Stella Prize-winning memoir sold to US, Canada
Friday, 14 June 2019
US and Canadian rights to the Stella Prize-winning memoir The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Fourth Estate) have sold to Knopf and Doubleday Canada, respectively. The Erratics follows two daughters who return home to Canada...
Australian books heading for the screen, crime writers bound for the US
Friday, 14 June 2019
As season two of the TV series Big Little Lies—adapted from Liane Moriarty’s bestseller of the same name—premieres this month, progress is being made on a number of other screen...
‘Boy Swallows Universe’ and ‘The Barefoot Investor’ top Australian charts
Friday, 14 June 2019
Trent Dalton’s multi-award-winning Boy Swallows Universe—now in the running for the Miles Franklin Literary Award—remains at the top of the Australian fiction bestsellers chart in May, while Scott Pape’s The...
Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist announced
Friday, 14 June 2019
The longlist for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced. The longlisted titles are: The Lebs (Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Hachette), Flames (Robbie Arnott, Text), Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate), A...
It Sounded Better in My Head (Nina Kenwood, Text)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Natalie is caught in-between: between year 12 exams and uni results, between her parents’ slow-motion divorce, between her two best friends, Zach and Lucy, who have been dating for a...
Bitsy (Nicki Greenberg, Affirm Kids)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
We all know that bats are nocturnal creatures, but writer/illustrator Nicki Greenberg’s latest picture book takes this fact and subverts it: her bat, Bitsy, dares to behave differently from its...
All That Impossible Space (Anna Morgan, Lothian)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Lara Laylor just wants to get through year 10 without too much drama, but between a controlling best friend and the shadow of an older sister with a much bigger...
The Naughtiest Pixie in Disguise (Ailsa Wild, illus by Saoirse Lou, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
The Naughtiest Pixie in Disguise is the first book in a second series by Ailsa Wild, following her hugely successful Squishy Taylor series. Naughty, charming young pixie Jenifry Star lives...
A Boy Called Bob: Becomes an AFL footballer (Bob Murphy & Tony Wilson, Piccolo Nero)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Bob is a boy from country Victoria who grew up loving footy. His first oval was actually a gravel-covered rectangle, but he dreamed of one day playing on the green...
Fashionista (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Lothian)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
The ever-versatile Maxine Beneba Clarke has worked within a number of genres (nonfiction, fiction, poetry, essays and children’s books) and now she is back with another picture book. The point...
Horatio Squeak (Karen Foxlee, illus by Evie Barrow, Walker)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Horatio, the smallest and shyest in a large family of mice, lives in a very big house on a very grand street. One day he is invited to a party...
Argh! There’s a Skeleton Inside You! (Idan Ben-Barak & Julian Frost, A&U)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Quog and Oort are two aliens. Quog is blobby and green; Oort is a pink gas cloud with three eyes. While on their way to a mate’s birthday their purple...
Promise (Alexandra Alt, Omnibus)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Fifteen-year-old Lene wishes only to live a peaceful and happy life in Berlin with her family and neighbour Ludwig. But all around her World War II is raging: bombs are...
My Name is Not Peaseblossom (Jackie French, HarperCollins)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Much-loved children’s author Jackie French brings us a new addition to her Shakespeare series with My Name is Not Peaseblossom. French has previously reinterpreted Shakespeare’s work, giving it a 21st-century...
Vincent and the Grandest Hotel on Earth (Lisa Nicol, Puffin)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Not 10 pages after inheriting his grandfather’s ostensibly magical shoeshine kit, Vincent is scouted to shine shoes at the Grandest Hotel on Earth—a job that entails far more than it...
100 Ways to Fly (Michelle Taylor, UQP)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
100 Ways to Fly is Michelle Taylor’s third poetry collection for children. She is also a published poet for adults. This book contains a generous number of poems, usually one...
The Brilliant Ideas of Lily Green (Lisa Siberry, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Thursday, 6 June 2019
This debut middle-grade novel, which won Hardie Grant Egmont’s Ampersand Prize, ticks many familiar boxes. The main character: a 12-year-old on the cusp of maturity. The challenges: friendships, enemies, family,...
Australia’s Original Languages: An introduction (R M W Dixon, A&U)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Bob Dixon has an impressive academic and publishing career, which includes 50 years of researching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. Dixon’s latest book combines linguistics, colonisation history, anthropology and...
Lapse (Sarah Thornton, Text)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Former corporate lawyer Clementine Jones is holed up in a country town where no-one knows her past, and she’s hoping to keep it that way. During her self-imposed exile she...
Storytime: Growing up with books (Jane Sullivan, Ventura)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Storytime is a delightful collection of essays by literary journalist Jane Sullivan on her favourite childhood books, revisited as an adult. Best known as the scribe behind the Saturday Age’s...
On Drugs (Chris Fleming, Giramondo)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Philosopher Chris Fleming’s memoir is a searching, considered account of drug and alcohol use and the mechanisms of addiction. Fleming traces his history of marijuana, codeine-based painkillers and alcohol consumption,...
Taking Tom Murray Home (Tim Slee, HarperCollins)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
This debut novel and winner of HarperCollins’ Banjo Prize is based on the ingenious premise of a funeral-protest that raises awareness of the pressures facing dairy farmers from banks, supermarkets...
Love and Other Battles (Tess Woods, HarperCollins)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Tess Woods’ latest novel follows the lives of three generations of women: Jess is a flower child who falls for a soldier under the shadow of the Vietnam war; Jamie...
Fortune (Lenny Bartulin, A&U)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Lenny Bartulin—who cut his teeth with the Jack Susko crime series—made a dramatic shift with his rollicking 2013 historical novel Infamy. But the visceral energy and dirty, real descriptions that...
The Yield (Tara June Winch, Hamish Hamilton)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
The Yield unpicks intergenerational trauma and redacted histories in prose that glimmers. The word ‘yield’ has a dual meaning: in English it refers to the harvest reaped from the land...
A Constant Hum (Alice Bishop, Text)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Alice Bishop’s debut is a collection of short stories linked by the central theme of bushfire, specifically Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday fires, which killed and injured hundreds of people, decimating...
Something to Believe In (Andrew Stafford, UQP)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
This memoir is rock journalist Andrew Stafford’s first book since his 2004 milestone Pig City, which mapped Brisbane music ‘from the Saints to Savage Garden’. Named after a Ramones song,...
Fake: A startling true story of love in a world of liars, cheats, narcissists, fantasists and phonies (Stephanie Wood, Vintage)
Thursday, 30 May 2019
In 2017 journalist Stephanie Wood penned a piece for Good Weekend magazine in which she detailed a relationship she’d had with a man she met online. The relationship went awry,...
Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories (ed by Michael Earp, Walker)
Thursday, 16 May 2019
Among the boon of recent #LoveOzYA anthologies (Begin, End, Begin; Meet Me at the Intersection; Underdog), Kindred takes the unique position of being entirely devoted to stories by and about...
‘Girl Stuff 8–12’ tops Australian children’s/YA nonfiction bestsellers chart
Thursday, 16 May 2019
Kaz Cooke’s go-to guides for pre-teen and teenage girls, Girl Stuff 8–12 and the original Girl Stuff, are at number one and eight, respectively, on the Australian nonfiction children’s/YA bestsellers...
