Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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WBN advance reviews >

A Feather on a Wing (Maria Speyer, UQP)  

Tuesday, 12 April 2022
The darkness of night is a common fear for many children trying to get to sleep after lights-out. The dark can make you feel alone and separated from everyone, even...

When Only One (Meg Gatland-Veness, Pantera)  

Tuesday, 12 April 2022
Everything changes when Sam’s one-time best friend Emily appears outside his window for the first time in five years. He knows why she’s back and it isn’t good. The story...

Black River (Matthew Spencer, A&U) 

Tuesday, 5 April 2022
He’s been dubbed the Blue Moon Killer: someone who has been killing young women along Sydney’s Parramatta River whenever the moon is full. Sydney is on edge, and the cops,...

The Making of Her (Bernadette Jiwa, Bantam) 

Tuesday, 5 April 2022
The Making of Her is a historical family drama that immediately conjures the sense of a time not so long ago. Spanning the 1960s to the 1990s, this cross between...

Hard Joy: Life and writing (Susan Varga, Upswell) 

Tuesday, 5 April 2022
Susan Varga spent the first half of her life having affairs with inappropriate men, including some of the older leading lights of the libertarian Sydney Push. At the same time,...

The Way of Dog (Zana Fraillon, UQP) 

Tuesday, 29 March 2022
The Way of Dog is the latest work from internationally acclaimed author Zana Fraillon. A beautifully written verse novel told through an animal voice, this is an ambitious and absorbing...

Abomination (Ashley Goldberg, Vintage)  

Tuesday, 29 March 2022
Best friends Ezra and Yonatan are students at an ultra-Orthodox Melbourne Jewish school when a teacher is accused of sexual molestation and is quickly squirreled away to Israel, beyond the...

Homesickness (Janine Mikosza, Ultimo Press)  

Tuesday, 22 March 2022
‘I can’t escape myself or my past. There’s no way out,’ a character named Janine (‘Jin’) muses to an unknown interviewer near the beginning of artist and writer Janine Mikosza’s...

Sunbathing (Isobel Beech, A&U)  

Tuesday, 22 March 2022
After her father dies of suicide, the unnamed narrator of Sunbathing travels from her hometown of Melbourne to the Italian countryside. There, she stays with friends Fabrizio and Giulia in...

All the Little Tricky Things (Karys McEwen, Text)  

Tuesday, 22 March 2022
This debut middle-grade novel is a gentle and empathetic story about navigating the period between primary and high school, as well as the complex ways in which adolescent female friendships...

Dirt Town (Hayley Scrivenor, Macmillan)  

Tuesday, 22 March 2022
Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor is a complex and multi-layered whodunnit, peppered with red-herrings and shocking revelations. In the rural New South Wales town of Durton, a young girl, Esther,...

The Callers (Kiah Thomas, HarperCollins)  

Wednesday, 16 March 2022
Publishing simultaneously in Australia and the US, The Callers—Kiah Thomas’s first foray into middle-grade fiction—is a thoughtful, nuanced fantasy adventure in which two young people fight back against a colonising...

Daisy & Woolf (Michelle Cahill, Hachette)  

Wednesday, 16 March 2022
Michelle Cahill’s debut novel tells the story of a struggling writer, Mina, as she expands upon the often disregarded character Daisy Simmons from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Daisy & Woolf...

Root & Branch (Eda Gunaydin, NewSouth)  

Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Root & Branch is the debut essay collection from Eda Gunaydin, Turkish-Australian scholar and writer of academic and creative nonfiction. It examines with spectacular tenacity and wit the real-world impacts that...

Seven Days (Fleur Ferris, Puffin) 

Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Winner of a Young Australian Best Book Award (YABBA) for her debut YA novel Risk, Fleur Ferris has subsequently built a reputation for dark and compelling YA thrillers. Ferris’s second...

Losing Face (George Haddad, UQP) 

Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Following the success of his 2016 Viva La Novella Prize–winning Populate or Perish, George Haddad’s Losing Face is an expansive work written in a staunch voice. Fusing the diverse experiences...

Red (Felicity McLean, HarperCollins)   

Tuesday, 1 March 2022
Ruby ‘Red’ McCoy wants people to hear her side of the story. She knows what the police are saying, and she knows what’s been reported in the media—but none of...

How to Spell Catastrophe (Fiona Wood, Pan) 

Tuesday, 1 March 2022
Fiona Wood, three-time winner of the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers, moves into middle-grade fiction with the funny and charming How to Spell Catastrophe. Nell McPherson is...

Heartland (Jennifer Pinkerton, A&U)  

Tuesday, 1 March 2022
There would be very few among us who, deep in the wilds of the dating tundra, wouldn’t have thought in frustration, I just wish I knew what they’re thinking! Well,...

Katerina Cruickshanks (Daniel Gray-Barnett, Scribble) 

Wednesday, 23 February 2022
Daniel Gray-Barnett’s playful second book as both author and illustrator tells a cautionary tale about exiling exuberance and individuality. Katerina Cruickshanks’ wild and inventive approach to the world becomes too...