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Katerina Cruickshanks (Daniel Gray-Barnett, Scribble)
Released May 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... Read more
How to Spell Catastrophe (Fiona Wood, Pan)
Released May 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... Read more
Libby Lawrence is Good at Pretending (Jodi McAlister, Wakefield)
Released May 2022
Jodi McAlister, author of the young adult urban fantasy trilogy ‘Valentine’, draws on her academic study of romance fiction in her new YA novel Libby Lawrence is Good at Pretending.... Read more
Red (Felicity McLean, HarperCollins)
Released May 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... Read more
Heartland (Jennifer Pinkerton, A&U)
Released May 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,... Read more
The Silence of Water (Sharron Booth, Fremantle Press)
Released May 2022
Be swept up in the tragedy of this based-on-fact historical drama that follows the lives of three generations of the Salt family through the 1800s and early 1900s. Edwin Salt... Read more
Losing Face (George Haddad, UQP)
Released May 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... Read more
Root & Branch (Eda Gunaydin, NewSouth)
Released May 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... Read more
Seven Days (Fleur Ferris, Puffin)
Released May 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... Read more
Let’s Build a Backyard (Mike Lucas, illus by Daron Parton, Lothian)
Released May 2022
A companion to Mike Lucas and Daron Parton’s 2021 publication Let’s Build a House, this bouncy book illustrates simple steps to creating a garden—dig, plant, water, protect and enjoy the... Read more
Daisy & Woolf (Michelle Cahill, Hachette)
Released May 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... Read more
The Red Witch: A biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard (Nathan Hobby, MUP)
Released May 2022
Fifty years after the writer Katharine Susannah Prichard’s death, Nathan Hobby has produced this highly detailed, meticulously researched biography, both a revealing account of Prichard’s thrilling life and a sensitive... Read more
The Greatest Thing (Sarah Winifred Searle, A&U Children’s)
Released May 2022
The Greatest Thing is a graphic novel about friendship and self-actualisation, with a dash of queer romance. Semi-autobiographical in nature, it’s set in America in 2002 where Winifred (Searle) meets... Read more
The Callers (Kiah Thomas, HarperCollins)
Released May 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... Read more
Homesickness (Janine Mikosza, Ultimo Press)
Released May 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... Read more
Sunbathing (Isobel Beech, A&U)
Released May 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... Read more
Dirt Town (Hayley Scrivenor, Macmillan)
Released May 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,... Read more
All the Little Tricky Things (Karys McEwen, Text)
Released May 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... Read more
How to Be Between (Bastian Fox Phelan, Giramondo)
Released May 2022
How to Be Between is a memoir that takes the reader on a tour of Australian counterculture at the beginning of the 21st century, through queer spaces, art festivals, DIY... Read more
Abomination (Ashley Goldberg, Vintage)
Released May 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... Read more
