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The Dry (Jane Harper, Macmillan) 

The Dry Monday, 21 March 2016
In the tiny town of Kiewarra, a mother and son are found murdered. The likely culprit is the father, also found shot dead in the back of his truck. It...

Circle (Jeannie Baker, Walker Books) 

Circle cover Monday, 21 March 2016
This extraordinary picture book is yet another masterpiece from the creator of the award-winning Where the Forest Meets the Sea and Mirror. The deceptively simple story is about the migration...

Portable Curiosities (Julie Koh, UQP) 

Monday, 21 March 2016
Armed with an uncanny ability to capture the zeitgeist of the time—whether it be contemporary society’s obsession with foodie culture or institutionalised racism and misogyny—Australian writer Julie Koh’s darkly satirical...

Fertile ground: Jane Harper on ‘The Dry’ 

Jane Harper Monday, 21 March 2016
Jane Harper won the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for her first novel The Dry (Picador, June). She spoke to reviewer Myles McGuire. One of the most...

On tour: Maria V Snyder

Maria V Snyder Monday, 21 March 2016
US fantasy author Maria V Snyder is best known for her YA-crossover ‘Study’ series. Her latest book is Night Study (Harlequin). She will be travelling to the Gold Coast, Sydney...

Bestsellers this week

Monday, 21 March 2016
Two new releases have topped the charts this week, with YA title Lady Midnight (S&S), the first book in Cassandra Clare’s new ‘Dark Artifices’ series, debuting top of the overall...

‘Four horsemen’ the focus of Digital Book World 2016

Thursday, 17 March 2016
This year’s Digital Book World conference was held in New York from 7-9 March. Books+Publishing’s Andrew Wrathall reports from the event: Digital Book World (DBW) organiser and The Idea Logical...

Bestsellers this week

8 week blood sugar diet Tuesday, 15 March 2016
British broadcaster Michael Mosley’s latest book The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet (S&S) has topped this week’s top 10 and fastest movers charts. The Australian and New Zealand edition of the...

Nonfiction dominates at Taipei International Book Exhibition

Wednesday, 9 March 2016
A delegation of Australian rights sellers recently attended the Taipei International Book Exhibition. Nerrilee Weir, rights manager for Penguin Random House Australia, reports: The vibrant and energetic Taipei International Book...

Bestsellers this week 

Monday, 7 March 2016
There is a large overlap between the highest new entries and top 10 bestsellers chart this week, with Cometh the Hour (Jeffrey Archer, Macmillan) and 15th Affair (James Patterson, Century)...

On tour: Jon Klassen

jon klassen author photo Thursday, 3 March 2016
Canadian author Jon Klassen’s We Found a Hat, the third book in his picture-book trilogy (Candlewick Press) that includes I Want My Hat Back and This is Not My Hat,...

Milo (Tohby Riddle, A&U) 

Milo cover Thursday, 3 March 2016
The latest picture book from Tohby Riddle is all about Milo, a dog who ‘lived in a solid kennel in an okay part of town and had few complaints’. Milo...

Gary (Leila Rudge, Walker Books) 

Gary cover Thursday, 3 March 2016
Gary the pigeon has wanderlust. His scrapbook is filled with mementos from everywhere, yet he has travelled nowhere. Unlike his fellow racing pigeons, Gary can’t fly. But one day he...

Rockhopping (Trace Balla, A&U) 

Rockhopping cover Thursday, 3 March 2016
Clancy and his Uncle Egg, the heroes of Trace Balla’s Rivertime, are on a climbing adventure through Victoria’s Grampians. Their six-day trip is full of excitement, with some hairy situations...

Cult following: Em Bailey on ‘The Special Ones’

Em Bailey Meredith Badger author photo Thursday, 3 March 2016
Em Bailey’s The Special Ones is an ‘edge-of-your-seat’ YA novel that ‘marks the gradual return of the YA thriller’, writes reviewer Bec Kavanagh. She spoke to the author. What was...

Special (Georgia Blain, Random House) 

Special cover Thursday, 3 March 2016
Seventeen-year-old Fern Marlow always thought she was one of the lucky ones—not just lucky, but special. She’s a Lotto Girl: before she was born, her parents won the chance to...

The Secrets We Keep (Nova Weetman, UQP) 

The Secrets We Keep cover Thursday, 3 March 2016
Eleven-year-old Clem Timmins never thought her life could change so suddenly. After a house fire destroyed all her possessions and took her mother’s life, Clem and her dad have moved...

Dreaming the Enemy (David Metzenthen, A&U) 

Dreaming the Enemy cover Thursday, 3 March 2016
Governments randomly selecting young people, training them to fight and then sending them off to kill is an age-old YA trope. So when the protagonist in David Metzenthen’s novel, Johnny...

The Special Ones (Em Bailey, HGE) 

The Special Ones cover Wednesday, 2 March 2016
Four teens are prisoners on an Amish-style estate, forced to discard their true identities to play the roles that keep their online viewers fascinated. Their captor, the mysterious he, monitors...

Bestsellers this week

awful auntie Monday, 29 February 2016
The paperback edition of David Walliams’ 2014 children’ s book Awful Auntie (HarperCollins) is the highest new entry in this week’s charts; the British author has three more books in...

On tour: Patrick deWitt

Patrick deWitt Thursday, 25 February 2016
Canadian author Patrick deWitt’s latest novel Undermajordomo Minor (Granta) is a black comedy of manners. He will be visiting the Perth Writers Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week in February. What...