As the winner of the Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025, I was expecting something rare and raw from Johanna Bell’s latest novel. And that was exactly what I found with Department of the Vanishing. Strange and sad, it is a tale of this time of extinction, broken yet beautiful. Our protagonist, Ava, is surrounded by the…
Howard McKenzie-Murray‘s debut novel – shortlisted for the 2024 Hungerford Award novel – has something of a dreamlike quality to it. The kind of dream where you are trying to get somewhere important, but increasingly bizarre obstacles keep getting thrown in your path. This is what happens to Maud Tarkington, the twenty-one year old protagonist…
It is a surprise that I Remember Everything is WA writer and researcher Fiona Wilkes’ debut novel – it is, after all, a tale told with so much skill, passion, and delicacy. Shortlisted for the 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, it is a bittersweet story of love and loss, religion and forgiveness. It is…
Written by Masateru Konishi and translated by Louise Heal Kawai, My Grandfather The Master Detective is a novel which seems to say it all with its title. It’s about a young woman, and her grandfather, and solving mysteries. Simple. But while that title is true, it’s also a little deceptive – this novel is about…
It’s clear that disabled author Olivia Muscat knows just how frustrating and inaccurate some portrayals of disability (and especially blindness) can be. Equally as clear is her passion for telling a more accurate narrative, with all the real-life frustrations and unexpected aspects that can come with it. It’s that own-voices approach that makes her new…
It’s a niche subject, the history of Australian publishing. Even more so when you take regionalism into account, and choose to focus on the history of one of Western Australia’s oldest publishing houses alongside one of its newest. But this is exactly what Linda Martin has done in her debut book as an author, A Tale…
It’s been fourteen years since M.L. Stedman‘s debut novel The Light Between Oceans was published, and went on to become a bestselling sensation. In the intervening years, there’s been very little news about the West Australian born writer, who now lives in London, aside from the novel’s adaptation into a film starring Alicia Vikander and…
“No burnings at the stake. Just lighting more candles, driving away more darkness.” You may have heard that we live in the Age of Information. Naomi Alderman argues that we live an era called the Information Crisis. The internet has flooded us with more information than ever before; and with it, more opinions, ideas, opportunities,…
Penny Tangey is no stranger to the publishing world, with four novels for young readers to her name. She’s also no stranger to the world of libraries. But her latest novel – set in the busy East Melbourne Library – is brand new territory for Tangey, who (one hopes) has never had to solve a…
Liz Byrski’s twelfth novel, Lost and Found, feels like the perfect bookend to her memoir, Remember Me, published in 2000. Described as “true story of love lost and found”, the book charted Liz’s own reunion with a boyfriend whom she had not seen since she was eighteen, some thirty-seven years later, and the way that such…
It’s hard to classify Shaeden Berry’s novels into any one genre. On the one hand, both her latest novel, At Cafe 64 and her debut, Down the Rabbit Hole revolve around a crime. But on the other, Berry’s writing puts its focus so far away from the traditional ‘solving of a case format’ that it…
When Ainslie Harvey read that women make up just 0.5% of written history, first she got mad, and then she decided to try and even the odds a little bit. As the creator behind Hot History Club on TikTok (or Instagram, for those of you who are elder millennials like me), Harvey has now turned her…
It’s hard to believe that Gunpowder Creek is Alex Dook‘s first novel – probably because it’s not. The Perth-based writer has been recognised twice for the Fremantle Press Fogarty Literary Award with a long-listing in 2019 and a shortlisting in 2021, though neither manuscript was picked up at the time. In the fifteen or so years that…
Three of Australia’s greatest literary journalists walk into a court. It almost sounds like a lead-in to a joke except that these three women are award-winners, and no strangers to the true crime genre. They want to make a podcast but settle on writing a book. The result is something that offers insight into what…
Kathleen Jennings‘ debut novel, Flyaway was a quiet achiever of a novel– it wasn’t the title on everyone’s lips, but those who knew it, raved about it. Published in 2020, it was a finalist for the 2021 World Fantasy Awards and the 2020 Crawford Award, as well as one of NPR’s picks of 2020. Kathleen is…
It’s hard reviewing A Fine Line Between Clever & Stupid: The Story of Spinal Tap now. It is devastating to know that its co-author, the acclaimed director Rob Reiner is no longer with us. Vale Rob! If there’s any consolation, it is knowing that now – more than ever – the world needs to be…
Holly Cardamone won the 2024 Hawkeye Press Manuscript Development award for her novel, Summer, In Between. Described as a kind of modern mash-up of Aussie teenage classics, Looking for Alibrandi and Puberty Blues, Summer, In Between follows seventeen-year-old Cat Kelty, an ambitious and slightly spiky Italian-Australian girl who lives in a coastal holiday town. Cat is stressed about the impending…
When Luke Harris accepts a temp job in disability support during his exam period, the biggest problem he anticipates is running out of time to study for his economics exams. But the job – looking after an autistic man named Phil while his brusque father, Jonathan, is at work – draws Luke back into the…
Florence Nightingale is a figure so well-known historically that her name has become a shorthand for describing someone virtuous and self-sacrificing in the care of others. But how much of the real woman, or indeed the period in which she lived do most people really know? In her debut novel, Brisbane-based writer Laura Elvery has…
Hekate, the daughter of Titans, has never known safety. When her parents are on the losing side of war with Zeus, her mother Asteria seeks refuge in the Underworld, where Styx and Hades agree to raise Hekate. Asteria flees, pursued by Zeus and Poseidon, while Hekate’s father, the Titan Perses, is captured, locked away somewhere…
Staggering through the desert, Jesse Bartos stumbles across a train station. Wounded and with only fragmented memories of what brought him to Dawn’s Holt station, he’s taken in by a welcoming, albeit strange, family, who assure him that the train will come. He just has to be patient. Stark Holborn returns with fever dream For…
Holly is a professional ghost-whisperer, convincing unruly and unwanted spirits to go into the light. It’s honest-ish work – those ghosts are making life difficult for the living, after all – but she’d be lying if she said she couldn’t use a big payday. Enter Callum. Successful paranormal investigator and podcast host. Oh, and Holly’s…
Bri Lee‘s latest novel takes us deep into the wilderness of Antarctica, to an area that some might call barren while others call it beautiful. Lee uses this landscape of dualities, in which two scientists undertake the final stages of a seed vault project to protect the biodiversity of the world’s flora, to unravel issues…
Karen Herbert‘s fourth novel is described as a ‘psychological medical thriller’; but, if you’re worried about gory surgical scenes or murderous doctors, then perhaps it might be better to think of The Ghost Walk as a mystery with an unlikely detective at its heart, and focus more on the psychological aspect. The protagonist of The…
There aren’t many of us who can imagine our lives changing in an instant. But many years ago, journalist, Nathan Dunne found that this was his reality. He contracted an illness called depersonalisation, a misunderstood and highly mysterious condition, as this book highlights. When Nothing Feels Real is Dunne’s first book. But, he manages to…
Ever since her mother left, Dusty has always been a little withdrawn. Eschewing crowds and sticking with her younger sister Opi and best friend Mali, her books and the beautiful wilderness that surrounds her mountain home are enough for her. But one morning Dusty wakes with dirt on her feet, and no recollection of how…
Nina and Patrick first meet at the age of 12, whisked away to Belavere City to undergo a traditional rite of passage. Here, children discover their calling: the alchemical magic of the Artisans or the essential yet undervalued work of the Craftsmen. But, as they wait to find their fate, Nina and Patrick uncover a…
More than 100 years on from Picnic at Hanging Rock, Australian novelists are still exploring the terror of being lost in the Australian landscape, with many genres now borrowing from what we know as the Australian Gothic. Bronwyn Rivers‘ debut thriller, The Reunion, is one such novel, a mystery with an air of menace throughout as five…
Marion Taffe‘s debut work of historical fiction, By Her Hand, released earlier this year, is already sporting comparisons to literary heavyweights like Geraldine Brooks and Lauren Groff. Set in 10th Century Mercia, AKA England before it was actually England, the story follows Freda, a young woman whose fascination with learning, stories, and the power of…
The ‘little world’ of the title in Josephine Rowe‘s latest novella refers to the sphere of consciousness of an unusual narrator. Arriving in a wooden box in the back of a horse float, she is a nameless girl, perhaps a saint, perhaps a miracle; but, certainly she is the body of a young girl who…
