Too Much Lip (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
The title of Melissa Lucashenko’s latest book—both an accusation and a lament—speaks of hunger, greed, desperation, destruction and redemption. Central to the novel are themes of rage, incarceration, and generational...
A Superior Spectre (Angela Meyer, Peter Bishop)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Angela Meyer’s A Superior Spectre is an eerie, gothic work that is both a richly detailed historical novel and a chilling prediction of the near future. The book follows Jeff,...
Scrublands (Chris Hammer, A&U)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
In a dying Riverina town that’s suffering a merciless drought, ‘good people fight to retain honour and dignity against unfair odds’. Shockingly, one Sunday morning, the town’s priest opens fire...
Prize Fighter (Future D Fidel, Hachette)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Isa Alaki is 10 years old, a budding engineer with a loving family in the Congolese city of Bukavu, when a rebel militia descends on his city, slaughtering his family and...
The Fireflies of Autumn (Moreno Giovannoni, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
The stories in this impressive fictional debut by Moreno Giovannoni cover all aspects of noisy, nosey, gossipy Italian village life. Ninety-year-old Ugo introduces a series of stories from his Tuscan...
The Biographer’s Lover (Ruby J Murray, Black Inc.)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Ruby J Murray returns with her second novel, The Biographer’s Lover, a book that is as much about the art of biography as it is a fictional story about a...
Beautiful Revolutionary (Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Scribe)
Thursday, 31 May 2018
In this meticulously researched first novel, Laura Elizabeth Woollett tells the story of Jim Jones’ religious cult, the Peoples Temple, infamous for the mass-suicide of nearly a thousand people in...
Girltopia (Hilary Rogers, Scholastic)
Friday, 4 May 2018
Twelve-year-old Clara wakes up one day to a city where all the men and boys are afflicted by a mystery illness that leaves them unconscious and unresponsive but thankfully still...
Mercy Point (Anna Snoekstra, HarperCollins)
Friday, 4 May 2018
Five teenagers living in a small town become anonymous online friends, without realising they hate each other in real life. The common thread they share is that they all believe...
Hive (A J Betts, Pan)
Friday, 4 May 2018
Hayley is a beekeeper, content with her place in her small, rigid, underwater world ruled over by a shadowy council. But while her friend Celia dreams of marrying a ‘netter...
Wren (Katrina Lehman, illus by Sophie Beer, Scribble)
Friday, 4 May 2018
Wren longs for peace and quiet but, alas, his rambunctious family create havoc as naturally as they breathe. When a noisy baby sister joins the clan, Wren puts his foot...
Cicada (Shaun Tan, Lothian)
Friday, 4 May 2018
Shaun Tan has done it again. Cicada is excellent. Although more distinctly a narrative picture book than some of his others, Cicada’s darkness breeds a rich subtext that will serve...
Ottilie Colter and the Narroway Hunt (Rhiannon Williams, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Friday, 4 May 2018
The Colter siblings have learned to look after each other in the dangerous Brakkerswamp, so when Ottilie’s brother Gully is kidnapped under mysterious circumstances, it falls to her to save...
Duck! (Meg McKinlay, illus by Nathaniel Eckstrom, Walker Books)
Friday, 4 May 2018
Duck!, from award-winning writer Meg McKinlay, is perhaps the most delightful picture book to feature a drawn-out play on a single word. The clues, laid out expertly in Nathaniel Eckstrom’s...
The Geography of Friendship (Sally Piper, UQP)
Friday, 27 April 2018
The romantic notion that female friendships are made of irrevocable bonds that can sustain all manner of hardships and joy is at the centre of Sally Piper’s The Geography of...
The Peacock Summer (Hannah Richell, Hachette)
Friday, 27 April 2018
Hannah Richell’s third novel, The Peacock Summer, is a vivid tale stretching across 50 years. It tells the story of Lillian and her granddaughter Maggie, set against the intimidating backdrop...
When Elephants Fight (Majok Tulba, Hamish Hamilton)
Friday, 27 April 2018
When Elephants Fight is a novel that really packs a punch. Majok Tulba has previously written about the realities of the Sudanese civil war in his 2012 novel, Beneath the...
The Knowledge Solution: Politics (ed by Michelle Grattan, MUP)
Friday, 27 April 2018
In The Knowledge Solution: Politics, editor Michelle Grattan presents a range of views dissecting today's most pressing political problems. A heavy artillery of top-brass contributors such as Paul Kelly, Peter...
Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate)
Friday, 27 April 2018
The debut novel from award-winning journalist Trent Dalton is a harrowing coming-of-age tale set against the street-level drug trade in 1980s Brisbane. Boy Swallows Universe follows Eli Bell from ages...
The Nowhere Child (Christian White, Affirm Press)
Friday, 27 April 2018
Sammy Went was a toddler when she disappeared from her home in Kentucky 28 years ago. Kim Leamy is an Australian photography teacher living a fairly unremarkable life until a...
The Orchard Underground (Mat Larkin, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Friday, 13 April 2018
The Orchard Underground is a funny and intriguing debut that’s mercifully free of a ‘tween’ sensibility but never patronising to its upper-primary readers. The story is fresh and strange: the...
Bab Sharkey and the Animal Mummies: The Weird Beard (Andrew Hansen & Jessica Roberts, Walker Books)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Parents will likely be familiar with The Chaser’s Andrew Hansen, but this wacky new series is a departure from his satirical brand of humour. The book opens with the Unpharaoh:...
Red House, Blue House, Green House, Tree House! (Jane Godwin, illus by Jane Reiseger, Affirm Press)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Young children love listening to rhyming text. Even though they may not understand rhyming, they enjoy the sounds of the rhymes and the rhythm of the words. These kinds of...
Whisper (Lynette Noni, Pantera Press)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Subject Six-Eight-Four (aka Jane Doe) has been locked up in an underground facility and experimented on for over two and a half years as part of a mysterious ‘program’. In...
Benny Bungarra’s Big Bush Clean-up (Sally Morgan, illus by Ambelin Kwaymullina, Magabala Books)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Benny Bungarra’s Big Bush Clean-up is an animal tale with a strong environmental message. When Benny Bungarra investigates some strange noises in the bush, he comes across different animals that...
Under My Bed (John Dickson, illus by Guridi, Berbay)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Most people will remember the spine-tingling feeling of lying in bed at night and imagining there are monsters in their bedroom—and the comfort of realising that they’re safely snuggled up...
Lifel1k3 (Jay Kristoff, A&U)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Set in a savage post-apocalyptic California (or Kalifornya as it’s remembered now), Lifel1k3 (Lifelike) follows 15-year-old Eve, who makes a living building robots out of scraps and using them to...
Bonesland (Brendan Lawley, Text)
Friday, 13 April 2018
Sixteen-year-old Bones Carter has a lot going on. With his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, anxiety, germ-phobia, separated parents and regular harassment at the hands of his older brother Trav and school bully...
The Singing Seal (Merv Lamington, illus by Allison Langton, Affirm Press)
Friday, 13 April 2018
The first book in Affirm Press’ new ‘True Animal Tales’ series is an amiable and accessible glimpse into the cheeky imagined world of the real-life New Zealand fur seal who...
It’s Hard to Love a Tiger (Anna Pignataro, Scholastic)
Thursday, 12 April 2018
Kittens and cats are so passé; how much more fun would it be to have a pet tiger instead? The cover—with its smiley little blonde girl trying to affix a...
