Tuesday, 13 August 2013
The subject of Peter Goldsworthy’s memoir is his first 18 years and ‘the getting of stupidity’. ‘The getting of wisdom would have to wait,’ he writes. Goldsworthy’s father was a...

Wednesday, 7 August 2013
This impressive debut novel from Melbourne writer Nelika McDonald had me hooked from the beginning. Told through realistically drawn characters, this part thriller, part coming-of-age story revolves around 14-year-old Sarah...

Friday, 26 July 2013
Author and Indigenous academic Alexis Wright’s haunting third novel is hard to capture in simple terms as, similar to her previous fiction, it operates largely through abstraction and metaphor. Wright’s...

Monday, 22 July 2013
Sixteen-year-old Danika is a street kid in a world where a tyrant king keeps the population cowed with alchemy bombs dropped by royal biplanes. The only way to escape to...

Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Kirsten Krauth’s debut novel is by turns frustrating and exhilarating. On one hand, the plot is fraught with clichés connected to the too-familiar ‘rite of passage’ plotline. On the other,...

Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Green Vanilla Tea is the winner of the 2013 Finch Memoir Prize and it’s easy to see why. Marie Williams, her husband Dominic, and their two sons Michael and Nicolas are...

Tuesday, 2 July 2013
It’s quite a bold move to name your book Holy Bible; it could pique curiosity or incite alienation. Let’s hope it’s the former, as regardless of first impressions, Vanessa Russell...

Wednesday, 26 June 2013
This short book is the first in what promises to be a great new series from Black Inc. called ‘Redbacks’. The series aims to introduce readers to important national debates...

Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Ali Alizadeh’s critically acclaimed book of poetry Ashes in the Air was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards last year and I would be surprised if Transactions doesn’t receive...

Thursday, 13 June 2013
‘Now you are dead perhaps we can really talk.’ Ryan’s last poetry collection, The Argument, won the WA Premier’s Book Award for poetry and her previous volume, Scar Revision, was shortlisted in...

Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Catherine Berlin, a private investigator with a heroin addiction, is battling the unseasonal heat of London as well as physical scars from an earlier investigation. She is also grappling with...

Wednesday, 29 May 2013
ABC journalist Mark Willacy won a Walkley Award for his coverage of the 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear disasters in Japan. In the years since he has conducted interviews with...

Wednesday, 22 May 2013
The book that comes to mind on having finished Inga Simpson’s Mr Wigg is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. They share nothing much in common; Mr Wigg is set in country Australia in 1970,...

Wednesday, 15 May 2013
In this suspenseful gothic thriller set in late Victorian England, John Harwood (The Ghost Writer, Séance) has clearly had fun with the genre while creating a compelling page-turner with enough...

Wednesday, 8 May 2013
A road novel, a tale of magic realism, a story of two outsiders finding each other, and a search for identity saga. Lightning, an ambitious, finely written novel from first-time...