Rainfish (Andrew Paterson, Text)
11 May 2021
Debut middle-grade novel Rainfish is set in the 1980s during the uncomplicated glory days of Transformers and Star Wars, when ‘being offline’ meant you left your phone off the hook....
The Shut Ins (Katherine Brabon, A&U)
11 May 2021
When Mai Takeda runs into an old acquaintance at a train station in Nagoya, it begins a narrative that weaves the lives of four people together in unexpected ways. Mai,...
The Brilliant Boy: Doc Evatt and the great Australian dissent (Gideon Haigh, Scribner)
11 May 2021
If Herbert Vere 'Doc' Evatt is thought of at all today, it’s usually in terms of his nearly decade-long failure as Labor leader to combat Menzies’s conservative stranglehold. Gideon Haigh...
The Incredibly Busy Mind of Bowen Bartholomew Crisp (Paul Russell & Nicky Johnston, EK Books)
11 May 2021
The title of this picture book is a bit of a mouthful, but it is rather apt because there is a lot going on in the mind of young Bowen...
The Nordic Edge: Policy possibilities for Australia (ed by Andrew Scott & Rod Campbell, MUP)
5 May 2021
What can Australia learn from Nordic countries Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland? Quite a lot, according to editors Andrew Scott and Rod Campbell. Marshalling an array of Australian and...
The Story of Australia: For the young (and the curious) (Don Watson, Black Inc.)
4 May 2021
After being out of print for 20 years, Don Watson’s The Story of Australia has been given a new life, a new target demographic and a new subtitle. Now targeted...
Henry Hamlet’s Heart (Rhiannon Wilde, UQP)
4 May 2021
Henry Hamlet lives in his head, and his head is full of worries—will he ever get a girlfriend and lose his virginity? Will he pass his year 12 exams? What...
The Rabbits (Sophie Overett, Vintage)
4 May 2021
The Rabbits is a tense suburban drama that probes the limits of family bonds and human potential. Sophie Overett, who won the 2020 Penguin Literary Prize for the manuscript, has...
Catch Us the Foxes (Nicola West, S&S)
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...
The Other Half of You (Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Hachette)
28 April 2021
Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s latest novel continues the story of Bani Adam, a young Lebanese Muslim man growing up in Sydney. Bani, the protagonist of Ahmad’s 2018 novel The Lebs, now...
Everything Harder Than Everyone Else (Jenny Valentish, Black Inc.)
27 April 2021
Don't be fooled by the Motörhead-inspired title: journalist Jenny Valentish’s latest work of nonfiction isn't about music but is instead an accessible deep dive into extreme bodily endurance. A spiritual...
Coco, the Fish with Hands: Endangered Animal Tales 1 (Aleesah Darlison, illus by Mel Matthews, Puffin)
27 April 2021
Coco, the Fish with Hands is a simple book that reads almost like a souvenir from a conservation habitat visit. Its story is practical and streamlined, introducing an individual handfish,...
Echo in the Memory (Cameron Nunn, Walker Books)
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...
Walking in Gagudju Country: Exploring the monsoon forest (Diane Lucas and Ben Tyler, illus by Emma Long, A&U Children’s)
20 April 2021
Combining their expertise in and passion for botanical work, wild landscapes and the culture of the Top End bush, authors Diane Lucas and Ben Tyler join with illustrator Emma Long...
The School (Brendan James Murray, Picador)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
100 Remarkable Feats of Xander Maze (Clayton Zane Comber, HarperCollins)
14 April 2021
Xander Maze’s best friend is his Nanna. When she is diagnosed with stage four cancer and asks him to write a list of 100 Remarkable Feats for him to achieve...
A Pair of Pears and an Orange (Anna McGregor, Scribble)
13 April 2021
A pair of pears are good friends who like to spend their days together, playing games that are just right for the two of them. When Orange appears, Little Pear...
One Hundred Days (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)
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)
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...
Marlow Brown, Magician in the Making (Kesta Fleming, illus by Marjory Gardner, Celapene Press)
7 April 2021
Kesta Fleming has written stories and poems for junior readers for many years, making her publishing debut with the Marlow Brown chapter books in 2019. Magician in the Making, the second in...
Echolalia (Briohny Doyle, Vintage)
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)
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)
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)
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...
Frizzle and Me (Ellie Royce, illus by Andrew McLean, Ford St)
30 March 2021
Frizzle and Me jumps on board a current—and vital—trend for books celebrating diversity, and makes a respectable contribution to the cohort. The premise is that the definition of ‘family’ is...
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) (Anita Heiss, S&S)
24 March 2021
Exploring themes of family, belonging, courage, equality and heartache, this important new historical novel from Anita Heiss raises awareness of First Nations perspectives on the early days of white settlement...
