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WBN advance reviews >

Maggie (Catherine Johns, Hachette) 

Tuesday, 15 November 2022
In Catherine Johns’s debut novel, a 17-year-old Catholic school girl’s life is derailed when she becomes enamoured of her priest. It’s 1967 and Maggie is a straight-A student whose education...

This Time it’s Real (Ann Liang, Penguin) 

Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Ann Liang’s This Time it’s Real is a vibrant young adult romantic comedy with its heart in the right place. When 17-year-old Eliza Lin’s school essay about her fabricated love...

Little Plum (Laura McPhee-Browne, Text)

Tuesday, 8 November 2022
Little Plum is the second novel by the award-winning author of Cherry Beach, Laura McPhee-Browne. The story unfolds around 29-year-old Coral, who decides to follow through with a pregnancy from...

You Talk, We Die (Judy Ryan, Scribe) 

Tuesday, 8 November 2022
Safe injecting rooms have been a polarising issue in Victoria for decades. Years of debate, government inquiries, coroner’s reports, media conjecture and scare campaigns have plagued any productive conversation. But...

Cloud Land (Penny van Oosterzee, A&U) 

Tuesday, 8 November 2022
In the gripping and extensively researched Cloud Land, Penny van Oosterzee imagines what a small region of Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands has witnessed over both geological time and since white settlement....

The Exclusion Zone (Shastra Deo, UQP) 

Wednesday, 2 November 2022
‘You are searching for something,’ begins The Exclusion Zone. It's a provocation that forms the manifesto for the enthralling and ingenious second poetry collection from Shastra Deo following her ALS...

How to Kill a Client (Joanna Jenkins, A&U) 

the book cover of How to Kill a Client Tuesday, 1 November 2022
Gavin Jones is the slimiest, most unpleasant client at big law firm Howard Greene—and that’s with some stiff competition. When this misogynistic, manipulative man dies suddenly it’s not so much...

The Cockatoo Wars (Helen Milroy, Magabala) 

Tuesday, 1 November 2022
The Cockatoo Wars is the latest picture book in Helen Milroy’s vibrant Tales from the Bush Mob series. Featuring a cast of Australian animals including Dingo, Willy Wagtail, Platypus and Wombat, and drawing...

Timeless (Kelly Canby, Fremantle Press) 

Tuesday, 1 November 2022
A topical theme in these social media-obsessed days, Timeless tells the tale of Emit, a young boy whose parents are always too preoccupied to pay attention to him. Tired of...

Compulsion (Kate Scott, Hamish Hamilton) 

Tuesday, 25 October 2022
Lucy is a music journalist with a penchant for 80s party dresses, long, languorous walks, and throwing decadent dinner parties for her friends. Robin is the dark-eyed, softly spoken man...

A Man and His Pride (Luke Rutledge, Michael Joseph) 

Tuesday, 25 October 2022
In Luke Rutledge’s A Man and His Pride, 26-year-old Sean Preston navigates the realities of being in his 20s—work, relationships, sexuality, mental health—against the backdrop of Australia’s 2017 same-sex marriage...

Headland (John Byrnes, A&U) 

Wednesday, 19 October 2022
It’s a well-worn storyline for Australian crime fiction: a detective arrives in a small town only to discover that danger lurks beneath quaint country manners; the detective is usually running...

The Last Love Note (Emma Grey, Michael Joseph) 

Wednesday, 19 October 2022
Recently widowed, Kate Whittaker is trying her hardest to navigate the grief of losing her husband, Cam, while also being a single mother to their young son. That’s not to...

The Matchmaker (Saman Shad, Viking) 

Wednesday, 19 October 2022
Playing cupid for the Sydney Pakistani community is Saima Khan in The Matchmaker. Pairing lovers is second nature for Saima until the handsome, young white-collar Kal (Khalid) Ali unwittingly saunters...

Why Does it Still Hurt? (Paul Biegler, Scribe) 

Tuesday, 11 October 2022
The way we understand pain evolves, and it is misunderstood even within the medical community. Part physical, part psychological, it is notoriously difficult to study. In Why Does it Still...

Seven Sisters (Katherine Kovacic, HarperCollins) 

Tuesday, 11 October 2022
Katherine Kovacic’s latest novel is an intense, page-turning psychological thriller that explores the depravity of domestic violence, the failings of the justice system and the lengths families will go in...

Sydney: A biography (Louis Nowra, NewSouth) 

Tuesday, 4 October 2022
Melbourne-born Louis Nowra moved to Sydney as an adult and has never lost his passion for his adopted home. Whether he’s describing the city’s mercurial weather, its elegant convict-designed colonial...

An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb (Louise Wolhuter, Ultimo) 

Tuesday, 4 October 2022
‘Twisty mystery’ is the delightfully accurate descriptor on the AI sheet for this character-based drama. Yet before its mysterious elements begin unspooling, the characters and setting are firmly established, endearing...

The Teal Revolution (Margot Saville, Hardie Grant) 

Tuesday, 27 September 2022
Australia's 2022 federal election brought a major upset: six independent female candidates—colloquially known as ‘the teals’ for the signature colour they adopted (a blend of green and Liberal blue)—catapulted into...