Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Following the romantic capering of Fall Girl and the historically set Nine Days, Toni Jordan’s Our Tiny, Useless Hearts is a highly entertaining romp through the complexities of modern relationships....

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
As Lucy’s philandering husband picks his teeth with a fish-bone pulled from a beautifully prepared roasted snapper stuffed with kaffir lime, she decides it’s finally time to leave him. Searching...

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Queensland writer Inga Simpson’s third novel is a moving meditation on the bonds of childhood friendship and the moral complications of atonement. The summer before they start high school, Jay...

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
When Robbi Neal and her family moved from Geelong to the remote Lockhart River Aboriginal community in Cape York to manage the local art centre, their plan was to stay...

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
What’s the difference between a writer and a reader? In an ideal world, you would be both. After all, they say everyone has a story to tell. Damon Young’s story...

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Henry Nissen was a champion boxer in the 1970s. Still fit at the age of 67, he now works as a labourer on the docks and helps out as a...

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
For a pastime beloved by so many Australians, the loudest voices in the world of AFL are invariably straight, white and male. From the Outer provides a valuable contribution to...

Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Journalist, war correspondent, minor novelist and major popular historian Alan Moorehead was one of the best-known expatriate Australians in the Western world. How is it that he is now almost...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Award-winning poet Philip Salom’s third novel, set in inner-city Melbourne, is an absurdist fiction following the haphazard lives of oddball couple Big and Little. Big is a large, Rabelaisian, somewhat...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Shelley Davidow’s family memoir Whisperings in the Blood is a book about destiny and the way lives are shaped by inheritances passed down by previous generations. A haunting and beautiful...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Language development in children is a fascinating process, as any parent or carer will attest. In Talking Baby, experts Anne Buckley and Margaret MacLagan cover the years from birth to...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Aileen Palmer was the first child of Australian writers Vance and Nettie Palmer, born in London in 1915. The new family moved back to Australia, where Vance and Nettie were...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Domestic abuse and PTSD in returning soldiers are two issues the Australian media is only starting to raise awareness about, especially after high-profile campaigners Rosie Batty (A Mother’s Story) and...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
While distance running has become popular with women today, incredibly, women didn’t run the Olympic marathon till 1984 and were barred from entering the Boston Marathon until 1972. Catriona Menzies-Pike...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi woman from Gunnedah, who was awarded a black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship in 2015. This debut collection of poetry introduces her as a force to be...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
In her debut novel, Sarah Kanake deals in so many Gothic tropes—ghosts, implied incest, a stark natural landscape and the legacy of an earlier generation’s follies—that an alternative title for...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
On the night the Titanic sank, another ship, the Californian, saw her distress flares but did not respond. Her captain, Stanley Lord, denied that he was informed, testimony contradicted in...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Recently divorced Anne Forster heads to Wilson’s Promontory on an overnight bushwalk with her six-year-old autistic daughter Aida and returns home alone. Although no body is found, Anne is charged...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Ghost Girls is a promising debut that defies easy categorisation. Set in the sometimes sketchy world of adult English-language colleges in inner Sydney—a scene the author clearly knows very well—it...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Hold is Kirsten Tranter’s third novel and like her second, A Common Loss, it deals with the grief of unexpectedly losing a loved one and the strange places that grief...

Wednesday, 27 January 2016
After receiving international accolades for her Miles Franklin-shortlisted debut novel The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane follows up with a short-story collection laden with wry wit and a deceptive simplicity. The...

Monday, 25 January 2016
Pen Sheppard is recovering at her rural family home after an assault she won’t discuss with anyone, let alone her psychologist. As she prowls the house, avoiding everyone inside and...