The Honourable Thief (Meaghan Wilson Anastasios, Macmillan)
Friday, 1 June 2018
Set in Crete and Turkey in the years around World War II, The Honourable Thief centres on the adventures and misfortunes of Benedict Hitchens, an archaeologist and reluctant dealer of...
Ghost in the machine: Angela Meyer on ‘A Superior Spectre’
Friday, 1 June 2018
Writer and editor Angela Meyer’s debut full-length novel, A Superior Spectre (August), is the first book published under the new Ventura Press imprint for emerging writers, Peter Bishop Books. The...
Telling tales: Moreno Giovannoni on ‘The Fireflies of Autumn’
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Moreno Giovannoni’s The Fireflies of Autumn (Black Inc., July) is a collection of loosely connected short stories, describing life in the Tuscan village of San Ginese. ‘[It] reads like top-notch...
Trace (Rachael Brown, Scribe)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Journalist Rachael Brown’s ABC podcast Trace, which earned comparisons to the global sensation Serial, investigated the cold-case murder of Melbourne bookshop owner Maria James. The 38-year-old single mother was stabbed...
Teacher (Gabbie Stroud, A&U)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Gabbie Stroud always wanted to be a teacher. Her childhood teachers changed her life, and she wanted to do the same for others. This memoir weaves together a broader look...
Happy Never After (Jill Stark, Scribe)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Picking up where her debut bestseller High Sobriety left off, journalist and author Jill Stark’s Happy Never After charts the period from her breakdown in October 2014 to her ensuing...
Always Another Country (Sisonke Msimang, Text)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
A coming-of-age memoir brimming with no-holds-barred honesty, Always Another Country is a story about love, survival, politics and home. Sisonke Msimang charts various stages of her life, observing her surroundings...
Too Much Lip (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
The title of Melissa Lucashenko’s latest book—both an accusation and a lament—speaks of hunger, greed, desperation, destruction and redemption. Central to the novel are themes of rage, incarceration, and generational...
A Superior Spectre (Angela Meyer, Peter Bishop)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Angela Meyer’s A Superior Spectre is an eerie, gothic work that is both a richly detailed historical novel and a chilling prediction of the near future. The book follows Jeff,...
Scrublands (Chris Hammer, A&U)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
In a dying Riverina town that’s suffering a merciless drought, ‘good people fight to retain honour and dignity against unfair odds’. Shockingly, one Sunday morning, the town’s priest opens fire...
Prize Fighter (Future D Fidel, Hachette)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Isa Alaki is 10 years old, a budding engineer with a loving family in the Congolese city of Bukavu, when a rebel militia descends on his city, slaughtering his family and...
The Fireflies of Autumn (Moreno Giovannoni, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
The stories in this impressive fictional debut by Moreno Giovannoni cover all aspects of noisy, nosey, gossipy Italian village life. Ninety-year-old Ugo introduces a series of stories from his Tuscan...
The Biographer’s Lover (Ruby J Murray, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Ruby J Murray returns with her second novel, The Biographer’s Lover, a book that is as much about the art of biography as it is a fictional story about a...
Beautiful Revolutionary (Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Scribe)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
In this meticulously researched first novel, Laura Elizabeth Woollett tells the story of Jim Jones’ religious cult, the Peoples Temple, infamous for the mass-suicide of nearly a thousand people in...
The Shanghai Wife (Emma Harcourt, HQ)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Escaping a mysterious past in Australia, Annie Brand dreams of adventures along the Yangtze with her new husband, but soon finds herself ensconced in Shanghai for her own safety. Chafing...
Come out swinging: Christian White on ‘The Nowhere Child’
Friday, 27 April 2018
Christian White’s The Nowhere Child (Affirm, July) tells the story of a Melbourne woman caught up in the investigation of a decades-old kidnapping in Kentucky. Reviewer Deborah Crabtree spoke to...
The Geography of Friendship (Sally Piper, UQP)
Friday, 27 April 2018
The romantic notion that female friendships are made of irrevocable bonds that can sustain all manner of hardships and joy is at the centre of Sally Piper’s The Geography of...
The Peacock Summer (Hannah Richell, Hachette)
Friday, 27 April 2018
Hannah Richell’s third novel, The Peacock Summer, is a vivid tale stretching across 50 years. It tells the story of Lillian and her granddaughter Maggie, set against the intimidating backdrop...
When Elephants Fight (Majok Tulba, Hamish Hamilton)
Friday, 27 April 2018
When Elephants Fight is a novel that really packs a punch. Majok Tulba has previously written about the realities of the Sudanese civil war in his 2012 novel, Beneath the...
The Knowledge Solution: Politics (ed by Michelle Grattan, MUP)
Friday, 27 April 2018
In The Knowledge Solution: Politics, editor Michelle Grattan presents a range of views dissecting today's most pressing political problems. A heavy artillery of top-brass contributors such as Paul Kelly, Peter...
Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate)
Friday, 27 April 2018
The debut novel from award-winning journalist Trent Dalton is a harrowing coming-of-age tale set against the street-level drug trade in 1980s Brisbane. Boy Swallows Universe follows Eli Bell from ages...
The Nowhere Child (Christian White, Affirm Press)
Friday, 27 April 2018
Sammy Went was a toddler when she disappeared from her home in Kentucky 28 years ago. Kim Leamy is an Australian photography teacher living a fairly unremarkable life until a...
Waiting for Elijah (Kate Wild, Scribe)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
In Armidale, NSW, in 2009, 24-year-old Elijah Holcombe was shot and killed by a police officer. Elijah was described by all who knew him as a sweet, sensitive and artistic...
Traumata (Meera Atkinson, UQP)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Trauma and the events that provoke it involve a complex web of personal experience, history and society, but most books on the topic seem to sit squarely in either the...
Staying: A Memoir (Jessie Cole, Text)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Jessie Cole’s Staying is a well-written, extremely moving memoir that steers resolutely clear of stereotypes and self-pity. The ‘staying’ of the title refers to how Cole resumes control of her...
The Making of Martin Sparrow (Peter Cochrane, Viking)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Martin Sparrow is an ‘expiree’, a convict who has served his time and been granted a plot of land. When the terrible 1806 flood destroys his crops, he’s forced to...
Ironbark (Jay Carmichael, Scribe)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Ironbark brings to disturbing life three years in the life of Marcus, a young, gay country man. He has a casually supportive father, platonic girlfriends, an interest in poetry, a...
Small Wrongs (Kate Rossmanith, Hardie Grant)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Part memoir, part cultural study, Small Wrongs is a unique look into the role remorse plays in both public and private spheres. With the observational spirit of Helen Garner and...
The Way Things Should Be (Bridie Jabour, Echo)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Claudia has returned to her hometown to get married. She should be happy, but instead she feels confused and sad, and running the gauntlet of her dysfunctional family in the...
Flames (Robbie Arnott, Text)
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Flames opens with a moment of transformation: ‘Our mother returned to us two days after we spread her ashes over Notley Fern Gorge.’ This arresting first line sets the tone...
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