Laughing matters: Tony Martin on ‘Deadly Kerfuffle’
Thursday, 31 August 2017
Writer and comedian Tony Martin’s debut novel Deadly Kerfuffle (Affirm, November) is a ‘rip-roaring ride through suburban Australia, its anxieties, obsessions and weird imaginings’, writes reviewer Chris Saliba. He spoke...
A fine art: Gabriella Coslovich on ‘Whiteley on Trial’
Thursday, 31 August 2017
Arts journalist Gabriella Coslovich’s Whiteley on Trial (MUP, October) investigates the twists and turns in the biggest case of alleged art fraud the Australian criminal justice system has seen. ‘The...
Domestic Interior (Fiona Wright, Giramondo)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Fiona Wright’s second book Small Acts of Disappearance won the Kibble Literary Award for Australian women writers, and her debut Knuckled won the Mary Gilmore Award for poetry. In this new...
Homecamp (Doron and Stephanie Francis, Hardie Grant)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Homecamp is 250 pages of pure escapism. Compiled by Doron and Stephanie Francis, creators of the popular Homecamp blog and stylish outdoor lifestyle brand, this unusual coffee-table book features short...
Incorrigible Optimist: A Political Memoir (Gareth Evans, MUP)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Gareth Evans has enjoyed a stellar career as a politician, policy expert and internationalist. He has worked for governments and institutions that he variously describes as ‘gold standard’, ‘platinum’ and...
Whiteley on Trial (Gabriella Coslovich, MUP)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
From the dramatis personae of the opening pages—the Suspect Paintings, the Authentic Painting and the Individuals—I was taken by this story of true crime and courtroom drama. Who would want...
The Greatest Gift (Rachael Johns, HQ)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Rachael Johns is best known for her rural romances, but her more recent books, including the ABIA-winner The Patterson Girls, have moved into contemporary women’s fiction, or ‘life-lit’, as Johns...
The Passage of Love (Alex Miller, A&U)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
The Passage of Love is a slow-burning, fictional recasting of dual Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Alex Miller’s life, told through the often lost and solitary life of Robert Crofts, an...
Deadly Kerfuffle (Tony Martin, Affirm)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Dunlop Crescent is in an uproar. Muslims have taken over this once peaceful enclave. The Tamaki family, as rumour has it, are turning their house on its axis so it...
Atlantic Black (A S Patric, Transit Lounge)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Seventeen-year-old Katerina is an ambassador’s daughter on the precipice—and perhaps already over the edge—of womanhood. Travelling on board the transatlantic ocean liner RMS Aquitania en route to her beloved father...
Can You Hear the Sea? My Grandmother’s Story (Brenda Niall, Text)
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
When Brenda Niall was 10 years old her grandmother gave her a cedar box that was made more than 50 years ago by a brother who died as they were...
The Trauma Cleaner (Sarah Krasnostein, Text)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Sandra Pankhurst was adopted through the Catholic Church in the 1950s by a Melbourne couple who would prove to be horrendously abusive parents. Driven out of home by the age...
Baby Lost: A Story of Grief and Hope (Hannah Robert, MUP)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Baby Lost is a heartbreaking study of the aftermath of an accident that changed the author’s life. Hannah Robert—a law lecturer at Melbourne’s La Trobe University—is not a saccharine writer,...
Force of Nature (Jane Harper, Macmillan)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Jane Harper’s follow-up to her 2016 bestseller The Dry is another well-written, pacey crime thriller. Force of Nature is set after the events of The Dry but can be read...
Suburbia (Jeremy Chambers, Text)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Melbourne author Jeremy Chambers’ second novel is a nostalgic coming-of-age story set in the unglamorous outer-eastern suburbs of Melbourne in the 1980s. The book’s protagonist Roland is a bookish outsider...
The Book of Thistles (Noëlle Janaczewska, UWA Publishing)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
This debut from Windham-Campbell prize-winning playwright Noëlle Janaczewska is a genre-bending mash-up that incorporates memoir, popular science, history and food writing. Janaczewska uses her lifelong personal interest in the thistle...
Soon (Lois Murphy, Transit Lounge)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Five four-wheel drives with tinted windows roll slowly, mysteriously, through a small Australian town during a winter solstice. Their purpose is unknown, their arrival an ominous portent. When they depart,...
Drawing Sybylla (Odette Kelada, UWA Publishing)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Drawing Sybylla is an ambitious piece of writing that shines a spotlight on the injustices and inequalities faced by women writers in Australia throughout history. The winner of the 2016...
Bird Country (Claire Aman, Text)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Claire Aman has regularly referred to Grafton, her northern New South Wales hometown, as ‘an inspiring town’. This inspiration is realised in Bird Country, a suite of quietly beautiful short...
Two Steps Forward (Graeme Simsion & Anne Buist, Text)
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Martin, a divorced English engineer, and Zoe, a widowed American artist, are each at a turning point in their lives. Unexpectedly alone, without money or young families to care for,...
Brief encounters: Chris Feik on ‘Writers on Writers’
Thursday, 27 July 2017
In October, Black Inc. is launching its new ‘Writers on Writers’ series with two titles: On John Marsden by Alice Pung and On Kate Jennings by Erik Jensen. These short,...
On tour: Reni Eddo-Lodge
Thursday, 27 July 2017
British journalist and activist Reni Eddo-Lodge is the author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury) and will be one of the international guests at...
Counter narratives: Vanessa Berry on ‘Mirror Sydney’
Thursday, 27 July 2017
Since 2012, Vanessa Berry has been conducting deep dives into the mysterious local histories around Sydney on her blog, and her book Mirror Sydney (Giramondo, October) continues that exploration. ‘Beautifully...
A New England Affair (Steven Carroll, HarperCollins)
Wednesday, 26 July 2017
The third instalment of Steven Carroll’s quartet based on the life of T S Eliot is a quiet but strong narrative centred on the poet’s muse Emily Hale. As is...
Call of the Reed Warbler (Charles Massy, UQP)
Tuesday, 18 July 2017
Farmer and author Charles Massy has been thinking intensely about the environment and our relationship to it for most of his life. Brought up in the industrial farming tradition, with...
The Life to Come (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
Monday, 17 July 2017
The Life to Come is Michelle de Kretser’s first novel since her Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning Questions of Travel in 2012, and it affirms her as a writer of great...
Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook (ed by Christopher Sequeira, Echo)
Monday, 17 July 2017
The stories in this collection of fan fiction commissioned by Sherlock Holmes aficionado Christopher Sequeira come from writers both emerging and established (better known names include Kerry Greenwood, Meg Keneally...
An Activist Life (Christine Milne, UQP)
Monday, 17 July 2017
Rather than write a straight biography, former Australian Greens leader Christine Milne has chosen ‘objects’ to illustrate her life, her ideas and her actions. Her father’s gun represents old-fashion farm...
Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections (Vanessa Berry, Giramondo)
Monday, 17 July 2017
Every city has its ghost lines, those mysterious details that underpin the contemporary physicality of a place, the memories that are faded but visible to anyone with a keen eye...
Writers on Writers: On John Marsden | On Kate Jennings (Alice Pung | Erik Jensen, Black Inc.)
Monday, 17 July 2017
Australian writers are being honoured in a new essay series called ‘Writers on Writers’, published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and the State Library of...
