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Tiddas (Anita Heiss, Simon & Schuster)
Released March 2014
Prolific author and academic Anita Heiss has created a fascinating subgenre of popular women’s fiction, dubbed ‘choc-lit’, as a way of celebrating Australia’s Indigenous culture and promoting it to a... Read more
The Weaver Fish (Robert Edeson, Fremantle Press)
Released March 2014
The Weaver Fish is fiendishly clever. It brings together so many threads it’s hard to know where to start. From hurricane-proof hats to a mysterious bird of prey that’s perhaps... Read more
Grace’s Table (Sally Piper, UQP)
Released April 2014
This beguiling novel is set at a pivotal moment in the life of Grace, an Australian woman about to turn 70. She is determined to mark this moment with an... Read more
Kat Jumps the Shark (Melinda Houston, Text)
Released April 2014
Melinda Houston’s debut novel is a fun, heartfelt and deeply satisfying story about Kat Kelly, a 40-something Melburnian whose seemingly charmed life is turned upside down, and then the right... Read more
Meatloaf in Manhattan (Robert Power, Transit Lounge)
Released April 2014
A man arrives in New York and inveigles his way into the arms of two women; a Vietnamese orphan is taken under the wing of an old man and given... Read more
Stormswept (Shannon Curtis, Pan Macmillan)
Released April 2014
Fans of The Bold and the Beautiful won’t be disappointed with Pan Macmillan’s tie-in with the popular daytime soap. Stormswept sees Hope Logan and long-time friend and former flame, Oliver,... Read more
The Tea Chest (Josephine Moon, A&U)
Released April 2014
Five unlikely women have to work together to make a boutique tea shop work and flourish. Simone has left her two Australian tea shops, and the plans for another branch... Read more
Terms & Conditions (Robert Glancy, Bloomsbury)
Released March 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... Read more
Top ‘Books+Publishing’ adult reviews of 2013
Released January 1970
In 2013 Books+Publishing reviewed over 130 adult fiction and nonfiction titles. But which books did our reviewers enjoy the most? Here's a round-up of the top-scorers: One of the first books to... Read more
Wolf Creek: Origin and Wolf Creek: Desolation Game (Greg McLean, Aaron Sterns & Brett McBean, Penguin)
Released January 2014
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... Read more
BOOK REVIEW: Stop Press: The Last Days of Newspapers (Rachel Buchanan, Scribe)
Released January 1970
From her first job as a junior reporter at a local paper in New Zealand to her time as a subeditor at the Age in the early 1990s, Rachel Buchanan... Read more
The Tinklers Three: Books 1-3 (M C Badger, illus by Leigh Brown, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Released February 2014
It’s always exciting to see a new junior fiction series enter the bookshop. Meredith Badger’s ‘The Tinklers Three’ series launches with three books for five- to eight-year-olds about the three Tinkler children, who... Read more
The Train to Paris (Sebastian Hampson, Text)
Released March 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... Read more
Simple Things (Bill Condon, A&U)
Released March 2014
Ten-year-old Stephen is shy. So when his parents take him to stay with Great Aunt Lola in the country, he’s simply dreading it. Things go from bad to worse when... Read more
The Catier Emerald: Kitten Kaboodle Mission 1 (Eileen O’Hely, illus by Heath McKenzie, Walker Books)
Released February 2014
Kitten Kaboodle, known as Buttons to his clueless owner, is a white and ginger tabby who also happens to be the number one secret agent at the CAT (Clandestine Activity... Read more
The Firebird Mystery (Darrell Pitt, Text)
Released March 2014
At its heart, The Firebird Mystery is a novel about a Sherlock Holmes-type character with a young apprentice—an ex-circus performer orphan—solving mysteries and saving the world. It’s set in the... Read more
Saving Thanehaven (Catherine Jinks, A&U)
Released March 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... Read more
Inside Out (Will Elliott, HarperVoyager)
Released February 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... Read more
The Lost Child (Suzanne McCourt, Text)
Released March 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... Read more
Ash Rover and the Keeper of the Phoenix (Aleesah Darlison, Walker Books)
Released January 1970
One day cowherd Ash Rover finds an egg, from which a phoenix called Gwaam is hatched. This weak fledging tells Ash that the boy is now its keeper and protector.... Read more
