Review search
Growing Up Disabled in Australia (ed by Carly Findlay, Black Inc.)
Released February 2021
Growing up Disabled in Australia, edited by Carly Findlay, is the latest anthology in Black Inc.’s ‘Growing Up’ series. Like the previous anthologies, it features both emerging and established writers.... Read more
Honey Blood (Kirsty Everett, HarperCollins)
Released February 2021
I learned a lot about cancer treatment from Kirsty Everett’s memoir Honey Blood: that chemotherapy can make you very sensitive to smells, that jellybeans are helpful for the taste of... Read more
The Second Son (Loraine Peck, Text)
Released February 2021
In Sydney’s western suburbs, the summer air thick enough to slice with a switchblade, Johnny Novak’s family reels from the murder of Ivan, his older brother. Their father, a notorious... Read more
Lola Online: #TheSecretUpstairsFanClubParty (Shannan & Tayla Stedman, Omnibus)
Released February 2021
Sisters Shannan and Tayla Stedman, children’s entertainers turned authors, try their hands at junior fiction with Lola Online, which comes after the 2018 release of their picture book Harlow and... Read more
The Silent Listener (Lyn Yeowart, Viking)
Released February 2021
Lyn Yeowart’s debut crime thriller The Silent Listener is the intense, horrific, utterly devastating and totally addictive tale of the Henderson family. Spanning four decades and encompassing a missing child... Read more
Beneath the Trees (Cristy Burne, Fremantle Press)
Released February 2021
Cam and her little sister Sophie have travelled halfway across Australia to see some platypuses in the wild, and even their mum forcing them to wear bright yellow emergency ponchos... Read more
Iceberg (Claire Saxby, illus by Jess Racklyeft, A&U)
Released February 2021
There is no absolutely question as to why Claire Saxby and Jess Racklyeft are both multi-award-winning creators, and this book is a perfect partnership, eliciting the very best from both... Read more
Tiger Daughter (Rebecca Lim, A&U)
Released February 2021
From Rebecca Lim, author and co-editor of the Meet Me at the Intersection YA anthology, this coming-of-age tale is about finding your own voice as a young girl in a... Read more
Float or Sink? (Kylie Covark, illus by Andrew Plant, Ford St)
Released February 2021
Kylie Covark’s Float or Sink? quickly develops (after an opening that doesn’t quite nail the meter/rhyme structure to come) into a lively, playful story and preschool children will undoubtedly relish... Read more
The Imitator (Rebecca Starford, A&U)
Released February 2021
Rebecca Starford’s debut novel is a beautifully written espionage thriller that bookends the world-changing period of WWII. Its meticulously researched narrative draws the reader into the early life of Evelyn... Read more
Coming of Age in the War on Terror (Randa Abdel-Fattah, NewSouth)
Released February 2021
‘I’ve always had this almost pre-conceived guilt attached to who I was.’ — Jena (18, Lebanese–Australian, South West Sydney) On September 11 2001, two planes smashed into the World Trade... Read more
The Boy From the Mish (Gary Lonesborough, A&U)
Released February 2021
Jackson is an Aboriginal teen who lives with his mum and little brother; he has a girlfriend, good mates and the local men’s group. Then his aunty from the city... Read more
Buried Not Dead (Fiona McGregor, Giramondo)
Released February 2021
Outsider art, as critic Roger Cardinal once wrote, is ‘immune to the polarisations of culture and the copycat spirit of cultural art’. It’s fair to say that Fiona McGregor’s new... Read more
The Price of Two Sparrows (Christy Collins, Affirm)
Released February 2021
Christy Collins’s The Price of Two Sparrows is an elegantly structured study of migration and community in Australia. A burgeoning Muslim community on the outskirts of Sydney has made plans... Read more
With a Little Kelp from Our Friends (Mathew Bate, illus by Liz Rowland, Thames & Hudson)
Released February 2021
From the evolution of this fascinating stuff to its modern usage as food, fuel and building material, in With a Little Kelp from Our Friends Mathew Bate tells you everything... Read more
The Speechwriter (Martin McKenzie-Murray, Scribe)
Released February 2021
Martin McKenzie-Murray’s fiction debut is a fun but sometimes frustrating book that nevertheless delivers plenty of laughs along the way. The story is told by Toby—an aspiring speechwriter whose hyper-ambition... Read more
The Ghost Squad (Sophie Masson, MidnightSun)
Released February 2021
This young adult thriller starts as a post-collapse story and then takes a supernatural turn. It begins with ‘the pulse’, a solar flare that shuts down all electronics, pitching the... Read more
Footprints on the Moon (Lorraine Marwood, UQP)
Released February 2021
It’s 1969 and Sharnie is entering year seven and finding it difficult to make friends. The world is consumed by the Space Race and the Vietnam War, and Sharnie is... Read more
Eating With My Mouth Open (Sam van Zweden, NewSouth)
Released February 2021
Sam van Zweden’s Eating With My Mouth Open is at once an expressive memoir and a cultural commentary on the role of food in our lives. It’s part vulnerable and... Read more
Black Summer (ed by Michael Rowland, ABC Books)
Released January 2021
This excellent anthology won’t be the final word on the 2019–20 Black Summer fires but it contains some of the very best words you can read on the subject. From... Read more
