Books

With Covid-19 causing mass disruption to everyday lives, including the cancellation of the Leading Edge Books Conference, the winners of 2020 Indie Book Awards have been announced online. This is the first time the Indie book Awards have been announced online.  The big winner for 2020 was Favel Parrett, who takes home The Indie Awards…

Hester Why has her share of secrets. Travelling under a false name, on the run from something that – for the time being – remains a mystery, she’s on her way to Morvoren House, an isolated manor on the Cornish coast. Tasked with nursing Morvoren’s aging owner, Miss Louise Pinecroft, Hester joins a household in…

A key fixture of Australia’s literary scene, the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) celebrates the very best in homegrown literature and publishing. This year, as we collectively navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, the ABIAs team have made the decision to forego their usual awards ceremony. Instead, they’ll be livestreaming the event, turning it from a 500 guest…

Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher. He makes his living travelling from town to town, hunting down the monsters that stalk the land. After a particularly nasty encounter with a striga, he recovers in a secluded temple. While there, he reflects on past assignments and an uncertain future. First published in the early 90s and…

The bestselling and much beloved author and LGBT activist, Armistead Maupin is returning to Australia in July. Tales Of The City with Armistead Maupin will see the author recount his favourite stories from the past five decades, and offer his observations on contemporary society.  Armistead Maupin has been a part of US popular culture since…

The longlist for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced at midnight GMT on March 3rd, with many avid UK booklovers staying up in anticipation of the announcement. Now in its 25th year, the prize was previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction and until recently was the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction. It…

The line between short stories and poetry is thin in Mandy Beaumont’s debut collection, Wild Fearless Chests, which was published earlier in the year by Hachette, off the back of a shortlisting in both the Richell Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award run by UWA Publishing. The collection readers were promised was a catalogue of…

Fetch Phillips’ world is just like ours. Well except for the magic, and all that comes with that: chimera, wizards, elves, vampires and more. But, the magic has gone out, leaving the world irrevocably changed. And, our erstwhile “hero” Fetch might have more to do with it than we imagine. The Last Smile in Sunder…

According to the end matter in her debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, author Lara Prescott was named for the heroine of Boris Pasternak‘s Nobel Prize winning novel, Doctor Zhivago. It was not until the CIA declassified 99 documents pertaining to the real story behind the publication of the Russian classic, however, that her interest…

Gwyn is in a bad way. Imprisoned in the dungeons of the Clockwork City, visits from interrogators and torturers are becoming routine. But, then a wizard walks in with something she’d thought long lost. A memento from a life left behind. And suddenly the words start coming. Ascepis and his caravan. Lucian, the shapeshifter. Her…

Iris, Babs, and the boy without a name. One from the earth, one made of fire, and one who isn’t quite sure what he’s made of just yet. For this trio, navigating school and family life should have been enough. But there’s trouble brewing. Iris, who counts the faeries and dryads amongst their friends, is…

Ada is dying. Watched over by her new nurse, Jay, Ada is preparing for the end. Ada has lived all over the world. Sydney, Bali, San Francisco. And the Old World she doesn’t remember, save for the boat journey as a child when she first met Leyla. But, Jay has no interest in Leyla, because…

Akin is Emma Donoghue’s tenth novel for adults, but only her second set in the modern day. Known by most readers for her 2010 novel, Room, Donoghue has published countless novels which examine little known pockets of history, such as 2014’s Frog Music and 2016’s The Wonder. At first glance, Akin is something entirely different to Donoghue’s back catalogue, including…

There’s just a few weeks to go until the release of The Ninth Sorceress, the debut novel from author Bonnie Wynne. We were lucky enough to grab five minutes with her in the (very busy) run up to release day! First of all, can you tell us what The Ninth Sorceress is all about? (No…

Sisonke Msimang, the new curator for Perth Festival’s Literature and Ideas festival, delivered her full program for the late February event on Thursday night to an enthusiastic crowd at the Octagon Theatre. Her program, designed around the concepts of ‘Land, Money, Power, and Sex’ has been curated with a goal of inviting a new intake…

It is not often that we see science threaded into popular fiction plots. Even less common is to have this domain accompanied with an exploration of art. But that’s what we find in Dr. Amanda Niehaus’ debut novel, The Breeding Season, and it’s like a breath of fresh air. Niehaus is a scientist by trade. She leans…

The latest book from Gary Janetti, Do You Mind If I Cancel? might be a small one, but it contains some big laughs. This collection of essays recalls Janetti’s time as a twenty-something year old living in New York City. It is a book that will appeal to fans of David Sedaris and his colourful and…

Lynne Truss is an author with many feathers to her (detective’s) cap. She is the renowned grammarian who wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves as well as a journalist by trade. Her latest release is The Man That Got Away, her second crime novel. It’s another offbeat book starring some bumbling Bobbies, Brighton Belles and British bandits….

For a book that attempts to celebrate the magical power of the medium, The Girl Who Reads on the Metro is certainly underwhelming. Although written by a prolific French author, the results appear lost in translation. What could have been an exciting and energetic meditation on the restorative power of these delightful things, is instead,…

Stoned, is a collection of images that have never been seen before by the general public. Consisting of over five hundred photographs, notes, artwork, newspaper clippings and other ephemera put together by Jo Wood documenting life behind the scenes of The Rolling Stones. Photographer and hoarder (thankfully) Jo Wood has kept thousands of polaroids and…

Helen Garner is a Virginia Woolf fan. This is especially apparent in her latest release, Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume 1 1978-1987. Woolf once said, “Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with a sharpness of steel.” This quote amply…

2019 you’re done. It might not have all gone to plan, and you might’ve been a bit of a trash fire politically, but there’s no denying you’ve produced the goods books wise. It’s been another big year in publishing, with thousands of books being published, read and enjoyed. We’ve also had quite a few literary heavyweights…

Kathy O’Shaughnessy‘s In Love with George Eliot is subtitled ‘A Novel’. Thank goodness for that, because if not, booksellers and librarians probably would not know where to shelve it. While readable and intensely interesting, the book reads more like a bibliomemoir, more akin to previous George Eliot studies like The Road to Middlemarch and last year’s…

Elton John and photographer Terry O’Neill first collaborated in 1972. Since then, O’Neill has taken around five thousand photographs of the star across the decades that followed. Recently, when going through his collection, O’Neill recognised the special nature of these photographs and wanted to share them with Elton’s legion of fans. Elton John: The Definitive…

Mary Costello’s first novel, Academy Street, was shortlisted for a number of awards, and won the Irish Book of the Year Award in 2014. It also shares a lot thematically with her latest work. However, in her second novel, The River Capture, Costello has used a very different narrative style, and although providing some real…

Eberron is one of Dungeons & Dragons greatest settings. A world still sifting through the wreckage of a recent global war, a place where sorcery and ambition have created technological marvels. The second major campaign setting for D&D 5th Edition is a palate cleanser, a very different flavour to the game’s traditional home in the…

It’s only been a week since Aussie satire newspaper The Betoota Advocate launched their second book, How Good’s Australia, and the team are already about to restock their copies – which can be bought through the website, as editor Clancy Overell has been quick to remind me. More than just a stocking filler for the Christmas – or, as Overall…

In her new collection of essays, through the lens of reflecting on her reading and writing, Debra Adelaide reveals much of her own story. An avid reader from a young age, Adelaide recounts her early encounters with Tolkien at the local library, laments her own inability to reduce the number of books in her home (no matter…

See Pictures and Apogee Pictures have teamed up to produce a television adaptation of Emily Bitto‘s The Strays, with Picnic At Hanging Rock screenwriter Beatrix Christian attached as head writer. Author Bitto said: “I’m absolutely delighted to have The Strays adapted for television and couldn’t be more excited about the brilliant group of creatives who will be working…

An expert free-diver disappears while training with her son. An unlikely Blanche DuBois makes her theatrical debut. A group of teens head to a music festival. And two young women run away together. These are just some of the tales that make up Well-Behaved Women, the debut short story collection from Perth writer Emily Paull….