Wednesday, 28 May 2014
In her first book of fiction, writer and literary journalist Angela Meyer demonstrates her gift for painting vivid pictures with a few adroit, restrained brush strokes. ‘Few’ being the operative word here...

Wednesday, 21 May 2014
Set in the Wimmera Mallee in Victoria’s north-west, award-winning author Craig Sherborne’s second novel Tree Palace is about a group of street smart survivors living on society’s fringe. They are itinerants or...

Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Ash’s flight out of Auckland is grounded by an erupting volcano, so she heads back into the city. With her new friends, she visits the drive-in for a disaster-movie marathon,...

Wednesday, 7 May 2014
His name is Kyle, but everyone calls him Calypso. In high school he grew dreadlocks, started listening to reggae and took to the ganja with a vengeance. Calypso isn’t Jamaican...

Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Frank is a contracts lawyer who lives his life according to an explicit set of rules. But after a serious car crash, Frank has forgotten all that he once knew...

Thursday, 24 April 2014
A young art history student from New Zealand finds himself stranded at a railway station on the French/Spanish border, where he meets an alluring and mysterious older woman. They go...

Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Saving Thanehaven has possibly the strangest premise of any recent teen book: the protagonists are characters in computer games. The antagonist is a virus named Rufus, set out to sow...

Wednesday, 9 April 2014
What begins as a story about Denton, an utterly unremarkable and unsuccessful young man, and his encounter with a bizarre new age cult, turns into a delightfully odd exploration of...

Wednesday, 2 April 2014
This poignant and atmospheric debut novel set in a 1950s Australian fishing village is told from the perspective of Sylvie, who is five when the story opens. Confused by her...

Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Born in Sydney—to a Ballets Russes ballerina improbably named Sheila and a larrikin silent-movie actor, John—young Ronald Faulkner earned his sobriquet after trading back his lost marbles for a whiff...

Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Coming of Age is the kind of book that will change how readers look at the world, at others and themselves. This anthology of real-life stories from Australian Muslim authors explores...

Thursday, 13 March 2014
A gritty story about drug wars, drive-bys, sexual assault and long-buried secrets, Noel Beddoe’s latest novel draws loosely on real events and is set in and around the Wollongong suburb...

Wednesday, 5 March 2014
Twelve-year-old Josh is highly unimpressed when his family packs up and moves to Tarrawagga, the most boring town in Australia. Determined not to enjoy himself at his new school, he...

Wednesday, 26 February 2014
A century ago, there weren’t many roads in Australia, and outside the main cities and the south-eastern states, what railways there were tended to run inland from ports rather than...

Wednesday, 19 February 2014
When star nymph Merope is banished from Olympus for spurning the advances of her would-be suitor Orion, she can’t imagine ever fitting into this strange place where ‘hot’ means attractive...

Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Karen Viggers, author of the successful The Lightkeeper’s Wife and The Stranding, has penned this new tale of two women, generations apart, set in the evocative bush of the Brindabella Ranges. With...

Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Society princess Lilac LaRoux and war hero from the wrong side of the tracks Tarver Merendsen lock eyes across the room during yet another party aboard the luxury space liner Icarus....

Thursday, 30 January 2014
What do you do if you wake up in the dead of night to see a spirit standing by your bed … and he’s really, really hot? Such is the...

Wednesday, 22 January 2014
When it comes to memoir in Australian publishing, it seems that 30 is the new 40, with many writers mining their rollercoaster 20s for outrageously funny and poignant stories and...

Wednesday, 15 January 2014
A Palestinian youth is shot while trying to bomb the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and his Israeli doctor discovers that they share a common bloodline. A Jewish operative plots...

Wednesday, 8 January 2014
December, 1945. When their father goes missing in mysterious circumstances, the four Caddy children are uprooted from their lives in outback Australia and taken to London to live with an...

Tuesday, 10 December 2013
Garry Disher’s new novel is a rewarding mix of small-town policing and corruption, parish politics, vested interests and the closing of ranks against an outsider. The outsider in question is...

Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Pre-empting the release of Wolf Creek 2 in cinemas in February come two prequel books about the villain of both films, Mick Taylor. Origin offers an insight into Mick’s childhood...

Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Pitched as a return to form for Colleen McCullough, Bittersweet is a family saga (although to describe it as ‘sweeping’ might be pushing it) set in depression-era rural New South Wales....

Tuesday, 19 November 2013
After the success of 2008’s The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas could be excused for feeling he had nothing more to prove. Perhaps though it was that completely unexpected good fortune that planted...

Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Sebastian Pink, perennial underachiever and ESL teacher at The Future Perfect, bites off more than he can chew with a new arrival at the school. Struggling to conceive with work-obsessed...

Wednesday, 6 November 2013
There is something about a rainbow that appeals to kids of all ages (and no doubt, to adults too): its large arc across the sky, the way it appears almost...

Tuesday, 29 October 2013
What a tale this is! Adventurer, author and filmmaker Tim Cope gives us an awe-inspiring account of his three-year trek on horseback from Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia, to...

Tuesday, 22 October 2013
In Tasmania, a new book by Richard Flanagan is a much-anticipated event. He is, after all, a local hero. But he is much more than that, and with each book...

Tuesday, 15 October 2013
Catherine Titasey’s debut novel My Island Homicide, which won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript by an emerging author, is part murder mystery, part family drama and part...