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...
Hazelwood (Tom Doig, Viking)
27 March 2019
During a heatwave in February 2014, brown coal ignites within Hazelwood Power Station’s open-pit mine, causing a fire that burns for 45 days and sends toxic plumes of smoke over...
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...
Attraction (Ruby Porter, Text)
27 March 2019
Auckland-based writer Ruby Porter’s debut novel Attraction, winner of the inaugural Michael Gifkins Prize for an unpublished novel, is a melancholic and haunting meditation on postcolonial guilt and the stories...
Sky (Ondine Sherman, Pantera)
7 March 2019
Fifteen-year-old animal lover Sky has had her world turned upside down. Her mum has died, she is sent to live with Aunt Paula (a virtual stranger who cries constantly and...
Our Little Inventor (Sher Rill Ng, A&U)
7 March 2019
Little Nell has been furiously working away at her desk, her room cloaked in gloom. But she’s finally finished her invention. Despite her younger brother’s scoffing, Nell is adamant that...
Wilam: A Birrarung Story (Aunty Joy Murphy & Andrew Kelly, illus by Lisa Kennedy, Black Dog)
7 March 2019
Wilam is an illustrated children’s book about Birrarung (the Yarra River) and some of the native animals that live nearby. Aunty Joy Murphy, a Wurundjeri Elder, is the author of...
Horse Warrior (Meredith Jaffé, Harbour Publishing)
7 March 2019
In this medieval fantasy for middle-grade readers, 11-year-old Maia is desperate to compete in the annual Tournament of Avenal, a showcase of riding and shooting skills. But girls are not...
Sherlock Bones and the Natural History Mystery (Renée Treml, A&U)
7 March 2019
Middle primary readers seem to have an unquenchable thirst for illustrated, funny novels, with kids devouring series after series of the ‘Treehouse’ books, ‘The Bad Guys’, and ‘Dog Man’. Renée...
Rebellion at Eureka (Alan Tucker, Scholastic)
7 March 2019
It’s 1854, and now that Alf is 13 years old and finally done with school, he wants some independence. But his mum has other ideas, moving their general store business...
The Honeyman and the Hunter (Neil Grant, A&U)
7 March 2019
When 16-year-old Rudra’s estranged grandmother arrives from India to reunite with her only daughter, it unlocks a side of Rudra’s family and culture that he never knew; born and raised...
One Tree (Christopher Cheng, illus by Bruce Whatley, Puffin)
7 March 2019
Grandfather used to live happily on a farm, nearest the tallest tree on a mountain. Now he lives with his family in a small apartment in a crowded city and...
The Secret Runners of New York (Matthew Reilly, Macmillan)
7 March 2019
A school for the children of the wealthy elite is not where you would expect a book about the end of the world to be set, but that's what Matthew...
Fled (Meg Keneally, Echo)
28 February 2019
Having co-written the ‘Monsarrat’ historical fiction series with her father, Meg Keneally makes her solo debut with the gripping tale of one extraordinary woman’s life-long battle for survival. Following an...
River of Salt (Dave Warner, Fremantle Press)
28 February 2019
After fronting a rock band in the late 1970s and later writing for film and TV, Dave Warner now taps a rich seam of character-driven crime novels. His 2015 book...
The Place on Dalhousie (Melina Marchetta, Viking)
28 February 2019
Melina Marchetta writes masterfully about messy relationships, whether they are familial or romantic, and her new novel is no exception. When Rosie Gennaro meets Jimmy Hailler, the two enter into...
Unconditional Love: A Memoir of Filmmaking and Motherhood (Jocelyn Moorhouse, Text)
28 February 2019
When Jocelyn Moorhouse’s film Proof was released in 1991, it created excitement—here was a new Australian writer-director with a startlingly original eye. International success quickly followed, but then she disappeared...
Eight Lives (Susan Hurley, Affirm)
28 February 2019
Former refugee David Tran has invented a wonder-drug that could transform immunology. With the first human trial about to take place, David, the new Golden Boy of Australian medical research,...
