Norton and the Borrowing Bear (Gabriel Evans, Berbay)
24 August 2021
Gabriel Evans is fast becoming one of the most consistently delightful Australian picture book creators of recent years. With each release he adds to his oeuvre with such apparent ease,...
My Brother Ben (Peter Carnavas, UQP)
10 August 2021
Acclaimed Australian children’s writer Peter Carnavas has followed up his wonderful first novel The Elephant with another book equally full of heart. An ode to sibling relationships, growing up and the natural world, My...
Permafrost (S J Norman, UQP)
10 August 2021
Permafrost is a decadent, artistic delight, full of sensory pleasure for the reader. S J Norman, a visual and performance artist who won the inaugural Kill Your Darlings Manuscript Award with this collection, makes a...
Bodies of Light (Jennifer Down, Text)
10 August 2021
Bodies of Light is Jennifer Down’s third book and her best yet. It begins with fierce, ageing Maggie (now living in the US under a new identity) being prompted to revisit...
The Stoning (Peter Papathanasiou, Transit Lounge)
3 August 2021
At dawn one Sunday, homicide detective George Manolis is woken with a call: a schoolteacher has been murdered in the outback town of Cobb, and the local police need his...
In Moonland (Miles Allinson, Scribe)
21 July 2021
Miles Allinson’s accomplished second novel—the follow-up to his moving and deeply personal 2015 debut Fever of Animals—is an ambitious and gripping story of parenthood, utopias and environmental collapse, told across several interconnected narratives. The narrator of...
My Friend Fox (Heidi Everett, Ultimo Press)
13 July 2021
This memoir from mental health recovery advocate Heidi Everett is a thoroughly real and stunningly evocative retelling of her life as a person with diagnosed mental illness. Everett tells the...
The Things We See in the Light (Amal Awad, Pantera Press)
30 June 2021
This book opens with Sahar arriving on her best friend Lara’s doorstep in Newtown, and it’s apparent Sahar has changed a lot since Lara last saw her. Once a shy,...
An Insider’s Plague Year (Peter Doherty, MUP)
29 June 2021
Laureate Professor Peter Doherty is one of the most well placed individuals to write a walk-through of the past year and a half of pandemic life. A Nobel Prize-winning immunologist...
The Spectacular Suit (Kat Patrick, illus by Hayley Wells, Scribble)
9 June 2021
Parties can be extremely important for children. Especially for Frankie, the protagonist of The Spectacular Suit, who has never asked for a party before. With everyone in her class coming,...
Sugar Town Queens (Malla Nunn, A&U)
8 June 2021
Sugar Town Queens is a young adult coming-of-age novel by Malla Nunn, author of When the Ground is Hard. Her latest book follows 15-year-old Amandla, who is mixed-raced and growing...
Muddy People (Sara El Sayed, Black Inc.)
2 June 2021
With elegant lyricism, compelling urgency and a dark sense of humour, Muddy People by Sara El Sayed is an impressive debut memoir from the young Egyptian–Australian writer. El Sayed’s work...
Albert Namatjira (Vincent Namatjira, Magabala)
2 June 2021
In his picture book biography Albert Namatjira, Vincent Namatjira paints a stoic and quietly devastating portrait of his great-grandfather Albert, one of the most iconic figures in Australian painting. An...
The Night Village (Zoe Deleuil, Fremantle Press)
1 June 2021
A year ago, Paul and Simone met at a party—young, carefree and living separate lives. Now, they’re parents to a tiny new baby and nothing between them is the same....
The Mother Wound (Amani Haydar, Macmillan)
25 May 2021
Like her own mother before her, Amani Haydar lost her mother young. In 2006 Haydar’s grandmother was killed in the 2006 Israeli–Lebanese conflict. In 2015 Haydar’s mother was murdered by...
Everything Harder Than Everyone Else (Jenny Valentish, Black Inc.)
27 April 2021
Don't be fooled by the Motörhead-inspired title: journalist Jenny Valentish’s latest work of nonfiction isn't about music but is instead an accessible deep dive into extreme bodily endurance. A spiritual...
One Hundred Days (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)
8 April 2021
Is there a right way to love? Karuna feels suffocated by her mother—and her entrapment multiplies when her dad leaves and she’s forced to move away from private school and...
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) (Anita Heiss, S&S)
24 March 2021
Exploring themes of family, belonging, courage, equality and heartache, this important new historical novel from Anita Heiss raises awareness of First Nations perspectives on the early days of white settlement...
As Beautiful As Any Other (Kaya Wilson, Picador)
23 March 2021
As Beautiful As Any Other is a joyous and thoughtful memoir–travelogue covering the terrains of both the body and the environment. Kaya Wilson's voice makes the reader feel immediately at...
Before You Knew My Name (Jacqueline Bublitz, A&U)
16 March 2021
We know the phrase from books, from crime shows, from the news: ‘The body was found by a jogger.’ Someone is murdered and somebody else finds them, while just going...
The Shape of Sound (Fiona Murphy, Text)
24 February 2021
Just like any relationship, even our relationship with our own body can be fraught with difficulty and denial. Fiona Murphy kept her deafness secret for 25 years, compensating for her...
No Document (Anwen Crawford, Giramondo)
17 February 2021
In this arresting book, Anwen Crawford reckons with the death of a close friend and comrade. Seeking a language suitable for grief, Crawford stitches together material from a wide range...
Tussaud (Belinda Lyons-Lee, Transit Lounge)
10 February 2021
Madame Tussaud is synonymous with wax figures of the famous and infamous and also with the uncanny-valley discomfort that such figures evoke. This book takes the documented strange life of...
Fly on the Wall (Remy Lai, Walker)
8 July 2020
When Henry Khoo isn’t trolling his school as anonymous cartoonist ‘Fly on the Wall’, he is being babied at home by an overprotective family. To correct this, Henry devises a...
Found (Bruce Pascoe, illus by Charmaine Ledden-Lewis, Magabala)
11 June 2020
The first foray into picture books for Bruce Pascoe (author of the wildly successful Dark Emu) is deceptively straightforward: a frightening separation (don’t worry, there’s a happy ending) between a...
The Lost Soul Atlas (Zana Fraillon, Lothian)
28 May 2020
The Lost Soul Atlas marks Zana Fraillon’s triumphant return to middle-grade after a stint writing YA and picture books, with Fraillon once again tackling significant social issues in this exploration...
The End of the World is Bigger Than Love (Davina Bell, Text)
2 April 2020
Davina Bell’s first young adult novel is unlike anything else written for the target audience. This becomes clear almost immediately upon beginning the book, when the identical twin protagonists, Summer...
The Vanishing Deep (Astrid Scholte, A&U)
6 February 2020
Tempest ekes out a living scavenging the sunken cities of a future flooded world, alone now after the death of her sister Elysea. But death is no longer the end....
Beautiful Eggs (Alice Lindstrom, Scribble)
22 January 2020
In this board book, Melbourne-based artist and illustrator Alice Lindstrom uses her stunning cut-paper style of illustration to introduce the tradition of egg decoration across a number of cultures around...
Beetle and Boo (Caitlin Murray, Puffin)
8 November 2019
Beetle is not scared of anything. Monsters? Ghosts? Bad dreams? Wild storms and cracking thunder and lightning? Nope. Uh-uh. Not ever. Caitlin Murray’s Beetle and Boo is a story of...
