On tour: Justin Cronin
Thursday, 25 August 2016
US novelist Justin Cronin is the author of the apocalyptic vampire trilogy The Passage, The Twelve and The City of Mirrors (all Orion). Cronin will be appearing at the Melbourne...
On tour: Molly Crabapple
Thursday, 25 August 2016
US artist and writer Molly Crabapple is the author of the memoir Drawing Blood (HarperCollins). She is appearing at the Melbourne Writers Festival and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in...
On tour: A C Grayling
Thursday, 25 August 2016
British philosopher A C Grayling’s latest book The Challenge of Things (Bloomsbury) is a collection of his recent writings on war and conflict. He is touring various writers’ festivals around...
Extinctions (Josephine Wilson, UWA Publishing)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Josephine Wilson was named the recipient of the inaugural Dorothy Hewett Award for her manuscript ‘Extinctions’. Chosen unanimously by the judges, that manuscript is now published by UWA Publishing as...
Victoria the Queen: The Woman Who Made the Modern World (Julia Baird, HarperCollins)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Julia Baird’s excellent and sadly out-of-print first book, Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians, was an engrossing dissection of gender, politics and power with the pace and...
Case study: Mark Tedeschi on ‘Murder at Myall Creek’
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Mark Tedeschi’s Murder at Myall Creek (S&S) is an account of one of Australia’s most notorious criminal cases—11 men tried for the 1848 mass murder of up to 30 Indigenous Australians in...
All is Given: A Memoir in Songs (Linda Neil, UQP)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Linda Neil’s beguiling memoir All is Given deserves to be read by anyone with an ounce of adventure or romance in their soul, albeit with a touch of caution. As...
The Good People (Hannah Kent, Picador)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Nóra Leahy has suffered great misfortune. It is 1825 in the far west of Ireland, and her beloved husband has just died, most ominously, at a crossroads, only a few...
Murder at Myall Creek: The Trial That Defined a Nation (Mark Tedeschi, S&S)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Massacres of Indigenous Australians were not unusual during the early colonial history of Australia. What sets the 1838 mass murder at Myall Creek in central New South Wales apart was...
Cynthia Nolan: A Biography (M E McGuire, Melbourne Books)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
While many biographies have explored the story of Heide and its art community, M E McGuire takes a fresh look at that world and early 20th-century society through the eyes...
Grog: A Bottled History of Australia’s First 30 Years (Tom Gilling, Hachette)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Colonial Australia was born with a drinking problem. Like a lot of the infant colony’s problems, alcohol addiction was inherited from the mother country. Many historical narratives of Australia, most...
Kiffy Rubbo: Curating the 1970s (ed by Janine Burke & Helen Hughes, Scribe)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Sometimes studying the micro gives us the best view of the macro. Reading the essay collection Kiffy Rubbo is one of those experiences. Art curator Kiffy Rubbo provided space and...
Ruling women: Julia Baird on ‘Victoria the Queen’
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Julia Baird’s ‘thoroughly contemporary’ biography of Queen Victoria explores the social evolution of ‘British society during her long reign—particularly that of the position of women’, writes reviewer Jo Case. She spoke...
The Answer (Allan & Barbara Pease, Harlequin)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Body language and relationship experts Allan and Barbara Pease have sold over 20 million copies worldwide of their previous titles Why Men Don’t Listen and Woman Can’t Read Road Maps...
The Art of Keeping Secrets (Rachael Johns, Harlequin)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
The Australian book industry voted Rachael Johns’ The Patterson Girls its 2015 General Fiction Book of the Year. Her new novel will also appeal to mainstream women’s fiction readers, as...
Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir (Catherine de Saint Phalle, Transit Lounge)
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Catherine de Saint Phalle’s first work of nonfiction, Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir, is an intricately woven narrative that centres on the author’s eccentric and charmingly flawed parents. Her...
Antipodes: In Search of the Southern Continent (Avan Judd Stallard, Monash University Press)
Monday, 8 August 2016
This remarkable book is about an imaginary place: Terra Australis Incognita, the Unknown Southern Land. Avan Judd Stallard tells the story of a geographical obsession and how it developed in...
Anything is Possible (Cosentino, HarperCollins)
Monday, 8 August 2016
Paul Cosentino was a 12-year-old boy with reading difficulties when he discovered a book on magic in his local library. With the support of his family, Paul’s fascination with magic...
Family Skeleton (Carmel Bird, UWA Publishing)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Carmel Bird is an incredibly distinctive writer who has earned a loyal following of fans in the literary community. In Family Skeleton, she mixes acidic authorial asides with an intimate...
The Fence (Meredith Jaffé, Macmillan)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Septuagenarian Gwen and husband Eric are long-term residents of Green Valley Avenue, a quiet leafy corner in Sydney. When her beloved friend next-door dies, and her house is put on...
The Locksmith’s Daughter (Karen Brooks, Harlequin)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Meticulously researched and historically compelling, Karen Brooks’ The Locksmith’s Daughter transports the reader to 16th-century London, at the height of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and into the tumultuous world of Mallory...
On the Blue Train (Kristel Thornell, A&U)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
In December 1926, Agatha Christie, already a well-known novelist, starred in her own mystery when she ‘disappeared’ for 11 days without a word to her husband or six-year-old daughter. The...
The Science of Appearances (Jacinta Halloran, Scribe)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
A trained GP, Jacinta Halloran continues to draw on her medical knowledge in her third novel, The Science of Appearances, exploring genetics—and its controversial twin eugenics. The novel opens with...
1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia’s Beginnings (Nick Brodie, Hardie Grant)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Australia’s documented history is ‘like a manuscript with the opening pages torn off,’ writes Nick Brodie in the opening of his latest book, 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia’s Beginnings....
Bob Ellis: In His Own Words (Bob Ellis, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Bob Ellis was an Australian journalist, writer, filmmaker, and political observer, and this latest posthumous collection of his writing, In His Own Words, is a selection of his work chosen...
The Death of Holden: The End of an Australian Dream (Royce Kurmelovs, Hachette)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
According to the dominant narrative, the demise of Australia’s car industry is easy to explain: we just couldn’t compete with competitors in Asia. The imminent closure of the car factories...
Fight Like a Girl (Clementine Ford, A&U)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
In her engaging debut, Fairfax columnist and feminist Clementine Ford surveys what it means to be a girl in the world today, covering topics from eating disorders and abortion, to...
Pitched Battle: In the Frontline of the 1971 Springbok Tour of Australia (Larry Writer, Scribe)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
In 1971, South Africa under apartheid sent its last sporting team to Australia. It caused an intense polarisation of opinion, demonstrations at matches and even riots in the streets. Opposition...
Looking for a fair fight: Clementine Ford on ‘Fight Like a Girl’
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Clementine Ford’s debut Fight Like a Girl (A&U, October) is an examination of ‘what it means to be a girl in the world today’, fuelled by Ford’s ‘clear-eyed defiance and...
Shine: The Making of the Australian Netball Diamonds (Jenny Sinclair & Megan Maurice, Finch)
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Women’s team sport is frequently overlooked when it comes to mainstream media, so it may come as a surprise then to find out that the Australian Diamonds Netball team are...




