Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

Image. Advertisement:

Review search

 

Hip Hop & Hymns (Mawunyo Gbogbo, Penguin) 

Cover of Hip Hop and Hymns

Released June 2022

Hip Hop & Hymns is a beautiful and heart-wrenching memoir by Mawunyo Gbogbo, music and pop culture reporter for the ABC. Gbogbo begins her story in Ghana, where her parents... Read more

The Eulogy (Jackie Bailey, Hardie Grant) 

Released June 2022

The Eulogy by Jackie Bailey is at once sprawling and intimate: it’s a novel of race, disability, trauma, poverty, abuse and maternal rage that takes place over the course of... Read more

What We All Saw (Mike Lucas, Puffin) 

Released June 2022

In a small English country town in the 1970s, four friends make their way to the local quarry, a place where stories of witches and curses are born. Hag’s Drop,... Read more

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life (Paul Dalla Rosa, A&U)

Released June 2022

The fiction of Melbourne-based Paul Dalla Rosa has been published in the Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's and Meanjin. His debut book, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, contains 10 short... Read more

The Museum of Broken Things (Lauren Draper, Text) 

Released June 2022

The concise opening of Lauren Draper’s debut YA novel immediately had me hooked: a new town, a mysterious statue and a curse all make for intriguing storylines. In The Museum... Read more

Swimming Home (Judy Cotton, Black Inc.)

Released June 2022

Judy Cotton is an internationally celebrated visual artist who has work in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Australia. Her father, Sir Robert... Read more

My Spare Heart (Jared Thomas, A&U)

Released June 2022

There’s a lot to unpack in this YA novel, which covers issues including alcoholism, climate change, divorce and racism. At the centre of it all is 17-year-old Phoebe. She is... Read more

Old Fellow (Christopher Cheng, illus by Liz Anelli, Walker)

Released June 2022

Old Fellow, written by Christopher Cheng and illustrated by Liz Anelli, is a warm, simple and engaging story of an old man and his old dog. Which one of the... Read more

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