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WBN advance reviews >

Catch Us the Foxes (Nicola West, S&S)

Tuesday, 4 May 2021
Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson is an ambitious young journalist given the job of covering the annual show for the local paper. When Lo discovers the body of her friend, reigning showgirl...

Echo in the Memory (Cameron Nunn, Walker Books)

Tuesday, 27 April 2021
Cameron Nunn presents an ambitious work of historical fiction in his latest novel Echo in the Memory. Seamlessly telling the stories of two adolescents existing almost 200 years apart, the...

The School (Brendan James Murray, Picador) 

Tuesday, 20 April 2021
Brendan James Murray is a full-time high school English teacher and an award-winning writer. His new nonfiction work The School chronicles a year in his classroom, in a public school...

We Were Not Men (Campbell Mattinson, Fourth Estate)

Tuesday, 20 April 2021
Campbell Mattinson’s We Were Not Men charts the story of twin brothers Jon and Eden in an episodic exploration of male kinship. Told from Jon’s perspective, the book begins with the...

The Covered Wife (Lisa Emanuel, Pantera Press) 

Tuesday, 20 April 2021
When young lawyer Sarah meets the smart, handsome Daniel, the attraction is instant. Influenced by the charismatic Rabbi Menachem Lev and his wife Chani, who take the new couple under...

Who Gets to be Smart (Bri Lee, A&U) 

Wednesday, 14 April 2021
Who Gets to be Smart opens with a walking tour of Oxford. Author Bri Lee is at the university to visit her friend, a freshly minted Rhodes Scholar. As the...

Kunyi (Kunyi June Anne McInerney, Magabala) 

Wednesday, 14 April 2021
Kunyi, an illustrated memoir of Kunyi June Anne McInerney’s childhood, collects snapshot moments and stories of her life, told in her own words and accompanied by her paintings. The lively...

One Hundred Days (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)

Thursday, 8 April 2021
Is there a right way to love? Karuna feels suffocated by her mother—and her entrapment multiplies when her dad leaves and she’s forced to move away from private school and...

A Paper Inheritance (Dymphna Stella Rees, UQP) 

Wednesday, 7 April 2021
Leslie Rees and Coralie Clarke Rees were a literary partnership, contemporaneous with two more famous Australian literary couples of the 20th century, Ruth Park and D’Arcy Niland, and Charmian Clift...

Echolalia (Briohny Doyle, Vintage) 

Wednesday, 7 April 2021
Echolalia, Briohny Doyle's skilful second novel, concerns a family on the verge of disintegration. Skipping elegantly between chapters set before and after a traumatic event that changes the family irrevocably,...

Gunk Baby (Jamie Marina Lau, Hachette)

Wednesday, 31 March 2021
Leen has opened up a massage and ear cleaning studio in the suburban wastelands of Par Mars. Her shop is housed in the second-best shopping mall in the district—Topic Heights....

Dear Ibis (Kate Liston-Mills, Spineless Wonders) 

Wednesday, 31 March 2021
From the author of The Waterfowl Are Drunk! comes an elegant and moving collection of short fiction set principally in New South Wales. With stories taking place against the backdrop...

A Glasshouse of Stars (Shirley Marr, Puffin) 

Tuesday, 30 March 2021
Meixing and her family have recently arrived in the New Land with hopes of a better life. Everything is different for Meixing, including the large house that is now the...

As Beautiful As Any Other (Kaya Wilson, Picador) 

Tuesday, 23 March 2021
As Beautiful As Any Other is a joyous and thoughtful memoir–travelogue covering the terrains of both the body and the environment. Kaya Wilson's voice makes the reader feel immediately at...

Monster (Ashleigh Synnott, Puncher & Wattmann) 

Wednesday, 17 March 2021
Monster is a collection of dark, finely written short stories by debut author Ashleigh Synnott. The stories are peopled with eccentric, predominantly female characters living atomised, often isolated lives. Mental...

Elsewhere Girls (Emily Gale & Nova Weetman, Text) 

Tuesday, 16 March 2021
Acclaimed authors Emily Gale and Nova Weetman have teamed up to write this beautifully rendered time-slip narrative that delves into the personal and social struggles of young women past and...