Stinkbug (Sinéad Stubbins, Affirm)
Tuesday, 8 April 2025
Sinéad Stubbins’ debut fiction novel, Stinkbug, is a sharp, darkly funny reflection on the corporate ‘normal’ and the compromises we make to survive in a hostile environment. It meditates on...
R.I.P. Nanny Tobbins (Lucie Stevens, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
R.I.P. Nanny Tobbins by Lucie Stevens is a deliciously macabre and unexpectedly funny debut fantasy for advanced middle-grade readers, blending tension, mystery and moments of humour with remarkable skill. Albertine...
When Nothing Feels Real (Nathan Dunne, Murdoch)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
When Nothing Feels Real is a raw and immersive first-person account of journalist Nathan Dunne’s experience of depersonalisation. It begins with a moment – a dive into cold water –...
Ever Blessed (Olivia O’Flynn, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Ever Blessed by Olivia O’Flynn is a confident debut in the romantasy genre, featuring a recalcitrant heroine, a taciturn hero, and potentially world-ending stakes. Captain Elva, a warrior princess of...
A Farm by the Sea (Jillian Packer, Berbay)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Fans of Alison Lester, Freya Blackwood and Trace Balla will be captivated by A Farm by the Sea by debut author and illustrator Jillian Packer. This new picture book invites young readers...
Rytual (Chloe Elisabeth Wilson, Penguin)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
In her unsettling and sharply constructed debut, Rytual, Chloe Elisabeth Wilson dissects the seductive promise of transformation through beauty, rituals and belief systems. Marnie Sellick once dreamed of writing screenplays....
Joss: A History (Grace Yee, Giramondo)
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Grace Yee’s Joss: A History uncovers the lives of Chinese immigrants in Australia during the 19th and 20th centuries through a powerful blend of archival research and poetry. Viewing White...
Our Dance (Jacinta Daniher & Taylor Hampton, illus by Janelle Burger, Lothian)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Our Dance by Jacinta Daniher and proud Ngiyampaa/Wiradjuri man Taylor Hampton celebrates Australian First Nations culture through the joy of movement as children dance and sing in the corroboree. The...
My Supercharged ADHD Brain (Dani Vee & James Layton, illus Ruth-Mary Smith, Larrikin)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
My Supercharged ADHD Brain is a brightly coloured picture book that candidly explores some of the positive aspects of having ADHD, celebrating differences and encouraging a better understanding of neurodivergence....
The Book of Guilt (Catherine Chidgey, Penguin)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Welcome to an alternative version of the UK in the 1970s. In Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt, Hitler is assassinated in 1943. After a purge of senior Nazis and...
The Letter Writer (Binny Talib, Windy Hollow)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
The Letter Writer by author and illustrator Binny Talib (Sloths Love Parties) opens with stunning endpapers – a delightful collage of envelopes adorned with scribbles and doodles that immediately draws...
Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family (Micaela Sahhar, NewSouth)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Several generations into the Palestinian diaspora in Australia, Micaela Sahhar explores the complexities of being disconnected from her ancestral land in Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of...
The Edge of Everything (Miranda Luby, Text)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
In The Edge of Everything, Miranda Luby (Sadie Starr’s Guide to Starting Over) tells a poignant story of a teenager recovering from tragedy. It’s been eleven months since Lucy’s older...
The Haunting of Hindmarsh Hall (Kate Gordon, Riveted Press)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
The Haunting of Hindmarsh Hall is the first book in The Secret Detectives Club middle-grade series by Kate Gordon (Xavier in the Meantime). Set in the quiet town of Table...
I Want Everything (Dominic Amerena, S&S)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
An unnamed aspiring writer leaves a Melbourne hospital and, seeking distraction, swims laps at his local pool. There, he recognises an elderly woman as Brenda Shales, one of Australia’s best...
Lonely Mouth (Jacqueline Maley, Fourth Estate)
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Jacqueline Maley (The Truth About Her) returns with Lonely Mouth, a powerful exploration of family, trauma and identity. Half-sisters Matilda and Lara share a mother but have different fathers. Abandoned...
Too Many Dogs (Maura Finn, illus Lucinda Gifford, Affirm)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Too Many Dogs is a charming and light-hearted picture book from the creative pairing behind Too Many Cats that explores what it means to be top dog. In their new collaboration,...
Nightingale (Laura Elvery, UQP)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Grounded in history and buoyed by Laura Elvery’s elegant, moving prose, Nightingale is a fictional reimagining of the near-mythic figure of Florence Nightingale, told in three parts. The first and...
Viet Kieu: Recipes Remembered from Vietnam (Thi Le, Murdoch)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
‘Viet Kieu’ is a Vietnamese term used for people of Vietnamese heritage who were raised and are living in the diaspora. In Viet Kieu: Recipes remembered from Vietnam, Thi Le,...
Diggers, Dozers, and Dumpers (Ole Könnecke, Gecko)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Picture books about machinery are always a hit, but they don’t always deliver an engaging narrative – this one does, seamlessly blending fiction with nonfiction. Diggers, Dozers, and Dumpers, written...
The Bearcat (Georgia Rose Phillips, Picador)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Based on true events, The Bearcat is an ambitious, mesmeric and deeply affecting debut novel that imagines the inner life of Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a rare female cult leader who founded...
The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains (Sarah Clutton, A&U)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Sarah Clutton’s The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is a richly woven novel that explores family dynamics, small-town life and long-buried secrets. The story follows Penny, a widowed farmer whose...
This Dream Will Devour Us (Emma Clancey, A&U Children’s)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
What if humanity developed a drug that could manipulate the elements – essentially perform magic? In This Dream Will Devour Us, debut author Emma Clancey builds a world where the...
He Would Never (Holly Wainwright, Macmillan)
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Holly Wainwright’s fifth novel, He Would Never, is pacy, compelling and character-driven, and will hook readers from the startling first sentence. The story follows five families on their annual summer...
The Girl and the Ghost (Jacqueline Harvey, Penguin)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Jacqueline Harvey, author of the best-selling Alice-Miranda and Kensy and Max books, returns with The Girl and the Ghost, the first instalment in a new fantasy-mystery middle-grade series. When 12-year-old...
Letters to Our Robot Son (Cadance Bell, Ultimo)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Letters to Our Robot Son is the fiction debut of memoirist Cadance Bell (The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody), a mercurial science fiction novel about a robot who awakens...
Little World (Josephine Rowe, Black Inc.)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Josephine Rowe’s Little World is a compact, lyrical read that feels both mythic and frighteningly current. When the perfectly preserved body of a child is brought to Western Australia, it...
The Surface Trials (HM Waugh, A&U Children’s)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Starquest Academy is an elite school for exceptional students from around the galaxy. Notoriously difficult to enter, Starquest requires prospects to undergo a three-day televised challenge on an unknown planet....
The Opposite of Lonely (Hilde Hinton, Hachette)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
For the past few years, Rose has felt disassociated from her own life, struggling to come to terms with the passing of her cherished father and the collapse of her...
Wandering Wild (Lynette Noni, Penguin)
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
Wandering Wild, the latest novel from Lynette Noni (The Prison Healer), is the perfect cosy romance read. The dual-perspective narrative follows Zander, a Hollywood ‘bad boy’ desperate to rebuild his...
