit a Human are the stuff of nightmares: a young, award-winning artist and poet has a psychotic break, is involuntarily hospitalised and...
Amma (Saraid de Silva, Moa Press)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
Annie Fernando has flown to London to meet her estranged uncle Suri. So begins the captivating tale of family, love and secrets told through the lives of three generations of...
Excitable Boy: Essays on risk (Dominic Gordon, Upswell)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
Dominic Gordon’s Excitable Boy: Essays on risk is a collection of punchy vignettes about his life growing up in Melbourne in the 1990s and early 2000s. Gordon sets out an...
Seed to Sky: Life in the Daintree (Pamela Freeman, illus Liz Anelli, Walker)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
With breathtaking illustrations, Seed to Sky: Life in the Daintree is packed with fun facts about the animals and plants native to the Daintree Rainforest region. After the success of...
Mitchell Itches (Kristin Kelly, illus Amelina Jones, EK Books)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
With one in five children living with eczema, Mitchell Itches will be a valuable resource for those looking to better understand and manage this common condition. Written by nurse and preschool...
Pheasants Nest (Louise Milligan, A&U)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
Pheasants Nest is a thriller about every journalist’s nightmare—that they, too, will be reduced to clickbait headlines and long-form reflective true crime essays. There may be no more fitting journalist...
Roarsome (Joel Slack-Smith, illus Rebel Challenger, Scholastic)
Tuesday, 6 February 2024
Roarsome is the first book in a new illustrated junior fiction series by TV comedy writer Joel Slack-Smith. Like many kids, Walter wants the latest tech for his birthday—a nitro-powered...
Gus and the Missing Boy (Troy Hunter, Wakefield)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
Gus Green is his injured mother’s primary carer after she was involved in a car accident; he is also gay and overweight. A true crime fanatic with aspirations of one...
Joy Moody Is Out of Time (Kerryn Mayne, Bantam)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
For two decades, Cassiopeia (Cassie) and Andromeda (Andie) Moody have understood their destiny. They are special, chosen and kept safe, spending most of their lives within the confines of their Melbourne home,...
Unique: What autism can teach us about difference, connection and belonging (Jodi Rodgers, Hachette)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
Neurodiversity commentary often references the double empathy problem, the concept that (put simply) neurodivergent–neurotypical communication can be more challenging than communication between people with the same neurotype. A related concept—neurodivergent...
My Heart (Katrina McKelvey, illus Deb Hudson, EK Books)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
My Heart by Katrina McKelvey is a picture book about a loving mother–child relationship. The mother character reflects on her feelings while pregnant, after birth and as she watches her...
Kin: Family in the 21st century (Marina Kamenev, NewSouth)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
While women’s rights over their bodies continue to be depleted in the United States, Kin: Family in the 21st century presents the history of a related struggle: the right to...
Alphabetter (Maura Pierlot, illus Jorge Garcia Redondo, Affirm)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
Alphabetter: A Better You and Me, from A to Z is a new educational picture book from Affirm Press, which published the popular Life Lessons for Little Ones series. Written by...
To The River (Vikki Wakefield, Text)
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
The Kelly family was always skirting trouble. When 17-year-old Sabine Kelly’s mum and sister die with seven other people in a mysterious caravan park fire, Sabine confesses to the crime...
Look Me in the Eye (Jane Godwin, Lothian)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
Look Me in the Eye is the latest young adult novel by award-winning author Jane Godwin. The story centres around Bella, a 13-year-old girl who leads quite a wholesome, drama-free...
Circles of Life (Gregg Dreise, Puffin)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
Circles of Life is a picture book in verse that shares the tradition, beauty and importance of Thank You Circles, or Gabayindah Guroos. These artworks are painted in layers to...
Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice (Natalie Paull, Hardie Grant)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
Come a Saturday morning, the line for Beatrix Bakes, a cult North Melbourne café and bakery, would snake down the street. Its closure in 2022—a personal tragedy for this reviewer—even...
The Rewilding (Donna M Cameron, Transit Lounge)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
Jagger Eckerman, the scion of a corrupt construction mogul and protagonist of Donna M Cameron’s second novel, blows his life up one morning by sending a fateful email whistleblowing the...
The Independent Pea (Maree Coote, Melbournestyle)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
Maree Coote’s love of vegetables, indulged vibrantly in her 2023 picture book Letters for Lunch!, gets another airing in The Independent Pea. This time, it’s an invigorating story about the...
Break the Curse (Shower Land #1) (Nat Amoore, illus James Hart, Puffin)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
The first in a new junior fiction series, Shower Land 1: Break the Curse is a fun, whimsical book that will appeal to kids who enjoy fantasy and humour plots....
Shining Like the Sun (Stephen Orr, Wakefield)
Tuesday, 23 January 2024
Stephen Orr's Shining Like the Sun is like an Australian version of A Man Called Ove, with the same qualities of grit and humanity that made the Swedish novel so...
What Happened to Nina? (Dervla McTiernan, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
Nina and Simon are teenage sweethearts, but cracks are starting to show in their relationship. After a stint of long distance, they decide to get away to Simon's parents’ new...
Saturday Is Pancake Day (Bernadette Green, illus Daniel Gray-Barnett, Scribble)
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
In the lively domestic chaos of Saturday Is Pancake Day—a story that might make you relieved it’s not your turn for the washing up (or that you’re not attending the...
Cool Water (Myfanwy Jones, Hachette)
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
Myfanwy Jones’s Cool Water is a cross-generational novel about the inheritance of toxic masculinity. When Frank Herbert returns to Tinaroo for his daughter’s wedding, he can’t stop thinking about his...
Thanks for Having Me (Emma Darragh, JOAN)
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
Emma Darragh’s debut novel, Thanks for Having Me, is an intergenerational familial story that offers a glimpse into the lives of three women: Mary Anne, Vivian and Evie. It’s a non-sequential...
