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WBN advance reviews >

Poly (Paul Dalgarno, Ventura) 

Wednesday, 22 July 2020
Spouses Chris and Sarah are trying something new—after years without sex, but still in love and keen to remain a family unit, they’ve agreed to see other people. The confident,...

The Fire Star (A L Tait, Penguin) 

Wednesday, 15 July 2020
Maven is a servant girl doomed to a life of servitude and forced to hide how sharp-minded she really is. Reeve is a squire with dreams of becoming a knight...

Dreams They Forgot (Emma Ashmere, Wakefield) 

Wednesday, 15 July 2020
The tagline on the title page of Emma Ashmere’s Dreams They Forgot is ‘stories of illusion, deception and quiet rebellion’. This is an apt description of the 25 stories that...

Bunnygirl (Holly Jayne, Berbay) 

Wednesday, 15 July 2020
In this adorable junior graphic novel, the main character Bea loves superhero comics, cute things, bunnies and eating cereal. She really wants to become a superhero so that she can...

None Shall Sleep (Ellie Marney, A&U) 

Wednesday, 15 July 2020
From mastermind Australian YA writer Ellie Marney comes a gripping new psychological thriller. Although the novel is not set in Australia—Marney opts for the larger criminal playing field of the...

The Lost Library (Jess McGeachin, Puffin) 

Wednesday, 8 July 2020
This is unashamedly a story for every child (and adult) who loves books and reading—and it reaches out to encourage every reader to fit that description. Little Oliver and his...

Ordinary Matter (Laura Elvery, UQP) 

Wednesday, 8 July 2020
Award-winning Brisbane author Laura Elvery (Trick of the Light) now brings us Ordinary Matter, a short story collection inspired by the 20 times women have won the Nobel Prize for...

Fly on the Wall (Remy Lai, Walker) 

Wednesday, 8 July 2020
When Henry Khoo isn’t trolling his school as anonymous cartoonist ‘Fly on the Wall’, he is being babied at home by an overprotective family. To correct this, Henry devises a...

Bluebird (Malcolm Knox, A&U) 

Wednesday, 8 July 2020
A shaggy array of characters populate Malcolm Knox’s ambitious novel, with 50-year-old Gordon Grimes at the centre. An erstwhile journalist and estranged husband, Gordon is determined to preserve a rundown...

The Burning Island (Jock Serong, Text) 

Wednesday, 1 July 2020
To read The Burning Island is to feel, very often, ‘all at sea’. Much of the novel takes place on the ocean, sure, but more than that, it can be...

The Mother Fault (Kate Mildenhall, S&S) 

Wednesday, 1 July 2020
This gripping and thoughtful novel offers a spine-tingling vision of a future Australia—eerie in its potential realism—in which citizens’ movements are tracked and climate change has decimated the country, flooding...

Sorrow and Bliss (Meg Mason, Fourth Estate) 

Wednesday, 24 June 2020
Martha is sick. She’s been sick since she was 17 years old, and a cocktail of pills in varying doses has never made a difference to the lows that leave...

The F Team (Rawah Arja, Giramondo) 

Wednesday, 24 June 2020
Tariq is a smart kid, he just lacks the motivation to achieve his full potential. At least, that’s what he has always been told, living in Punchbowl, Western Sydney, where...

Sunflower (Ingrid Laguna, Text) 

Wednesday, 17 June 2020
When Jamila’s oldest friend is granted a visa to move from Iraq to Australia with her family, Jamila is over the moon. But Mina’s arrival is more complicated than Jamila...

How to Win an Election (Chris Wallace, NewSouth) 

Wednesday, 17 June 2020
Journalist and historian Chris Wallace’s How to Win an Election can be read two ways. Firstly, as an autopsy of Labor’s shock 2019 defeat, and secondly as a witty Machiavellian...

The Labyrinth (Amanda Lohrey, Text) 

Thursday, 11 June 2020
Devastated when her son is convicted of negligent homicide, Erica Marsden cuts all ties to her former life and retreats to a lonely coastal hamlet near his prison. Moving into...

Man in Armour (Siobhan McKenna, Fourth Estate) 

Thursday, 11 June 2020
Man in Armour is a slice-of-life novel about Charles, a successful cog in the machine of the financial sector who has climbed his way up the corporate ladder to an...