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,...
Diggers, Dozers, and Dumpers (Ole Könnecke, Gecko)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Picture books about machinery are always a hit, but they don’t always deliver an engaging narrative – this one does, seamlessly blending fiction with nonfiction. Diggers, Dozers, and Dumpers, written...
The Bearcat (Georgia Rose Phillips, Picador)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Based on true events, The Bearcat is an ambitious, mesmeric and deeply affecting debut novel that imagines the inner life of Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a rare female cult leader who founded...
The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains (Sarah Clutton, A&U)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Sarah Clutton’s The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is a richly woven novel that explores family dynamics, small-town life and long-buried secrets. The story follows Penny, a widowed farmer whose...
This Dream Will Devour Us (Emma Clancey, A&U Children’s)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
What if humanity developed a drug that could manipulate the elements – essentially perform magic? In This Dream Will Devour Us, debut author Emma Clancey builds a world where the...
He Would Never (Holly Wainwright, Macmillan)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Holly Wainwright’s fifth novel, He Would Never, is pacy, compelling and character-driven, and will hook readers from the startling first sentence. The story follows five families on their annual summer...
‘Wild Side’ debuts at number one; fiction controls charts
Friday, 14 March 2025
Top 10 bestsellers Wild Side (Elsie Silver, Piatkus) The Let Them Theory (Mel Robbins, Hay House) Onyx Storm (Rebecca Yarros, Piatkus) RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan) 25 Alive (James Patterson,...
Books in the media this weekend, 15–16 March
Friday, 14 March 2025
A round-up of the books being reviewed and mentioned in key media this coming weekend. National The Saturday Paper The Buried Life (Andrea Goldsmith, Transit Lounge) First Name Second Name...
The Girl and the Ghost (Jacqueline Harvey, Penguin)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Jacqueline Harvey, author of the best-selling Alice-Miranda and Kensy and Max books, returns with The Girl and the Ghost, the first instalment in a new fantasy-mystery middle-grade series. When 12-year-old...
Letters to Our Robot Son (Cadance Bell, Ultimo)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Letters to Our Robot Son is the fiction debut of memoirist Cadance Bell (The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody), a mercurial science fiction novel about a robot who awakens...
Little World (Josephine Rowe, Black Inc.)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Josephine Rowe’s Little World is a compact, lyrical read that feels both mythic and frighteningly current. When the perfectly preserved body of a child is brought to Western Australia, it...
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....
The Opposite of Lonely (Hilde Hinton, Hachette)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
For the past few years, Rose has felt disassociated from her own life, struggling to come to terms with the passing of her cherished father and the collapse of her...
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...
I Am Not an Owl (Rhonda Ooi, illus Mel Corrigan, Woodslane)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
A small child who does not want to have a nap is a challenge. In this charming picture book for children aged 4 and up, Alexander turns the tables on...
Patterson, Kennedy leap on to charts; Let Them retains number one
Friday, 7 March 2025
Top 10 bestsellers The Let Them Theory (Mel Robbins, Hay House) Onyx Storm (Rebecca Yarros, Piatkus) Cozy Cuties (Coco Wyo, Penguin) 25 Alive (James Patterson, Century) RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (Nagi Maehashi,...
Books in the media this weekend, 8–9 March
Friday, 7 March 2025
A round-up of the books being reviewed and mentioned in key media this coming weekend. National The Saturday Paper Joan Lindsay (Brenda Niall, Text) The Theatre of Everything (Yumna Kassab, Ultimo) We...
Grandmother from the East, Grandmother from the West (Jacinta Liu, illus Freda Chiu, Lothian)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Jacinta Liu’s debut picture book is a comforting story about a young girl reflecting on the individual personalities, traits and experiences of her two grandmothers while looking at photos of...
Goodnight Sheep (Sally Barton, illus Cherie Dignam, Fremantle)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
For some parents and carers, nothing is more anxiety-inducing than bedtime. Sally Barton’s Goodnight Sheep, illustrated by Cherie Dignam (The Pen series), embraces this universal challenge, inviting readers to find...
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 Sex Lives of Married Women (Saman Shad, Penguin)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Meet Rani, Sophie and Meena – three Sydney women in their late 30s who are confronted with the realisation that their lives aren’t what they had hoped for. Saman Shad’s...
The Colt from Old Regret (Dianne Wolfer, illus Erica Wagner, NLA)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Dianne Wolfer (Soaring with the Sugarbird Lady) decentres the human perspective of Banjo Paterson’s ‘The Man from Snowy River’ in The Colt from Old Regret, recounting the escaped colt’s experience...
Mother Tongue (Naima Brown, Macmillan)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Naima Brown’s cleverly titled second novel Mother Tongue is a gripping, exquisitely layered story that deals with extremes and challenges conventional morality. The protagonist, Brynn, upends the assumption that mothers...
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...
The Great Chocolate Caper (Heist #1) (Joel McKerrow, Penguin)
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
The Great Chocolate Caper is the first in the middle-grade Heist series by performance poet Joel McKerrow. Andy McGee is struggling to fit in and make friends in his first...
Books in the media this weekend, 1–2 March
Friday, 28 February 2025
A round-up of the books being reviewed and mentioned in key media this coming weekend. National The Saturday Paper Little Bones (Sandy Bigna, UQP) The Seal Woman (Beverley Farmer, Giramondo)...
Robbins retakes number one
Friday, 28 February 2025
Top 10 bestsellers The Let Them Theory (Mel Robbins, Hay House) Onyx Storm (Rebecca Yarros, Piatkus) Cozy Cuties (Coco Wyo, Penguin) RecipeTin Eats: Tonight (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan) Fourth Wing (Rebecca...
How to Sail to Somewhere (Ashleigh Barton, Lothian)
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
In a coastal holiday town where ‘the land kisses the sea and the children grow up with salt in their hair’, Bea, a lonely only child who has never set...
