Australians have spent most of the past two years confined to our home country (and much of that time confined to our homes!), so it is wonderful to report that representatives from 14 Australian publishing businesses will attend Frankfurt this year as part of the Australian Publishers Association (APA) stand. A further 14 will be in attendance virtually and four publishers are sending attendees to exhibit on their own company stands.

Even better, the Australia stand will be hosting both a stand party and special VIP reception, to celebrate Australian talent and connect with international colleagues. If you’re at the fair in person, you can find the physical stand at hall 6.2 stand A50 and A51. Join the joint Australia & IPG stand party from 5:30pm on Thursday, 20 October.

To help you start to ‘think Australian’, in this Frankfurt edition we bring you insight into the diverse range of titles on offer from First Nations writers; an overview of the Australian market for the year so far; and a peek at the titles publishers are most excited to pitch at the fair across fiction, nonfiction and children’s/YA. We also introduce you to some familiar faces operating as a bold new business; look at Australian educational publishers attending the fair; check out the Australian bestsellers for the year to date; share books by Australian authors recommended by their fellow local writers; wrap up the recent recipients of Australian book awards; and share what local publishers have acquired recently in fiction, nonfiction and children’s/YA.

For more information, you can also check out the 2022 Australian Frankfurt Rights Catalogue alongside the APA’s Virtual Australian Collective Stand on the BooksFromAustralia website.

As previously, this issue of Think Australian is being distributed by Publishers Weekly and BookBrunch. For more information on Think Australian and to sign up directly, click here.

Happy reading and rights dealing!

—The Books+Publishing team

Think Australian is produced by Books+Publishing with support from the Australian Publishers Association and the Australia Council for the Arts.

First Nations poetry has been a standout success in 2022—so let’s take a look at what other titles are forthcoming from across the diverse spectrum of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing.

With sales of about 15,000 copies to date (a huge number for this market), Goorie-Koori poet Evelyn Araluen’s poetry collection Dropbear (UQP) has defied the stereotype of poetry as a traditionally niche and low-selling genre in Australia.

As well as being the first poetry collection to win the Stella Prize for women and nonbinary writers, after the award’s eligibility criteria changed for 2022 to allow poetry, Araluen’s debut collection went on to win small publishers’ adult book of the year at the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards, and was the number-one bestselling book at both Sydney Writers’ Festival and Brisbane Writers Festival—no small feat for a literary title nestled firmly in the traditionally niche genre of poetry. 

‘We’ve seen festivals programming poets in more mainstream ways, for opening nights and in general panels, and not sequestering the poets to a single “poetry” session, and that has helped certain poets and their books gain attention,’ says UQP publisher Aviva Tuffield, referring both to the success of Dropbear, as well as Wiradjuri poet Jazz Money’s debut collection how to make a basket.

Indeed, for UQP, First Nations poetry is its main growth area in poetry sales. Tuffield points to Ellen van Neerven’s Throat, which has been put on the Queensland and Victorian high school English curriculums, as well as the Alison Whittaker-edited Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today as two collections that have sold well. 

Read the full article here.

Among the titles Australian publishers are pitching at Frankfurt this year are two that have been recognised by local awards even before publication. Roseghetto by Kirsty Jagger (UQP, 2023), ‘an unforgettable and moving coming-of-age story’ that is also an account of breaking the cycle of violence and poverty, was the inaugural winner of the Kathryn Heyman Mentorship Award for a writer from a background of social and economic disadvantage. Meanwhile, Terms of Inheritance by Michelle Upton (HarperCollins), a ‘funny, moving, brilliantly observed story’ about a multi-millionaire mother who sets her daughters a challenge she believes will push them to become better versions of themselves in order to inherit her vast fortune, was a runner-up for the 2021 Banjo Prize for commercial fiction.

Debuts and familiar names

Books by debut authors that publishers will be pitching at Frankfurt include We Only Want What’s Best by Carolyn Swindell (Affirm, 2023) ‘an original and gripping novel about class, dance and the over-sexualisation of young girls, all set in the pressure-cooker environment of a long-haul flight to LA’, from the debut writer and comedian; The Last Days of Joy (Anne Tiernan, Hachette, 2023) ‘a heartbreakingly gorgeous debut that will make you laugh and cry’ for fans of Liane Moriarty, Marian Keyes, and Meg Mason; and Tiny Uncertain Miracles by Michelle Johnston (HarperCollins), in which ‘awkward, hapless Marick’, still struggling with the loss of his wife, his child and his faith, meets Hugo, a hospital scientist working in a forgotten lab who is convinced that the bacteria he uses for protein production have begun to produce gold.

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder by debut author Kerryn Mayne (Bantam, 2023) ‘blends suspense and uplit fiction’ in an ‘irresistible novel’. Meanwhile, in Children of Tomorrow (J R R Burgmann, Upswell/Black Inc., 2023) Arne Bakke witnesses the historic devastation of the 2016 summer’s bushfires across the ancient wilderness of Tasmania, while elsewhere Londoner Evie Weatherall witnesses extreme climate events in her travels. When their paths collide in Melbourne, Australia, they and their group of close friends ‘are set on course to witness and struggle together against the coming century, an age of great individual and planetary loss’.

Read the full article here.

Memoir and biography 

Look out for Ash Barty’s memoir My Dream Time (HarperCollins), which reflects on Barty’s tennis career, her family, and ‘finding the path to being the best I could be, not just as an athlete but as a person’.

Hachette is excited to pitch Ellidy Pullin’s memoir Heartstrong, which debuted at number five in its release week, and the forthcoming Inconceivable by playwright Alexandra Collier (2023), which follows Collier’s journey to be a solo mother by choice. Also from Hachette is The Girl in the Green Dress (Jeni Haynes & Georgia Blair-West), which shares how Haynes’s multiple personality disorder helped her survive a life of abuse.

From Affirm Press, Gold Digger (Tyler Mahoney) is the memoir of a third-generation gold miner, a young Australian woman working in the male-dominated world of gold mining, and Pardon My French by Rachael Mogan McIntosh is a retelling of one family’s year-long escapade in the south of France.

Sarah Malik’s Desi Girl (UQP) is a collection of memoir-style essays about coming of age and finding your feet as a second-generation Australian Muslim, while from Text, Shannon Burns’s Childhood is an ‘arresting’ memoir of a childhood spent bouncing between dysfunctional homes in impoverished suburbs, between families unwilling or unable to care for him.

Read the full article here.

Picture books

Allen & Unwin Children’s (A&U) is pitching a list of exciting new titles from beloved authors, including the picture book Shadow Catchers by award-winning team Kirsty Murray and Karen Blair, that captures the joy of playing with shadows; and Big Cat, a richly illustrated story about finding your inner wildness in unexpected places, growing confidence and embracing change, from Jess Racklyeft.

Affirm Press is excited to showcase Today You Changed the World! by Maggie Hutchings and Evie Barrow, inviting kids to make change for themselves and for others; Jane Godwin collaborates with emerging illustrator Sylvia Morris on The Best Hiding Place, a rich and atmospheric picture book capturing the magic of hide-and-seek; and This is Love by Zanni Louise and Sasha Haddad (2023) celebrates all the ways we can share and show our love.

Hachette is also celebrating love and family through 11 Words for Love by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Maxine Beneba Clarke, a gentle picture book about a family who flees their homeland to find safety in another country, carrying ‘little more than a suitcase full of love’; and Little Treasure by Chanelle Gosper and Jennifer Goldsmith, a tender book on the bond between mother and child.

Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing (HGCP) will be highlighting: All the Love in the World by Louise Fedele (illustrated by Ana Toro), a bedtime story that goes across the globe to show all the different ways we express our love; Come Over to My House (Eliza Hull & Sally Rippin, illus by Daniel Gray-Barnett), a ‘delightful picture book that explores the home lives of children and parents who are Deaf or disabled’; Democracy! by one of Australia’s well-loved picture book creators Philip Bunting, an easily digestible guide to democracy for young readers; and Tricked: A how-to guide to magic by Consentino.

Read the full article here.

The Australian book market posted strong results throughout the Covid-affected years of 2020 and 2021, and has continued this growth in 2022, with overall sales for the year to 18 June up 4.1% year-to-year, for a total of A$544 million, according to Nielsen BookData. Coming after two years of consecutive growth in 2020 (up 7.8%) and 2021 (up 2.5%), it shows that the market is trading well above the last pre-Covid year of 2019.

This year’s growth is driven by strong performing titles in the adult fiction, children’s, young adult and educational categories. Romance sales had a huge jump (77%) due in large part to Colleen Hoover titles, and the growth in the romance category generally, heavily driven by TikTok trends. It’s worth noting that while TikTok has been a positive development for sales overall, contemporary romance author Sally Thorne is the only major Australian success story on the platform. The children’s comic strip fiction & graphic novels category received a boost from sales of Alice Oseman’s ‘Heartstopper’ series following the Netflix adaptation in May. Overall, adult fiction is up 17.3% on the same time last year, manga is up 27% and literary fiction is up 12%.

The bestselling Australian title for the year to 18 June was the children’s picture book Bluey: Easter. Bluey—a cartoon dog from the Australian TV show of the same name—has been a fixture of the Australian bestseller charts for a few years now, with regular instalments to feed demand. In fact, Bluey titles fill four spots on the Australian-authored books bestseller charts for the year to date, as well as another two on the 2021 end of year Australian charts.

Read the full article here.

As well as a wealth of trade offerings, Australia boasts a healthy educational publishing sector. Attending in person on the Australia stand at Frankfurt this year will be ATF Press Publishing Group an Australian-based independent publisher with an international reach, established in 1993. ATF publishes trade books as well as academic books and peer-referred journals with a focus on ethical and social issues including environment, science, space exploration, art and religion. 

Attending on the virtual stand via the Books from Australia website will be CSIRO Publishing, Pascal Press, RIC Publications and Scale Free Network.  

CSIRO Publishing produces an internationally recognised, editorially independent books program publishing titles for academic, professional and trade audiences across a wide range of subject areas including animal, plant and soil science as well as agriculture, sustainability and ecology. CSIRO produces around 40 new books each year, maintains a backlist of over 600 titles and is growing its children’s list aimed at introducing young readers to themes in ecology, conservation and biology and igniting their curiosity and interest in science.  

Pascal Press is an independent educational publisher that has been publishing quality educational resources for teachers, students and parents for over 30 years. It is the leading Australian publisher of home study materials including our trusted educational Excel range, used in schools all across Australia, while RIC Publications , established over 30 years ago, is one of the largest supplementary resource publisher in Australia, as well as owning operations in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Malaysia and New Zealand.  

Finally, look out for the Scale Free Network (SFN), an Australian art-science collaborative co-founded by conceptual artist Briony Barr and microbial ecologist, Dr Gregory Crocetti. Since 2007, SFN has developed its highly-interdisciplinary methodology through workshops, participatory art-labs and interactive exhibitions inspired by the microscopic world and invisible forces. In 2013, Scale Free Network started creating and publishing books. Directed by Gregory and Briony, and developed in collaboration with writer Ailsa Wild, visual ecologist Aviva Reed, and scientist Professor Linda Blackall, the award-winning ‘Small Friends Books’ series explores the microscopic world and communicates complex science through narrative and illustration. Since 2016, SFN has expanded this work to create a new series of graphic novels for older readers (drawn by comic artist Ben Hutchings). 

Among recent fiction acquisitions by Australian publishers are literary speculative fiction books, a plethora of debut authors, and more poetry and short story collections.

HarperCollins Australia has acquired ANZ rights to The Visitors by Jane Harrison, in a highly competitive auction brokered by Danielle Binks of Jacinta di Mase Management Literacy Agency. Based on Harrison’s play of the same name, the novel explores a significant date—January 26, 1788, the day the British First Fleet arrived at Warrane, Sydney Cove—from a First Nations perspective. HarperCollins publisher Catherine Milne says she has ‘not been so excited, nor so engaged by a fiction project, in what feels like years’, describing the novel as ‘generous, big-hearted and funny, yet at the same time deadly serious, thoughtful and thought-provoking’. The Visitors will be published under the Fourth Estate imprint in mid-2023.

Affirm Press has acquired world rights to two new novels by Alice Robinson. The first title, Blueshifts, is a literary/speculative fiction novel set both 100 years into the future and in the present time, and follows Esther who is revived in an underground cryonics facility and now must grapple with the fact that everything she has known and loved are in the past. Blueshifts is set to be published in September 2023.

Transit Lounge has acquired world rights to Serengotti, a literary mystery novel by spec-fic author Eugen Bacon, who takes the classic story of a woman unexpectedly losing her job and her lover, and moving to a country town to take up a new job, and fills it with ‘original twists’ at every turn, says Transit Lounge publisher Barry Scott.

Transit Lounge has also acquired world rights to An Ungrateful Instrument by Michael Meehan, in a deal brokered by Jeanne Ryckmans at Cameron’s Management. Meehan’s first novel in over a decade, An Ungrateful Instrument tells the story of the violent relationship between Antoine Forqueray and his son Jean-Baptiste, who were each brought up as child musical prodigies to the court of Louis XIV. The novel will be published in February 2023.

Read the full article here.

Among the most recent nonfiction acquisitions by Australian publishers are a plethora of memoir titles, including actor Sam Neill’s memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?, for which Text acquired world rights and which is due to be published in the first half of 2023. Described by the publisher as ‘the work of a natural storyteller’, the memoir follows how Neill became one of the world’s most celebrated actors. Did I Ever Tell You This? will join ‘a grand tradition of unputdownable memoirs by great actors’, said the publisher.

Pantera Press has acquired world rights to the memoir Gigorou: Are you ready to redefine beauty? by Sasha Kutabah Sarago, represented by Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Agency. Sarago, a Wadjanbarra Yidinji, Jirrbal and African-American speaker, writer, filmmaker and former model, retraces her steps in the various roles in the beauty industry and looks at the history of beauty to reimagine Western and patriarchal definitions. ‘This book is a revolution, with Sasha Kutabah Sarago as our fearless guide,’ says Pantera publisher Lex Hirst. Gigorou is set to be published in March 2023.

Black Inc. has acquired Because I am Not Myself, You See by Ariane Beeston, via Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Agency. Black Inc. acquired ANZ print, audio and ebook rights to the book, a mix of memoir, research and expert commentary exploring perinatal mental illness and the challenges of receiving help. Black Inc. publisher Sophy Williams says Beeston’s account of her experience as psychologist-turned-patient is ‘riveting’ and ‘written with great generosity and candour’. The memoir will be publishing in March 2024.

Penguin Random House (PRH) has acquired ANZ rights to US-based Australian author Karen Kirsten’s memoir Irena’s Gift, via Chris Bucci and Vanessa Kerr at Aevitas. A story about a family torn apart by war, Irena’s Gift is ‘a moving and compelling story of survival, family secrets and a daughter’s search for the truth of her mother’s life,’ said PRH publisher Sophie Ambrose. The memoir is set to be published in mid-2023.

A&U has acquired world rights to a memoir by Priya Nadesalingam. The yet-to-be-named memoir will reveal the Nadesalingam family’s journey being detained in Melbourne, Perth and Christmas Island, and the extraordinary efforts of the Biloela community to bring the family’s situation to national attention. The memoir, to be written with journalist Rebekah Holt, will be published in late 2023.

UQP has acquired world rights to Personal Score, the first work of nonfiction by writer and poet Ellen van Neerven. Exploring sport in Australia through a First Nations and queer lens, Personal Score examines how it can challenge mainstream views of gender and sexuality, while also meditating on Indigenous connections to place and land. A writer and poet of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage, van Neerven’s most recent poetry collection Throat won Book of the Year at the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Personal Score will be published in March 2023.

Pantera Press has acquired a book on the psychology of stalking by journalist Nicole Madigan. Pantera acquired world rights from Jeanne Ryckmans at Cameron’s Management. In Obsession, publishing in May 2023, Madigan tells the story of how she was stalked for three years, and looks at the history and evolution of the crime. Pantera publisher Katherine Hassett says the book is a ‘gripping blend of memoir, investigation and analysis that reads like a crime thriller in parts’.

Pictured: Ellen van Neerven

The Australian children’s middle-grade market continues to grow, and recent acquisitions show it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ, Oceania and non-exclusive Asia rights to Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky, the new middle-grade novel by Rebecca Lim, via the Annabel Barker Agency. From the author of Tiger Daughter, Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky, publishing September 2023, follows siblings Fu and Pei who make the perilous journey from their small rural community in southern China to Australia to find their father during the mid–20th century.

Walker Books Australia has acquired world rights to Small Acts, a middle-grade novel by neurodiverse authors Kate Foster and Kate Gordon. Told from the perspectives of two autistic 11-year-old classmates who share the same dream of helping others, the book is ‘a gentle tale that will allow many child readers to be inspired, seen, represented, and accepted’, says the publisher. Small Acts is set to be published in 2023.

University of Queensland Press (UQP) has acquired ANZ rights to Meet Me at the Moon Tree by Shivaun Plozza. The middle-grade novel follows 10-year-old Carina, who while grieving the death of her father becomes obsessed with moon trees—special trees planted from seeds taken on the 1971 Apollo mission to the moon. UQP publisher Claire Hume describes the novel as ‘accomplished, unique and moving’ and places it beside the likes of Nova Weetman, Peter Carnavas and Zana Fraillon. Meet Me at the Moon Tree will be published in the first half of 2023.

Hachette Australia has acquired ANZ and UK rights to upper middle-grade novel Six Summers of Tash and Leopold by Danielle Binks in a two-book deal. Binks is the author of The Year the Maps Changed, which was shortlisted in the 2021 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, and The Monster of Her Age (both Lothian), which was the YA winner of the 2022 Indie Book of the Year awards. According to the publisher, Six Summers of Tash and Leopold is a ‘gently suspenseful story’ following the unlikely friendship between two 12-year-old neighbours, featuring complicated families and life-changing summers. The book is set to be published in September 2023.

Storytorch Press has acquired world rights to a nonfiction picture book by author and playwright Maura Pierlot. Inspired by Pierlot’s pre-internet childhood, What Will You Make Today? aims to inspire simple ways in which children can think about and influence their own lives and world around them. To be illustrated by Triandhika Anjani, What Will You Make Today? will be published in 2023.

Hachette has also acquired the YA graphic novel Get Your Story Straight by Melbourne-based author and illustrator Briar Rolfe. The graphic novel, which follows 19-year-old trans man Henry who is out to everyone except his conservative Christian parents, had Morosin ‘hooked from the start’. Bold Type Agency will be pitching Get Your Story Straight to publishers at Frankfurt. The book will be published in Australia in 2024.

Pictured: Rebecca Lim.

Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Murakami’s surrealism—this is speculative literary fiction at its best. In late twenty-first century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside a hyper-immersive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise, and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments. Across the city, in the abandoned ‘real’ world, Tao-Yi’s mother remains stubbornly offline, preferring instead to indulge in memories of her life in Malaysia. When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future, or an authentic past.

Every Version of You
Author: Grace Chan
Publisher: Affirm Press
Rights held for book: Translation rights
Email for rights contact: Nerrileeweir@boldtypeagency.com.au

Melbourne writer Jennifer Down took out Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, for her second novel Bodies of Light (Text). The winner was chosen from a shortlist announced in June, in a headline-grabbing year for the Miles Franklin that featured a plagiarism scandal as well as the shortlisting of a self-published book for the first time in the prize’s history.

The winner of the Barbara Jefferis Award was recently announced as S L Lim for Revenge: Murder in three parts (Transit Lounge); the $50,000 award is presented every two years for the best Australian novel that ‘depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society’.

The respected, long-running ALS Gold Medal went to poetry collection Human Looking by Andy Jackson (Giramondo). Administered by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, the medal was presented alongside the Mary Gilmore Award for the best first book of poetry (Jelena Dinić, In the Room with the She Wolf, Wakefield) and the Magarey Medal for biography (Bernadette Brennan, Leaping into Waterfalls, A&U). Brennan’s biography of the late Australian writer Gillian Mears also won the National Biography Award as well as the nonfiction category of the Age Book of the Year. The fiction category was awarded to Miles Allinson for his second novel In Moonland (Scribe).

In May the Sydney Morning Herald named three debut authors as the Best Young Australian Novelists for 2022: Ella Baxter for New Animal (A&U), Michael Burrows for Where the Line Breaks (Fremantle Press) and Diana Reid for Love & Virtue (Ultimo). Reid also swept this year’s trade awards, taking out overall book of the year and literary fiction book of the year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, as well as the adult fiction category at the Australian Booksellers Association’s awards night.

Read the full article here.

Nerrilee Weir, former Penguin Random House Australia senior rights manager and Fiona Henderson, former Simon & Schuster Australia publishing director, have joined forces to create new rights agency Bold Type Agency, which will focus on book-to-screen adaptations and representing Australian literary agents and publishers in international markets. Weir tells Think Australian what they’ll be pitching at Frankfurt and what she thinks will be trending.

How did the idea for your new venture Bold Type Agency (BTA) come about?

Fiona and I worked together on Holy Cow! by Sarah MacDonald in 2002. Fiona was the publisher, and I worked on world English-language rights. Fiona immediately started pitching and I would follow behind and we’d tag team to cover ground and build excitement. Holy Cow! was published in North America and the United Kingdom, and Fiona and I continued to attend fairs together, often meeting foreign editors as a very effective ‘double act’. Over the past 20 years of not working directly together, we would often talk about how much fun we had and how we’d love to one day have our own rights agency.

Is your decision to start BTA an indication of a shift in how rights are sold since Covid?

Not at all. Covid has meant a different way of connecting—more Zooms etc., and as people start to travel again I think we’d simply add the ‘additional’ meetings (i.e. have 70 meetings at a fair, and another 50 or so Zooms during the book fair seasons). We can cover more ground. Essentially, we saw a gap in the market for rights selling. Many publishers have active rights departments and many literary agents also have their own contacts. But many others don’t and we hope that we can bring value to those organisations.

Read the full article here.

Australian authors tell us the most recent book they have read and loved, and why.

 

Michelle Kadarusman is the author of the middle-grade book on animal activism Berani (A&U Children’s, November).

I usually have a few books on the go, both children and adult reads. Two newer books that really stood out for me recently were Rainfish by Andrew Paterson (Text) and The Islands by Emily Brugman (A&U). Both evoked such lush worlds and were truly enchanting in both setting and voice.

 

Meg Foster is the author of forthcoming Boundary Crossers: The hidden history of Australia’s other bushrangers (NewSouth, November)

Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen. It is a raw, evocative and powerful book of poetry that looks at Australia through a vivid and unvarnished lens. Many poems have First Nations’ perspectives at the forefront, weaving colonial history and our contemporary reality seamlessly together to show how this history is alive in the present.

I love this book because it is searing. It gets under your skin. It is visceral and doesn’t shy away from fraught issues and questions. It’s also an incredibly generous book. Araluen has offered so much of herself in its pages; has shown us her anger and frustration and what injustice in this country looks like. But in showing us what is wrong, she also offers new insights that we can take forward; to face and resist our colonial past, so its legacies don’t continue to contaminate our future.

 

Tobias Madden is the author of the YA coming-of-age rom-com Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell (Penguin).

A book I recently read and adored was Holden Sheppard’s upcoming YA novel The Brink (Text). On the surface, it’s a hard-hitting story about a group of school leavers who get themselves in some epic trouble on an island off the coast of Western Australia, but if you look a little deeper, it’s a fascinating exploration of masculinity and sexuality and the intersection between the two. I tore through it in a couple of sittings, which is super rare for me!

 

Sophie Cunningham is the author of the novel This Devastating Fever (Ultimo).

I’ve just finished Bedtime Story by Chloe Hooper (S&S). It’s a beautiful book, about the act of story telling and about the traumas that sometimes lie at the heart of a good story. And I really liked the layout and the illustrations. It’s a very lovely piece of publishing.

 

Claire G Coleman, an award-winning Noongar writer and poet, is the author of Enclave (Hachette).

It’s not the last book I have read and loved but whenever I think of this question I am again struck by how much I loved the final book in Palyku writer Ambelin Kwaymullina’s ‘The Tribe’ series, The Foretelling of Georgie Spider (Walker Books). Stories have a power to shine a light into the dark places of the world, to show us where we are going and perhaps how to avoid going there. We can also learn through stories where we might want to go.

The Foretelling of Georgie Spider is one of those books; the conclusion is far more powerful than I was ready for. Read the series, build up to the ending and when you feel it you will really feel it.

 

Lauren Draper is the author of YA novel The Museum of Broken Things (Text).

I adored Rhiannon Wilde’s debut novel Henry Hamlet’s Heart (UQP). It’s such a beautiful and warm novel, and perfectly balances the teenaged experience of friendship, futures, and first loves. I can’t actually keep a copy in my house, because I keep giving it away to everyone who comes to visit (my recommended reads are not optional, thanks).

 

Jasmine Seymour is an award-winning Dharug author and illustrator. Her fourth picture book is Open Your Heart to Country (Magabala).

The last book I read and loved is the picture book Sea Country by Aunty Patsy Cameron and Lisa Kennedy (Magabala). I picked it up in the school library last week and the illustrations took my breath away. [I am] so inspired by this work.

Pictured L–R: Claire G Coleman, Tobias Madden

Top 10 Australian fiction YTD

1. Apples Never Fall (Liane Moriarty, Macmillan) 44,080
2. The Murder Rule (Dervla McTiernan, HarperCollins) 40,870
3. Exiles (Jane Harper, Macmillan) 39,770
4. Cobalt Blue (Matthew Reilly, Macmiillan) 37,040
5. The Dictionary of Lost Words (Pip Williams, Affirm Press) 35,255
6. Dirt Town (Hayley Scrivenor, Macmillan) 35,210
7. Lying Beside You (Michael Robotham, Hachette) 32,885
8. Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton, HarperCollins) 31,110
9. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Benjamin Stevenson, Michael Joseph) 28,515
10. WAKE (Shelley Burr, Hachette) 27,730

Top 10 Australian nonfiction YTD

1. The Happiest Man on Earth (Eddie Jaku, Macmillan) 60,375
2. Love Stories (Trent Dalton, HarperCollins) 55,060
3. The 10:10 Diet (Sarah Di Lorenzo, S&S) 39,400
4. The Barefoot Investor (Scott Pape, Wiley) 30,630
5. The Boy from Boomerang Cresent (Eddie Betts, S&S) 25,935
6. She’s on the Money (Victoria Devine, Random House Australia) 23,930
7. The 10:10 Diet Recipe Book (Sarah Di Lorenzo, S&S) 23,500
8. Burn After Writing (Sharon Jones, Pop Press) 23,380
9. Lisa (Lisa Curry & Ellen Whinnett, HarperCollins) 23,065
10. Little Book of Chanel (Emma Baxter-Wright, Carlton Books) 21,735

Top 10 Australian Children’s Books YTD

1. Bluey: Easter (Puffin) 53,510
2. Bluey: Big Backyard (Puffin) 50,095
3. Open Wide and Say Arrrgh! (The Bad Guys #15) (Aaaron Blabey, Scholastic) 46,625
4. Pig the Rebel (Aaron Blabey, Scholastic) 41,670
5. The 156-Storey Treehouse (Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton, Pan) 41,510
6. Where is the Green Sheep (Mem Fox, Puffin) 40,330
7. Bluey: Hammerbarn (Puffin) 39,615
8. Crash Course (Wolf Girl #7) (Anh Do, A&U) 38,150
9. Bluey: Where’s Bluey? (Puffin) 36,805
10. Bluey: More Easter Fun! (Puffin) 36,205

© Nielsen BookScan 2022. Period covered: 2 January 2022 to week ending 1 October 2022. Data supplied by Nielsen BookScan’s book sales monitoring system from 1000 retailers nationwide.