Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories (ed by Michael Earp, Walker)
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...
Fox & Bird (Edwina Wyatt, illus by Alice Lindstrom, Little Hare)
2 May 2019
Edwina Wyatt’s picture book is about testing the bonds of new friendship. Fox’s loneliness lends him to do strange things. He tries to befriend a bird but she has a...
One Careless Night (Christina Booth, Black Dog)
2 May 2019
Christina Booth is an award-winning author and illustrator who has previously collaborated with well-known Australian authors such as Colin Thiele and Jackie French. In One Careless Night, Booth recreates the...
Lights Out, Leonard (Josh Pyke, illus by Chris Nixon, Puffin)
2 May 2019
This book has a perennial theme—a child who’s scared of the dark—but with a really original twist: parents who write a manual on how to scare monsters. Chris Nixon’s illustrations...
So She Did: The Story of May Wirth (Simi Genziuk, illus by Renée Treml, Affirm)
2 May 2019
Born in Bundaberg in 1984, May Wirth showed an unusual knack for acrobatics at an early age. So much so that she was adopted by an equestrienne from the famous...
Cheeky Dogs: To Lake Nash and Back (Dion Beasley & Johanna Bell, A&U)
2 May 2019
Dion Beasley’s illustrated memoir details his early life moving between a couple of remote communities in the Northern Territory before settling at Tennant Creek. Both profoundly deaf and suffering muscular...
My Book (Not Yours) (Ben Sanders, Lothian)
2 May 2019
This is the first in what is slated to be a series of picture books featuring Lento (a sloth) and Fox (a fox). It joins the growing trend of books...
Secrets of a Schoolyard Millionaire (Nat Amoore, Puffin)
2 May 2019
In her first children’s book, Nat Amoore has created such a likeable heroine in Tess Heckleton, entrepreneur and life advice-giver, that her unlikely adventures and somewhat unlikely personality are entirely...
Mindcull (K H Canobi, Ford Street)
2 May 2019
Eila, a rising social media star, is shortlisted to become the new face of Pearl, a virtual reality tech company. She is invited to spend three days in England trying...
Split: True Stories of Leaving, Loss, and New Beginnings (ed by Lee Kofman, Ventura)
26 April 2019
Author and editor Lee Kofman sent a callout for personal essays about breaking up. The essays could be about any kind of separation: with people, objects, whatever. Split: True Stories...
The White Girl (Tony Birch, UQP)
26 April 2019
Tony Birch’s latest novel tells the story of Odette Brown and her granddaughter Sissy, who live on the fringe of Deane, a fictional town situated between the mountains and the...
The Nancys (R W R McDonald, A&U)
26 April 2019
In the poky New Zealand town of Riverstone—home of bad interior design, dull news cycles and not much else—11-year-old Tippy Chan’s mother is about to go on holiday. Tippy’s flamboyant...
The Electric Hotel (Dominic Smith, A&U)
26 April 2019
Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel is a sensory delight, retelling the life story of a former film director—known as ‘the Frenchman behind the viewfinder’—with the rich vocabulary of cinema. Claude...
Allegra in Three Parts (Suzanne Daniel, Macmillan)
26 April 2019
In this impressive debut novel, 11-year-old Allegra finds herself torn between the three adults in her life: her two grandmothers and her father. They live on adjoining blocks and adore...
Fish Song (Caitlin Maling, Fremantle Press)
26 April 2019
Fish Song is Caitlin Maling’s third full-length collection after her 2015 debut Conversations I've Never Had (shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award and in the WA Premier's Book Awards)...
Hitch (Kathryn Hind, Hamish Hamilton)
26 April 2019
Kathryn Hind was the recipient of the inaugural Penguin Australia Literary Prize in 2018 for Hitch, a contemporary novel set in Australia. The protagonist, Amelia, is a naive young woman...
My Culture and Me (Gregg Dreise, Puffin)
4 April 2019
This beautiful picture book presents the voice of an Indigenous child relating the importance of knowing and living your culture. Beginning with an expression of love for Country and family,...
Arthur and the Tiger (Sophie Beer, Puffin)
4 April 2019
Sophie Beer has a knack for creating books that simultaneously feel contemporary and vintage, which is sure to make them modern classics. In Arthur and the Tiger, Arthur is the son of...
Sophia and the Corner Park Clubhouse (Davina Bell, Hardie Grant Egmont)
4 April 2019
Davina Bell is one of Australia’s most highly regarded authors for young people, and the first book in her new series for middle-grade readers cements her reputation as one of...
Devil’s Ballast (Meg Caddy, Text)
4 April 2019
After escaping her violently abusive husband, Anne Bonny disguises herself as a boy and joins her lover, pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham, on his ship the Ranger. Anne fits in...
How it Feels to Float (Helena Fox, Pan)
4 April 2019
How do you find the will to live when you can’t even feel the ground anymore? Elizabeth Martin Grey—Biz—doesn’t know. All she knows is that she’s got one foot in...
Shauna’s Great Expectations (Kathleen Loughnan, A&U)
4 April 2019
Seventeen-year-old Shauna is the recipient of an Indigenous scholarship to an elite Sydney girls’ school. The expectations placed on her could be no higher than those she places on herself,...
My Real Friend (David Hunt, illus by Lucinda Masciullo, ABC Books)
4 April 2019
David Hunt returns with his second offering for children following 2016’s The Nose Pixies. Taking the story of an imaginary friend and telling it from the other side, we hear...
Alex and the Alpacas Save the World (Kathryn Lefroy, Fremantle Press)
4 April 2019
Alex and the Alpacas Save the World is Kathryn Lefroy’s first novel. Part fantasy, part adventure, it reinvigorates the familiar good-versus-evil narrative with an original (if somewhat offbeat) setting and...
After She Left (Penelope Hanley, Ventura)
27 March 2019
After She Left is an exploration of feminism in relation to the arts, domestic life and the cultural ramifications of non-traditional motherhood. It spans six decades and the lives of...
A Lovely and Terrible Thing (Chris Womersley, Picador)
27 March 2019
A Lovely and Terrible Thing is novelist Chris Womersley’s debut short story collection, and his first book since 2017’s City of Crows. Of the 20 stories in the collection, 17...
Race, Islam and Power: Ethnic and Religious Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia (Andreas Harsono, Monash University Publishing)
27 March 2019
After the collapse of the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998, journalist Andreas Harsono spent almost three years travelling across Indonesia. Race, Islam and Power, which chronicles this journey, is a...
Daughter of Bad Times (Rohan Wilson, A&U)
27 March 2019
Vogel Award-winning novelist Rohan Wilson is back with another gripping page-turner, this time in the form of a dystopian tale set 50 years in the future. Sea levels have risen,...
Room for a Stranger (Melanie Cheng, Text)
27 March 2019
After an attempted home invasion leaves her feeling unsafe, elderly Meg signs on with a homeshare agency: Andy, an international student from Hong Kong who’s come to Melbourne to study...
The Lost Arabs (Omar Sakr, UQP)
27 March 2019
Omar Sakr’s second poetry collection is an assured and vibrant exploration of doubt and faith. Following on from his Kenneth Slessor Prize-nominated debut These Wild Houses, this collection explores the...
