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The Swan Book (Alexis Wright, Giramondo)
Released August 2013
Author and Indigenous academic Alexis Wright’s haunting third novel is hard to capture in simple terms as, similar to her previous fiction, it operates largely through abstraction and metaphor. Wright’s... Read more
A Cautionary Tail (Erica Harrison, illus by Simon Rippingale, Viking)
Released September 2013
In A Cautionary Tail we follow the life of a little girl who is born with a special difference—she has a tail. Initially, her tail is seen as a positive... Read more
The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie (Kirsty Murray, A&U)
Released August 2013
The latest book from Kirsty Murray is a ‘time-slip adventure’ in the tradition of books such as Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow and Jackie French’s Somewhere around the Corner. Set... Read more
The Great Blood Bank Robbery: The Bloodhound Boys Book 1 (Andrew Cranna, Walker Books)
Released October 2013
The Great Blood Bank Robbery follows the adventures of two monster children, werewolf Rocky and vampire Vince, as they navigate boring school subjects such as biting and transformation. When a... Read more
Jump: Twinmaker Book 1 (Sean Williams, A&U)
Released November 2013
The world has been revolutionised by ‘d-mat’—fabrication technology that can build any object instantly, atom by atom. Clothes, food and even human beings can be faithfully created, replicated and teleported... Read more
No Mercy: True Stories of Disaster, Survival and Brutality (Eleanor Learmonth & Jenny Tabakoff, Text)
Released August 2013
Cannibalism, murder, sexual slavery—is there no horror homo sapiens won’t mete out to each other in extremis? Evidence overwhelmingly suggests not, as Learmonth and Tabakoff discover in their study of... Read more
My Island Homicide (Catherine Titasey, UQP)
Released September 2013
Catherine Titasey’s debut novel My Island Homicide, which won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript by an emerging author, is part murder mystery, part family drama and... Read more
Letter to George Clooney (Debra Adelaide, Pan Macmillan)
Released September 2013
I’ve been a fan of Debra Adelaide’s writing since The Hotel Albatross was published in the mid 90s. Her last novel, The Household Guide to Dying, was a wonderfully touching... Read more
The Rule of Knowledge (Scott Baker, Hachette)
Released September 2013
This action debut started a little conventionally for me, but it quickly improved. Mild-mannered high school science teacher Shaun Strickland gets an invitation to Cambridge to present his theories of... Read more
On Offence: The Politics of Indignation (Richard King, Scribe)
Released September 2013
Impeccable in its timing, Richard King’s meditation on the history of taking offence comes at a time of increasingly personal point-scoring by the major political parties as they claw it... Read more
The Wombats Go on Camp (Roland Harvey, A&U)
Released November 2013
Once again, the indomitable Roland Harvey manages to capture chaos and bring it in an orderly way into the pages of a picture book. In this book he takes his... Read more
Blood Secret (Jaye Ford, Random House)
Released September 2013
Looking for your next nail-biting suspense thriller? Davitt award-winning author Jaye Ford (Beyond Fear, Scared Yet?) has written just the thing. Blood Secret throws readers directly into some fast-paced action... Read more
Coal Creek (Alex Miller, A&U)
Released October 2013
The latest novel by two-time Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Alex Miller is a rural love story that is harsh and beautiful like the Mount Hay bushland that narrator Bobby Blue... Read more
The Full Ridiculous (Mark Lamprell, Text)
Released October 2013
Beginning your debut novel with your protagonist bouncing off the windscreen of a car is a rough opener, but it sets Mark Lamprell up to create a ridiculous downward spiral... Read more
Eyre: The Forgotten Explorer (Ivan Rudolph, HarperCollins)
Released September 2013
The subtitle of this book is quite fitting. For unlike other explorers of colonial Australia, Edward Eyre has never had much hold on the cultural memory. Aside from the highway,... Read more
A History of Silence (Lloyd Jones, Text Publishing)
Released September 2013
Lloyd Jones lives in Wellington, but when an earthquake devastates Christchurch he is asked by the BBC to write about it. Feeling unable to ‘speak for all’, he declines. Instead,... Read more
Ugly (Robert Hoge, Hodder)
Released September 2013
Robert Hoge was born in Brisbane in 1972 with a massive tumour on his forehead, distorted facial features and deformed legs. As a toddler he underwent operations to correct his... Read more
The Swap (Jan Ormerod, illus by Andrew Joyner, Little Hare)
Released October 2013
Caroline’s mother thinks her new baby is gorgeous, but Caroline doesn’t agree at all. Caroline is quite green, in fact, and her snout is definitely out of joint. The family... Read more
A Swim in the Sea (Sue Whiting, illus by Meredith Thomas, Walker Books)
Released October 2013
It’s the first time Bruno has seen the ocean and he’s very excited. When his family arrives at the beach Bruno is amazed and delighted, but his delight quickly turns... Read more
Creatures of Magic (Maree Fenton-Smith, Walker Books)
Released October 2013
When Anna’s new neighbours move in, all she hopes for is a family with a girl her own age to play with. She certainly doesn’t imagine that the Brown family... Read more
