Hare’s Fur (Trevor Shearston, Scribe)
Friday, 1 February 2019
Russell Bass is a professional potter in his seventies, leading a quiet and solitary life in the Blue Mountains following the death of his wife. While gathering basalt for his...
Stranger Country (Monica Tan, A&U)
Friday, 1 February 2019
At first it’s hard to know how to interpret Monica Tan’s intention to discover ‘the Australia lying beyond her hometown’ and to ‘learn about Aboriginal Australia’ as she travels on...
Islands (Peggy Frew, A&U)
Friday, 1 February 2019
Peggy Frew shows her trademark flair for bringing complex domestic lives to the fore in her latest novel Islands. At first the book seems to have more in common with...
Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Brain and Mind (Nicola Redhouse, UQP)
Friday, 1 February 2019
Unlike the Heart is a quest to understand a mind, from the mind governing it, and offers much to appeal to different interests. Nicola Redhouse relates her troubled pregnancies and...
The Van Apfel Girls are Gone (Felicity McLean, Fourth Estate)
Friday, 1 February 2019
Felicity McLean’s debut novel The Van Apfel Girls are Gone opens with the arrival of a ghost, ‘summoned by the death rattle of Cornflakes in their box’. It is an...
Ozzie Goes to School (Jocelyn Crabb, illus by Danny Snell, Working Title)
Monday, 7 January 2019
Ozzie Goes to School is a gentle picture book about one of life’s great milestones. Ozzie loves living with his dad in their shipping container on the beach. Safe in...
Dippy’s Big Day Out (Jackie French, illus by Bruce Whatley & Ben Smith Whatley, HarperCollins)
Monday, 7 January 2019
The creators of the much-loved picture book Diary of a Wombat, are back with a new book that is set centuries back in time. Dippy, short for Diprotodon, is the...
Into the Fire (Sonia Orchard, Affirm Press)
Thursday, 29 November 2018
Sonia Orchard’s second work of literary fiction, Into the Fire, is a distinctly Australian novel. Descriptions of smoky blue-green gums that paint a vivid picture of rural Victoria are balanced...
Fridays with My Folks (Amal Awad, Vintage)
Thursday, 29 November 2018
In her fifth nonfiction book, journalist Amal Awad investigates ageing in Australia from her perspective as an adult daughter grappling with a parent’s decline. Woven into her analysis is the...
Stella the Unstoppable: The Talent Show Fiasco (Richard Newsome, Affirm)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Richard Newsome is known for action-packed adventure tales like his Text Prize-winning ‘Billionaire’ series, but his newest series, ‘Stella the Unstoppable’, is a little bit of a departure. Aimed at...
Fish Kid and the Lizard Ninja (Kylie Howarth, Walker Books)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Bodhi is a boy who travels the world with his parents (a scientist and a photographer) as they study marine environments, in this case the Galapagos Islands. He would much...
Gorski’s Bitemare (Robert Favretto, illus by Danny Willis, Ford St)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Gorski Dragonovski lives with his mum and dad and his sister Drusella. Their home is a castle outside of town and they sleep all day, in coffins. Gorski and his...
Tilly Maguire and the Royal Wedding Mess (Emma Grey, HarperCollins)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Author Emma Grey declares this gloriously soapy book an ‘unapologetic fairytale’. Grey has fun with classic fairytale elements as well as modern pop culture: indeed, the book features run-ins with...
Melody Trumpet (Gabrielle Tozer, HarperCollins)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Melody’s parents are world-famous musicians (and narcissistic bores) who expect their only daughter to have inherited their incredible talent, but poor Melody can’t play any instruments and sounds like a...
The Day We Built the Bridge (Samantha Tidy, illus by Fiona Burrows, MidnightSun)
Friday, 9 November 2018
Samantha Tidy and Fiona Burrows take the creation of a national icon, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and strip it back to a streamlined, succinct story of a need, an idea...
Fusion (Kate Richards, Hamish Hamilton)
Thursday, 1 November 2018
Kate Richards burst onto the literary scene in 2013 with her award-winning Madness: A Memoir, which described her decade of living with psychosis. She returns now with her first novel,...
A Season on Earth (Gerald Murnane, Text)
Thursday, 1 November 2018
In 1976 William Heinemann published Gerald Murnane’s second novel, A Lifetime on Clouds. In the book’s originally published two parts, the protagonist Adrian Sherd, a student at a Catholic high...
Yahoo Creek (Tohby Riddle, A&U)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
In this imaginative work, Tohby Riddle delves into the mystery of the yahoo (or the yowie, as it is commonly known today). Reported sightings of these large, hairy beasts were...
Queen Celine (Matt Shanks, Walker Books)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
Matt Shanks’ latest picture book introduces us to Celine Beaufort. Celine lives a fairly ordinary life, doing ordinary things, but sometimes she gets to be the queen of a very...
Mallee Sky (Jodi Toering, illus by Tannya Harricks, Walker Books)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
The Australia of Mallee Sky is a familiar one—wide, red-brown, drought-stricken, unforgiving, yet strikingly beautiful—but never a cliche. The book avoids patronising children, instead welcoming them into a mature literary...
47 Degrees (Justin D’Ath, Puffin)
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
Author Justin D’Ath lost his home in Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires, and the story of that harrowing day forms the basis for his new novel, 47 Degrees. The morning of...
Call Me Evie (J P Pomare, Hachette)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
What do you do when you can’t remember the incident that changed your life? Seventeen-year-old Kate—now using the alias ‘Evie’ to protect her identity—is being held captive in a remote...
Half Moon Lake (Kirsten Alexander, Bantam)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
In July of 1913 Sonny Davenport, the four-year-old son of a prominent family in America’s Deep South, goes missing. The father puts his political ambitions on hold to chase up...
Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook (Jacqueline Kent, UQP)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
On the face of it, Jacqueline Kent’s memoir feels like a simple story, a May to December romance between editor Kent and author Kenneth Cook. Like most of us, Kent...
I Can’t Remember the Title but the Cover Is Blue (Elias Greig, A&U)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
Sydney bookseller Elias Greig thought writing down his customer interactions would make for a nice creative outlet in between part-time work and his PhD thesis. The resulting book, similar in...
Imperfect: How Our Bodies Shape the People We Become (Lee Kofman, Affirm Press)
Thursday, 25 October 2018
Lee Kofman turns her eye to bodies that ‘defy the natural order of things’ in her latest book, blending memoir with cultural criticism to delve into what bodies that contravene...
The Tales of Mr Walker (Jess Black, illus by Sara Acton, Puffin)
Thursday, 4 October 2018
Mr Walker is a golden labrador who has been hired as the Melbourne Park Hyatt’s canine ambassador. Based on his real-life counterpart, this middle-grade chapter book comprises four beguiling vignettes...
The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars (Jaclyn Moriarty, A&U)
Thursday, 4 October 2018
Though this middle-grade fantasy chapter book shares the same world as Jaclyn Moriarty’s earlier book, The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, this is not really a sequel. While Bronte...
Midnight at the Library (Ursula Dubosarsky illus by Ron Brooks, NLA)
Thursday, 4 October 2018
This outstanding book by two acclaimed Australian creators is thought-provoking and informative. Ursula Dubosarsky’s text, combined with Ron Brooks’ illustrations, refers to the fascinating story of books—how they are created, preserved and connected...
Mamie (Tania McCartney, HarperCollins)
Thursday, 4 October 2018
This year marks the 100th anniversary since the publication of May Gibbs’ beloved Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Joining the centenary celebrations is Tania McCartney’s latest picture book Mamie, which explores Gibbs'...
