Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Off to the Market (Alice Oehr, Scribble) 

2 August 2022
Off to the Market is a celebration of markets and healthy, whole foods. Graphic artist Alice Oehr showcases her skills in her debut narrative nonfiction picture book, for children aged...

Dusty in the Outwilds (Rhiannon Williams, HGCP) 

2 August 2022
Dusty, real name Willa Dust, might just be the most intuitive, smart and brave 12-year-old you’ll ever get caught up in an extraordinary adventure with. Dusty has always heard about...

Runt (Craig Silvey, illus by Sara Acton, A&U) 

26 July 2022
Nobody knows where Runt came from, but everybody knows he’ll only listen to Annie. Annie’s instinct is to fix everything, and Runt’s is to follow Annie. When anyone else is...

Unnecessary Drama (Nina Kenwood, Text) 

19 July 2022
Things are going well for Brooke. Fresh out of high school and going straight into university, she is determined to reinvent herself from the nerdy and awkward person she once...

A Girl Called Corpse (Reece Carter, A&U) 

19 July 2022
Reece Carter—who previously brought us The Garden Apothecary—has turned his hand to prose for his debut middle-grade novel A Girl Called Corpse. Corpse is a ghost with no memory of...

The Upwelling (Lystra Rose, Lothian)

12 July 2022
Kirra doesn’t understand how or why, but her dreams come true. And no one believes her, not even Nan, who told Kirra to never mention her ‘power’. One night, she...

The Jammer (Nova Weetman, UQP) 

12 July 2022
Fred has roller derby in her blood. As soon as she could walk, her mum had her skating. It was their thing—and a place where Fred always knew she belonged—until...

Melanie La’Brooy on ‘The Wintrish Girl’

5 July 2022
Melanie La'Brooy's The Wintrish Girl (UQP) is the first book in her 'Talismans of Fate' fantasy trilogy for middle-grade readers. Featuring magical creatures and new friendships, the book uses tropes...

The Wintrish Girl (Melanie La’Brooy, UQP) 

5 July 2022
Melanie La’Brooy’s The Wintrish Girl is an exciting middle-grade fantasy debut. Penn is an outsider in the strict world of Aralyia, a slave to the princess Seraphine, who is orphaned...

The Tree at Number 43 (Jess McGeachin, Puffin) 

5 July 2022
Jess McGeachin has fast established himself as an exciting and skilled creator of picture books, drawing on his work at Melbourne Museum to celebrate the beauty of the natural world...

Where You Left Us (Rhiannon Wilde, UQP) 

28 June 2022
Rhiannon Wilde’s second YA novel, Where You Left Us, is as bewitching as her Glendower Award–winning debut Henry Hamlet’s Heart. It follows the two Prince sisters, Cinnamon and Scarlett, who...

Birdbrain (Kelli Anne Hawkins, HarperCollins) 

28 June 2022
In her return to middle-grade fiction, Kelli Anne Hawkins delivers another madcap caper for 10- to 12-year-olds that has puns aplenty and some genuine chuckles. Hadley Boggs is 11 and...

Honour Among Ghosts (Sean Williams, A&U) 

21 June 2022
Honour Among Ghosts is a high-action historical mystery set in a small Irish village where there are sorcerers, moralistic ghosts and spell-scribbling scribes. When 12-year-old Penny’s working-class father is thrown...

Dancing Barefoot (Alice Boyle, Text)

21 June 2022
Dancing Barefoot brings a warm and uplifting queer contemporary romance to the #LoveOzYA, #AusQueerYA and #OwnVoices scenes. Winner of the 2021 Text Prize, Alice Boyle’s debut novel follows Patti ‘Patch’...