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...
Henry Turnip (Chloe Jasmine Harris, Walker Books)
2 April 2020
Henry Turnip is a panda who likes strawberry jam sandwiches with the crusts cut off, reading about the ocean, and his seven sets of blue-striped overalls. He dislikes mess, too...
The Dark Tide (Alicia Jasinska, Penguin)
2 April 2020
The island city of Caldella is sinking, and the only way to hold back the tide is through an annual ritual sacrifice performed by the cold, distant Witch Queen. When...
Eloise and the Bucket of Stars (Janeen Brian, Walker Books)
2 April 2020
For nearly 13 years Eloise Pail has dreamed of a family and life outside the orphanage. But year after year Eloise is left under the watchful gaze of Sister Hortense,...
Change Starts with Us (Sophie Beer, Little Hare)
1 April 2020
This brightly coloured and accessible book sets out to empower young children and familiarise them with ways in which even the littlest of us can have an impact our world....
What Zola did on Monday (Melina Marchetta, illus by Deb Hudson, Puffin)
1 April 2020
Melina Marchetta is a novelist we normally associate with award-winning young adult fiction, and more recently her adult novels Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil and The Place on Dalhousie....
The Trials of Portnoy: How Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system (Patrick Mullins, Scribe)
26 March 2020
Starting even before Federation and lasting until the early 1970s, the Australian government controlled what Australians could read. Yet today, as Patrick Mullins recounts in this scintillating account of the rise and fall of Australian...
Father of the Lost Boys (Yuot A Alaak, Fremantle Press)
26 March 2020
This shocking story should be better known: the attempt of more than 20,000 orphaned boys and thousands more refugee followers to survive amid the terrifying atrocities of the Second Sudanse...
The Rain Heron (Robbie Arnott, Text)
26 March 2020
Ren has retreated from the world. After the country is torn apart by a coup, she hides herself away on a mountain, barely seeing another living soul beyond the animals...
Sticks and Stones (Katherine Firkin, Bantam)
26 March 2020
Detective senior constable Emmett Corban works for Missing Persons, a department under threat of downsizing: most of the people they’re looking for don’t want to be found. When a man...
Rise & Shine (Patrick Allington, Scribe)
26 March 2020
Patrick Allington’s second novel takes place in an allegorical dystopia following an ambiguous apocalypse. The cities of Rise and Shine have emerged from these ashes thanks to the efforts of...
The Hunted (Gabriel Bergmoser, HarperCollins)
24 March 2020
On a lonely highway in outback Australia sits a solitary service station run by the equally solitary Frank, whose teenage granddaughter has been sent to stay with him for some...
Respect (Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson, illus by Lisa Kennedy, Magabala)
5 March 2020
Dream team Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson, who previously brought us the excellent Nganga: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander words and phrases, have collaborated with artist Lisa Kennedy to...
Rocky and Louie (Phil Walleystack, Raewyn Caisley & Dub Leffler, Puffin)
5 March 2020
Siblings Rocky and Louie are as close as can be. Louie loves playing footy with his big brother and learning all about the Country they call home. Rocky shows Louie...
The Year the Maps Changed (Danielle Binks, Lothian)
5 March 2020
The Year the Maps Changed is Melbourne-based writer Danielle Binks’ debut novel. The year is 1999 and in small-town Sorrento, Victoria, 11-year-old Fred is lost within the complexity of a...
Tiger & Cat (Allira Tee, Berbay)
5 March 2020
In this appealing debut picture book from Melbourne illustrator Allira Tee, two animals recognise the value of their close friendship. Tiger and Cat do everything together—exploring, dancing, eating delicious pink...
Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal (Anna Whateley, A&U)
5 March 2020
Peta Lyre is an atypical girl living in a typical world. Her best mate says she has so many letters that they almost make up the alphabet—ADHD, ASD, SPD. Fiercely...
Sometimes Cake (Edwina Wyatt, illus by Tamsin Ainslie, Walker)
5 March 2020
Audrey meets a lion carrying a purple balloon and asks him if it’s his birthday. ‘Sometimes,’ he responds, ‘but not today’. But considering that Audrey happens to like birthdays, she...
When it Drops (Alex Dyson, Hardie Grant Egmont)
5 March 2020
Former triple j breakfast presenter Alex Dyson’s debut YA novel draws on his considerable knowledge of the Australian music industry—he has said that this book was inspired by the school-aged...
Please Don’t Hug Me (Kay Kerr, Text)
5 March 2020
At the suggestion of her psychologist, Erin writes letters to her absent older brother, Rudy. Erin is 17 years old, behind on her savings for Schoolies and freshly unemployed. There...
Broken Rules and Other Stories (Barry Lee Thompson, Transit Lounge)
28 February 2020
In this accomplished debut, Barry Lee Thompson makes delicate inquiries into the passage of time through a series of loosely linked, often coming-of-age stories. Several stories cast back to lucid...
The Drop-Off (Fiona Harris & Mike McLeish, Echo)
28 February 2020
The Drop-Off is a cheerful depiction of parenting culture, told through the alternating points-of-view of three parents and set in a middle-class primary school in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne....
Fathoms: The world in the whale (Rebecca Giggs, Scribe)
28 February 2020
Rebecca Giggs’ nonfiction debut is a lyrical, wide-ranging meditation on whales and their complex relationship with humanity. Meticulously researched and full of fascinating information, Fathoms is not just limited to...
Mammoth (Chris Flynn, UQP)
28 February 2020
Chris Flynn’s third novel is an ambitious adventure back in time that recounts the folly of humanity—as told by the fossil of a 13,000-year-old mammoth. It sounds like it could...
Hysteria: A memoir of illness, strength and women’s stories throughout history (Katerina Bryant, NewSouth)
28 February 2020
In this ambitious debut, Katerina Bryant blends memoir, biography, history and cultural analysis in an effort to deconstruct the complex cultural frameworks that inform our understanding of women’s mental health...
Night Lessons in Little Jerusalem (Rick Held, Hachette)
28 February 2020
Night Lessons in Little Jerusalem is an impressive and gripping debut that blurs the line between memoir and fiction. Based on the wartime diaries of the author’s father, the novel tells...
Ghost Species (James Bradley, Hamish Hamilton)
28 February 2020
James Bradley’s latest novel tells the story of Eve, a genetically engineered Neanderthal brought into life as part of a scheme for mitigating the environmental degradation of climate change. In...
Untethered (Hayley Katzen, Ventura)
28 February 2020
In 1989 academic Hayley Katzen moved from apartheid South Africa to Australia. In Sydney she taught and worked in law and enjoyed the comparative safety and community of the city...
How to Grow a Family Tree (Eliza Henry Jones, HarperCollins)
6 February 2020
Eliza Henry Jones explores addiction, family and identity in this insightful, compelling novel for young adults. Stella has always known that she’s adopted, but an unexpected letter from her birth...
Mum’s Elephant (Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O’Keefe, illus by Christina Booth, Magabala)
6 February 2020
Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O’Keefe has spun a cherished childhood memory into a beguiling tale for children in this debut picture book. In its pages she reflects on her mum’s ‘elephant’,...
