Wednesday, 7 July 2021
Three years after her husband’s death, 65-year-old artist Frances Calderwood has developed a drinking problem and squirrelled herself away from human contact. However, the cocoon built by the quirky, acerbic...

Wednesday, 7 July 2021
Once upon a time, Australian farmers traded thousands of megalitres of water for something as simple as a slab of beer. Then the economic mood changed. The 1980s brought political leaders...

Tuesday, 29 June 2021
With her debut middle grade novel, The School for Talking Pets, Kelli Anne Hawkins brings us a delightful tale that is reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Rusty Mulligan is...

Wednesday, 23 June 2021
It’s a deceptively simple premise: two young brothers bond over a newfound love of bike riding. But as ‘Bicycle Thieves’ unfolds, a sweet yet dark and sorrowful undercurrent starts to...

Wednesday, 23 June 2021
If you’ve had the good fortune to dine at Trentham’s du Fermier, where much of the food served is grown on chef/owner Annie Smithers’s own property, Babbington Park, in the...

Tuesday, 22 June 2021
‘I’m shopping local this year and I’m single,’ says the narrator of this novella. ‘I keep thinking “please kill me” and “back to basics.”’ Written in a fragmentary form reminiscent...

Thursday, 17 June 2021
Thirty-five years after migrating to Australia from London, educator and social scientist Belinda Probert is still struggling to feel at home in a country that is so ancient and so...

Thursday, 17 June 2021
Jennifer Mills’s The Airways unsettles the boundaries between consciousness, self and the physical world, deep-diving into the parallels between the workings of the human body and the cities we navigate....

Thursday, 17 June 2021
Four gen Zs in Sydney grapple with status, socialising and self-acceptance in the The Overthinkers by Lisa Portolan and Ben Cheong. First we are introduced to Leo, a self-deprecating gay...

Wednesday, 16 June 2021
When strange things start happening around 11-year-old Killarney’s house—missing clothes, screaming in the night—she becomes determined to solve the mystery. Killarney soon discovers that the culprit is a wild Tasmanian...

Wednesday, 2 June 2021
With elegant lyricism, compelling urgency and a dark sense of humour, Muddy People by Sara El Sayed is an impressive debut memoir from the young Egyptian–Australian writer. El Sayed’s work...

Tuesday, 1 June 2021
With his latest novel, Nick Earls again proves his talent for compelling and convincing storytelling. A novel in five parts, Empires tracks backwards through history from 2018 to 1809 before...

Wednesday, 26 May 2021
This book isn’t always an easy one to read, but it is certainly worthwhile. Dianne O’Brien’s memoir takes us through death, abuse, imprisonment and trauma of many different kinds. As...

Tuesday, 25 May 2021
The idea of parallel universes might once have been exotic, but between public interest in physics, the increasing popularity of science fiction books and movies, and the rise of the...