Author: Emily Paull

Whilst reading Kira McPherson‘s debut novel Higher Education, I couldn’t help but feel like the interior world of the novel was familiar. It wasn’t until I was a few chapters in that I realised it was set in Perth. Don’t get me wrong – it was not the book’s fault that I didn’t realise. It’s just…

If you’ve ever seen a knitting or crochet group get together at your local library or community centre, you’ll know that craft groups are a hive of big personalities. The Copeton Crochet Circle, AKA the Copeton Craft Resistance, are no different. These ladies (and gentleman) are the cast of Kate Solly‘s charming debut novel, Tuesday Evenings with…

Quirky American author, Kevin Wilson‘s latest fictional offering was released in late 2022 to much anticipation. Called Now is Not the Time to Panic, the novel once again explores the line between art and chaos as it follows sixteen-year-old Frances ‘Frankie’ Budge through the summer of 1996. A loner and an aspiring writer, Frankie is a…

In Faithless, Alice Nelson’s third novel, we follow Cressida as she writes a letter to her former lover, Max, dissecting the psychology of their relationship. Born the daughter of Lord Farley and his mistress, Cressida and her brother Lucian are part of a second, unacknowledged family. They share an idyllic childhood in India, growing up on…

It’s no secret that Greek Mythology retellings are having something of a moment. Madeline Miller‘s The Song of Achilles – published in 2011 – was one of the most talked about books on TikTok this year; and in the last couple of years, we’ve had novels which focus on the forgotten women’s perspectives within these…

There are echoes of The Lovely Bones in Joanna Morrison’s debut novel, The Ghost of Gracie Flynn. Narrated by Gracie, the story is told as if her ghost is talking directly to the infant daughter of one of Gracie’s university friends, Sam. Gracie, Sam, Robyn and Cohen were a tight knit foursome, once upon a time, but…

The protagonist of Adriane Howell’s debut novel, Hydra, has a very distinctive voice. An antiquarian with dreams of becoming a specialist at the auction house where she works; Anja has developed her own taxonomy of classifying objects based on the way they make a person feel rather than on where they are from, who made them…

In Brooke Dunnell‘s Fogarty Award-winning debut novel, The Glass House, Julia Lambett returns to her childhood home in Perth to move her father into care. The timing, as is usually the case in such novels, couldn’t be worse. Julia and her husband Rowan have taken to sleeping in separate beds; with some sort of unspoken issue…

Question: What do you get if you mash up Charlotte Wood‘s The Natural Way of Things, Anna North’s Outlawed and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? Answer: Kathryn Hore’s latest novel, The Stranger.  Set in an unspecified frontier-like future on an unnamed continent, in a small, gated town called Darkwater, The Stranger is a twist on the classic story prompt, a stranger comes…

The Three Lives of Alix St Pierre treads familiar territory for seasoned Natasha Lester readers, namely the streets of Paris during and immediately after the Second World War. The novel opens with Alix about to leave her Swiss finishing school to pursue her dream of working in fashion. She is devastated to leave her closest…

 – With pull quotes on its cover from the likes of Charlotte Wood, Tony Birch and Laura Elvery, Anne Casey-Hardy’s debut collection of short stories, Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls promises to be something special – and it does not disappoint. Often exploring themes of coming of age, motherhood, loss and friendship, these stories are about…

In 1925, Perth woman Audrey Jacob shot dead her former fiance, Cyril Gidley in the middle of the ballroom at Government House in front of hundreds of witnesses. Yet she did not go to jail for her crime. Now, almost one hundred years later, historian and author Leigh Straw has delved into this case for…

If it’s seemed this year like Ultimo Press are the ones to watch, then this latest novel by Eliza Henry-Jones is no exception. Pick it up for its gorgeous, moody cover, but stay for the complex and well thought-out plot and its cast of intriguing characters who almost seem to walk off the page. Salt…

My Heart is a Little Wild Thing is the sophomore novel from Australian writer, Nigel Featherstone. It is the story of Patrick, the beleaguered youngest son of a family from country New South Wales who has suppressed his own needs and desires for most of his life. Now the only member of his family in…

Portable Magic, the latest book by Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith, is more than just a book about books. Or rather, it’s not exactly what you would expect from a book about books. Instead of being a cultural history of books, reading and publishing, it’s a thematic account of books as physical objects. Divided into chapters about…

Katerina Gibson was the winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific Region) for their story “Fertile Soil”. Last month, their debut collection Women I Know was published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Described as ‘unpicking the stitches of gender and genre’, the seventeen stories in Women I Know explore various iterations of…

Katherine J. Chen’s second novel, Joan, a feminist reimagining of Joan of Arc, is surprisingly absent of religious fervour. She acknowledges that her Joan is a departure from the history in her author’s note, but also makes a conscious effort throughout the novel to draw attention to the mythologising of this figure throughout history. Given that…

To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara’s third novel, was released in January 2022. That it has taken me until now to finish it says as much about its length (some 700 plus pages) as it does about its subject matter. Spanning three interlinked novellas each set 100 years apart, To Paradise is a book about family, obligation, tradition and…

In Other Houses, the fourth novel by Melbourne-based writer Paddy O’Reilly, working class Australia takes centre stage. The novel follows Lily, a housecleaner who works in the inner suburbs of Melbourne to make sure that her daughter, Jewelee, has a good life. Jewelee was a wild child once, in and out of trouble with the…

Polly Phillips is back with another twist-filled thriller in her second novel The Reunion, the follow up to 2021’s smash hit, My Best Friend’s Murder. Though now based in Perth, UK-born Phillips has set this novel in the hallowed halls of Cambridge University. Her protagonist, Emily Toller, returns fifteen years after graduation and must confront some painful memories. Revenge…

Though Becky Manawatu’s debut novel Aue was originally released in 2019, readers may not have been surprised to see it on the new release shelves this past March. After its original publication by small NZ based publishers Makaro Press, the book went on to win the Jan Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the MITOQ Best First…

It’s not often that a sequel to a beloved novel lives up to its predecessor. Particularly, as is the case with Jessie Burton’s latest novel, The House of Fortune, when there was never a sequel promised in the first place. When The Miniaturist was published in 2014 (and became a million copy bestseller), there was…

Evelyn owns a laundromat in the Melbourne CBD. She surveys her community, making internal observations about the people she sees; the elderly man in the dapper suit who seems to be getting more forgetful, the young man with the new puppy at the park every morning, the tattooed couple who argue constantly. Evelyn notices everything,…

Best known for her Rowland Sinclair mystery series, Snowy Mountains-based author Sulari Gentill has published her latest standalone mystery. Titled The Woman in the Library, the book uses an unusual format to tell two stories at once. Gentill’s fictional counterpart Hannah Tigone is writing her latest book about four strangers who meet in the Reading Room…

Mona Awad‘s latest novel, All’s Well, tackles one of William Shakespeare‘s lesser known works. All’s Well That Ends Well is considered a ‘problem play’, not least because it sees its heroine, Helen, performing what was known as a ‘bed trick’ to consummate her marriage to her estranged husband, Bertram. But, the protagonist of Awad’s All’s Well…

In 1906, Frances (Fan) Johnson moves from Adelaide to Fremantle with her family so that her mother, Agnes, can take care of her estranged father. Edwin Salt has been thrown out by his wife, Annie, and everyone believes that he does not have much longer to live. Though Agnes is estranged from her mercurial and…

Love Marriage is the fourth novel from Booker Prize shortlisted author, Monica Ali; and her first novel in a decade. It is the story of Yasmin, an English doctor whose family are of Indian Muslim heritage, and her engagement to obstetrician Joe. Race, class, religion and gender all play major parts in the unfolding of…

Shipwrecks, court fashions and the Dutch art trade of the 17th Century take centre stage in Lauren Chater’s third historical novel, The Winter Dress. Chater was inspired by a shipwreck discovered in 2014 off the island of Texel, containing a dress perfectly preserved underwater for four hundred years. The dress was later found to have belonged…

If you thought it was too soon for a pandemic novel, you might just be put off by the premise of Toni Jordan’s newest book, Dinner with the Schnabels…don’t be! Known for her versatility across both the contemporary and historical genres, the Melbourne-based novelist has just published her first novel with Hachette. Schnabels follows down-on-his-luck former-architect Simon…

Lizzie Pook’s debut novel, Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, takes us to the fictional pearling town of Bannin Bay in the North of Western Australia. The year is 1896, and those who own fleets of pearling luggers – those such as Eliza Brightwell’s father – rule the town. But when Eliza goes to meet her father…