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WBN advance reviews >

Unfinished Woman (Robyn Davidson, Bloomsbury) 

Tuesday, 22 August 2023
Robyn Davidson is perhaps best known for her novel Tracks and has a writing career spanning over 40 years. Her latest, Unfinished Woman, is a nomadic memoir that details the author’s traumatic childhood,...

The Observologist (Giselle Clarkson, Gecko) 

Tuesday, 22 August 2023
An observologist is someone who makes scientific expeditions every day and notices interesting details in the world around them. This is the first thing we learn in The Observologist by Giselle Clarkson,...

Edenglassie (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP) 

Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie is a literary epic that skilfully weaves between the present day, where Grannie Eddie is looked after by her feisty granddaughter Winona and Dr Johnny, and mid-1850s Brisbane, where...

Unholy Terrors (Lyndall Clipstone, Penguin) 

Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Unholy Terrors is an alluring, gothic tale of forbidden love and shifting allegiances in a land of magic and monsters. Everline Blackthorn is not like the other wardens who guard...

Kinky History (Esmé Louise James, Pantera) 

Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Kinky History is based on the wildly popular TikTok account we all needed. Author Esmé Louise James (@esme.louisee) is a TikTok phenomenon with over 2.3 million followers, and it’s pretty...

Green Dot (Madeleine Gray, A&U) 

Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Madeline Gray’s debut novel, Green Dot, which has enjoyed a lot of pre-publication buzz, is a surprising read. With some superficial markers of the recently popular ‘sad girl’ novel—particularly in...

Prima Facie (Suzie Miller, Picador) 

Tuesday, 8 August 2023
Prima Facie, Suzie Miller’s debut novel (adapted from her internationally award-winning 2019 play of the same name), is a relentless, arresting story of a criminal defence barrister whose passionate faith...

Salt River Road (Molly Schmidt, Fremantle) 

Tuesday, 8 August 2023
Radio producer, journalist and now award-winning writer Molly Schmidt has poured her heart into her first book Salt River Road. ‘Write what you know’, they say, and having lost her...

The Modern (Anna Kate Blair, Scribner) 

Tuesday, 8 August 2023
Art aficionados and literary enthusiasts will feel at home in The Modern, in which Anna Kate Blair navigates New York City’s modern art institutions. Sophia is a MoMA fellow in NYC, who grapples with her instinct to sentimentalise her...

Finding My Bella Vita (Pia Miranda, Hachette) 

Tuesday, 8 August 2023
Pia Miranda’s memoir, Finding My Bella Vita, is like a long phone call with a friend. Based in Melbourne, Miranda is an actor best known for her role as Josie...

Summer of Blood (Dave Warner, Fremantle) 

Tuesday, 1 August 2023
Ned Kelly award-winning author and musician-songwriter Dave Warner revisits characters from his 1999 novel Big Bad Blood. Set two years after the events of that book, in 1967, Summer of...

Me, Her, Us (Yen-Rong Wong, UQP) 

Tuesday, 1 August 2023
Yen-Rong Wong’s Me, Her, Us encapsulates the Asian female body experience in a post-pandemic world. Wong oscillates between belonging and unbelonging in this bold-yet-anxious slice of Asian-Australian diaspora experience. The work is broken...

The Sugar Palace (Fiona McIntosh, Michael Joseph) 

Tuesday, 1 August 2023
Set in 1920s Sydney, The Sugar Palace is a pacy historical adventure with the perfect dose of romance, and shifts between the shadows of Sydney’s criminal underbelly and The Rocks....

Kip of the Mountain (Emma Gourlay, HarperCollins) 

Tuesday, 1 August 2023
Emma Gourlay’s debut novel for readers aged 8–12 is the madcap adventure of Kip Boowitt, who lives on South Africa’s Table Mountain. Beleaguered by a distant dad and cruel schoolmates,...

We Know a Place (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Lothian) 

Tuesday, 25 July 2023
Award-winning and well-loved writer for all ages, Maxine Beneba Clarke, celebrates the magic of bookshops in her latest title for younger readers. We Know a Place is an illustrated tribute to those...

Others Were Emeralds (Lang Leav, Viking) 

Tuesday, 25 July 2023
The year is 1997—the era of Jerry Maguire and Scream, dial-up modems, and rising anti-Asian sentiment in the heavily politicised Australian town of Whitlam. Poet Lang Leav’s debut novel revolves...