Friday, 8 July 2016
This new offering from The Rosie Project’s Graeme Simsion is another poignant glimpse into human relationships—what it is to love and to be loved. Adam Sharp, a 40-something database architect,...

Friday, 8 July 2016
The Better Son begins with the hot Tasmanian summer of 1952, where nine-year-old Kip suffers at the hands of his father, while his 11-year-old brother Tommy is the putative ‘better’...

Friday, 8 July 2016
Elizabeth Gould deserves much credit for the early success of her husband’s work, and it is tragic to think of what was lost to art and science when she died,...

Friday, 8 July 2016
Mark McKenna is one of Australia’s leading historians, notable both for his engagement with contemporary political debates such as republicanism, and his embrace of the narrative and personal style of...

Friday, 8 July 2016
The Promise of Things is the debut nonfiction book from sociologist Ruth Quibell, whose essays have appeared in magazines such as Island and Womankind. Quibell is interested in what she...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
The confines of a cruise ship headed for the most remote part of Antarctica is the perfect setting for jealous temperaments to thrive and plots of revenge to unfold in...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Isabelle Li’s debut collection A Chinese Affair is a strange beast—a genre mashup that showcases the Chinese-Australian experience by mixing short story and memoir. Li makes the unusual decision to...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Steven Amsterdam’s previous books Things We Didn’t See Coming and What the Family Needed are heavy with apocalyptic vision and metaphor, so his latest novel will immediately strike his fans...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
The Historian’s Daughter is a family story with a dark secret in its underbelly, cloaked by an otherworldly charm, where the traditional monikers of mum and dad are replaced with...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
The Love of a Bad Man offers what feels like a genuinely fresh reading experience: a short-fiction collection that marries true crime with literary fiction. In each discrete story, Melbourne-based...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Born out of WrICE—a program of reciprocal residencies focussed on writing from the Asia-Pacific—The Near and the Far interlaces the work of familiar Australian writers with that of emerging and...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
This slow-burning psychological thriller will appeal to anyone devouring the subgenre dubbed ‘domestic noir’. While it’s a quicker, lighter read than Gone Girl, Only Daughter poses a mystery that is...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
When infamous ex-cricketer Darren Keefe wakes up bound and gagged in the boot of a car, he begins reflecting on the life that led him there. Drugs, sex, booze, gangland...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Paul Mitchell’s debut novel is the rare book that seems to both invite every clichéd description of new Australian writing—visceral, lyrical, ‘ Wintonesque’—and somehow read as genuinely innovative. This is...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Jennifer Livett’s first novel interweaves Tasmanian colonial history with the untold periphery of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, assuming background knowledge of neither (though the reader is certainly rewarded by familiarity...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Play On! is a meticulously researched chronology of the genesis, evolution and trials of women’s footy. The sport has long been buried beneath the budget and reverence of men’s football,...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Martin Feil has over 20 years’ experience in advising multinational companies and the Australian Tax Office. In this timely book, Feil argues that the tax minimisation practices of multinational companies...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
According to some of the best research, close to 50% of all jobs will be automated in the next 20 years. Whether these jobs will be replaced, as has happened...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
‘The traditional shearer’s campfire yarning, joking, chiacking and debating over politics, general news, women, sport and family were morphing from culture to folklore,’ writes Alan Blunt. It’s a change that...

Wednesday, 29 June 2016
This is the 30th book from Roland Perry, who is well known for his books on Australian military history and cricket. Its subject is a courtesan who lived in Paris...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
Readers who enjoy the drama of television shows such as The Bachelor will appreciate the premise of Love Elimination by Sarah Gates. Anna Hobbs is so close to her dream...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
Tara June Winch focsuses on shared humanity in this collection of short stories. Her protagonists belong to groups dismissed by the white, straight, middle-class eye: in ‘Happy’, a gay couple...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
Entitled Shibboleth, after the winning story by Jo Riccioni, this absorbing anthology of entries from the Margaret River Short Story Competition demonstrates the calibre of the short-story scene. The contributors...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
In this harrowing memoir, James Miller, a successful solicitor and academic author, describes a young adulthood stolen and a life spent in hell. In 1978, at the age of 15,...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
We don’t see much formally innovative, experimental writing in Australian fiction—realist narratives tend to rule the roost. Also rare is genuinely fine comic writing. Enter then Ryan O’Neill, who, with...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
Australia has long looked to the bush as a formative element of our national character despite being one of the most urbanised countries in the world. Our cities have shaped,...

Thursday, 26 May 2016
After tobacco, alcohol is shown to cause the most drug-related deaths in the world. It’s one of many facts that are threaded through Elspeth Muir’s intricately crafted memoir Wasted. But...