Author: Emily Paull

Elizabeth Macneal is back with a follow up to her 2019 novel The Doll Factory. Though not a sequel, Circus of Wonders treads familiar ground in weaving another Victorian era tale of entertainment, exploitation and obsession. While The Doll Factory used as its setting the Great Exhibition, Circus of Wonders, as its title suggests, uses the travelling circus….

Imagine reading Picnic at Hanging Rock at the same time as The Handmaid’s Tale, and you’ll get somewhere close to understanding the experience of Phoebe Wynne‘s debut novel, Madam. This is the story of Rose, a twenty-six year old classics teacher who is plucked from obscurity (or, from teaching at public schools) and made the head of the…

“This is a trans story. But it is also my story.” So says this powerful quote from Kaya Wilson’s memoir: As Beautiful as Any Other. Written as a personal record of his own experiences with both the medical profession and the world, beginning the day Kaya began to question his gender, As Beautiful as Any Other is a powerful…

Melissa Manning may be based in Melbourne now, but her connection to Tasmania resounds strongly throughout the stories in her debut collection, Smokehouse. Told in the form of nine interlinked tales, the book follows the lives of a number of residents of a small Tasmanian coastal town. At the centre (and also bookending the collection) is…

In Heartsick, journalist and assistant head of content at Mammamia, Jessie Stephens goes undercover in search of the truth about heartbreak. Inspired by her own relationship breakdown and a search for a “book that [she was] fairly certain [didn’t] exist” which could “put into words how [she was] feeling”, this debut work of narrative non fiction looks…

Kirsty Manning‘s historical fiction always features two things: an intriguing mystery in the past that must be uncovered by characters in the present day, and sumptuous descriptions of food and drink. Her latest novel, The French Gift is no exception. And no wonder, as Kirsty Manning is the co-owner of the Bellota Wine Bar and the…

The winners of this year’s ABIAs (Australian Book Industry Awards) were announced at Carriageworks in Sydney as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival this evening in a hybrid online and in-person event. Julia Baird took out the top award for Book of the Year for her non-fiction release Phosphorescence, described by guest presenter Cate Blanchett…

Shortlisted for the inaugural Fogarty Literary Award, Where the Line Breaks, the debut novel by West Australian writer Michael Burrows is stylistically a little out of the ordinary for Fremantle Press. For a start, a large part of the story is told in the form of a fictional PhD thesis. Writing the thesis is Matthew Denton, a “starry-eyed…

Chasing the McCubbin, the debut novel by Melbourne academic and writer Sandi Scaunich, delves into what may be unfamiliar territory for most readers – a world of second hand dealers with nicknames like Blue Merc, Fritz the German and The Builder and His Missus. Beginning in the early ’90s during a financial recession, it is the story…

The back cover of Barry Divola‘s debut novel Driving Stevie Fracasso makes some lofty claims. It promises High Fidelity meets The Big Lebowski meets The Darjeeling Limited; it promises Nick Hornby, David Nicholls and Jonathan Tropper vibes. Picking it up, I thought to myself that this one novel could not possibly live up to all that. But here’s the thing,…

Dangerous Women may be the first novel published under the name Hope Adams, but it’s not in actual fact the author’s first book. Rather, Hope Adams is a pseudonym adopted by the well-established author (and mother of bestselling crime writer Sophie Hannah), Adele Geras. Geras has made no secret of her true identity, unlike like other well-known authors who have written…

The protagonist of Pip Drysdale’s third novel, The Paris Affair, would be a difficult woman to get along with in real life. By her own admission, she only keeps one friend close, claiming that all other people are “fake and they try to make her ‘fake’ too.” Yet for someone who supposedly hates phonies as much as…

In 1939, Odile Souchet applies for a job at the American Library in Paris, having just completed her library studies degree. An avid reader, Odile is so well-suited for a job as a librarian she even thinks in Dewey Decimal subject headings sometimes. Odile is drawn to the ALP because it is the place where…

Hold Your Fire is the highly anticipated short story collection by Australian writer, Chloe Wilson. Containing work which has been previously published in Granta, The Iowa Review, The Big Issue and the Australian Book Review online, the publication of this book marks the arrival of a new powerhouse in Australian short fiction. Each of the seventeen…

Fremantle Press have been running workshops on the business of being a writer in Australia for years. Now, after coming across the same questions again and again, publisher Georgia Richter and creative writing lecturer Deborah Hunn have decided that it was time to write a book that answered them. More than ‘just another how to write…

Cait Copper loves books. As the owner of Hay Street independent bookshop, Book Fiend, she doesn’t have time for any other kind of love in her life; unless you count the weekly deliveries she makes to her housebound clients. She goes to work, deals with the gamut of questions about why her stock is so…

In 1954, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II undertook a royal tour of the colonies to meet her new subjects. She was accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, and the usual bevy of ladies in waiting and staff. The Tour, the debut novel by Transmission Films producer and film distributor Andrew Mackie fictionalises this journey…

Detective-novel loving vacuum salesman, Bernard, barely listens to his wife anymore. They live in the same house, but that’s about the extent of things. Gloria talks a lot. Like, a lot a lot. So when she suddenly stops talking to him, the silence comes as a bit of a shock. But, after weeks of suffering…

‘Today is the fourteenth day of November, 1615. I have known Frankie for nearly seven years. She is twenty-five years old and eight months pregnant. I am thirty-nine years old and about to die or be pardoned.’ You’d be forgiven for not knowing about the murder known as The Overbury Scandal. I had certainly never…

Josephine Taylor‘s debut novel is something a little bit different for Fremantle Press. Mixing historical fiction with contemporary, Eye of a Rook takes a look at women’s health throughout recent centuries, shining a light particularly on attitudes to chronic illnesses and women’s pain. Based on the author’s own experiences with vulvodynia, Taylor hopes that this book…

Laura Purcell’s fourth novel with Raven Books once again sees the ‘queen of the sophisticated and spooky page turner’ serve us up a Gothic, historical treat. Whilst none of her subsequent books have been quite so spine-chilling as 2017’s The Silent Companions, this latest offering, The Shape of Darkness is a suitably spooky novel about violence, grief…

  There are few things that will turn a woman to becoming an outlaw faster than the threat of being hanged as a witch. So it is for Ada, the protagonist of Anna North’s latest novel, Outlawed.  Described as a mash up of The Handmaid’s Tale with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Outlawed takes place in “the year of…

There have been a number of big commercial thrillers which explore the dangers that hide inside ordinary homes and behind seemingly innocent faces; but none have been quite so relatable to me as the debut novel by Perth-based writer, Polly Phillips. My Best Friend’s Murder follows aspiring journalist Bec, who finds herself in her thirties,…

Caroline Scott’s fiction debut, 2019’s The Poppy Wife was that rare kind of historical novel, which is at once comfortingly familiar and refreshingly original. She returns to writing about the aftermath of the First World War with When I Come Home Again. The novel follows a returned solider with amnesia who is sent to convalesce in an English…

There’s a lot of subtlety to Barry Lee Thompson‘s short story collection, Broken Rules and Other Stories. It’s clear from the first story that this collection is incredibly literary. Most of the stories have their action take place in a character’s mind and draw tension from a close examination of the social contracts that govern the…

Ceridwen Dovey‘s latest novel is a bit of a departure from her previous offerings. Set at Harvard University, during the week of a fifteen year reunion, Life After Truth follows five friends as they navigate the many parties and events of the week, all the while wondering if they’ve taken the right path in life. The…

Well-known English writer, Rose Tremain‘s latest novel, Islands of Mercy explores the concept of places of safety, and contrasts two very different storylines – tenuously connected – in an attempt to explore what it means to have a meaningful life. Unfortunately, while the settings are richly drawn, both plotlines are ponderous and the book fails to excite….

Gail Jones‘s latest book, Our Shadows, looks at the history of a Kalgoorlie family through three generations. The story is told from several points of view; from those of Frances and Nell, two sisters who were raised by their grandparents in the fictional Midas Street, Kalgoorlie (located in the ‘shadow’ of the super pit) after the…

It’s hard to keep track of just how many books Jackie French has published. This year alone she will have published five books and according to her website, her total publications number around two hundred. French describes herself as an “Australian author, ecologist, historian, dyslexic and honourary wombat.” It’s not hard to see why generations…

Clarissa Goenawan‘s second novel The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida may tread familiar ground for her fans. While Goenawan is an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer, both this and her debut novel Rainbirds are set in Tokyo. Perhaps it is only fitting, then, that Sharlene Teo compares Goenawan’s writing to that of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, calling this novel…