When Maxine ‘Max’ Mayberry’s life falls apart around her, she doesn’t just get mad… she gets hungry. When Max discovers her long-term boyfriend Scott in bed with a glamorous ad executive from her work, her life begins to fall apart. Not to mention that she’s recently discovered that she has a brain tumour and needs…
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…
Thea Zoltaire wants to be a Warsword, a legendary warrior of Thezmarr. There’s just two problems. One, thanks to a prophecy, women are forbidden to wield blades. And two, Thea only has a few years left to live. Her time is running out. After years of training in secret, she finally has an opportunity to…
Dark Mode is author Ashley Kalagian Blunt‘s first crime novel, and it’s utterly terrifying. When twenty-six-year-old Reagan Carsen stumbles across a dismembered body in an alley in Sydney on a scorching hot day in 2017, her instinct is not to call the police, but to run and hide. The victim looks just like her, and…
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…
Only the wealthiest and most influential families can boast of having their own Grief Nurse. Shunned, feared, and revered in equal measure, Grief Nurses ensure their families are free of negative emotions, freeing them from sadness, anxiety, and heartache. Lynx is the Asters’ Grief Nurse, removing their Sorrow and replacing it with Bright. Taken as…
On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks, a famous but fading horror writer, receives a desk from his partner. It’s hoped that the piece will get his creative juices flowing again, and rekindle his passion for his work. And it seems to be working. His agent is more excited than Tyson has seen him in years,…
A book about staring down the barrel of a stage four cancer diagnosis could have made for grim reading. But beloved actor, Richard E. Grant brings his likeable nature and positive personality to the unsurprisingly-named, A Pocketful of Happiness. This memoir is a love letter to his darling wife, Joan Washington, and a reminder of…
The recent memoir from Paul Newman really ought to have been titled ‘self-critical man’, with the late actor casting a critical and analytical eye over his career and life. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is the result of a project started decades ago by Newman and his friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern. The pair got…
Comedian Tom Ballard is known for the biting social commentary in his jokes. The podcaster, former Triple J presenter and TV host has never been backward in coming forward with his political views. His new book, I, Millennial is cut from much the same cloth, as he grapples with various important issues and considers the…
When it comes to true crime Emily Webb is something of an expert. The Melbourne-based journalist is the host of the Australian True Crime podcast along with co-host and fellow author, Meshel Laurie. Webb has also published three books on the subject matter; her latest, Suburban True Crime draws together some of the same cases…
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…
If anyone knows how to argue with finesse it is Bo Seo. The journalist and author is a two-time winner of the Debating World Championships and a former debate coach. In his debut book, Good Arguments, he distills many of the lessons he learnt over the years so that we may know how to debate with…
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…
Dr Lachlan McIver has had an extraordinary career. An Associate Professor, he has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organisation, specialising in tropical diseases and rural medicine. Life & Death Decisions takes readers into high-stakes environments: natural disasters and civil war zones where the term ‘life and death decisions’ really counts. This…
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…
Debra Dank’s We Come With This Place is an outstanding and remarkable book. It’s an unforgettable read, packed with rich detail regarding Dank’s own family history; but also the broader story of Country and people. It is a vivid and profound story that is told with great honesty and depth. I have never before felt…
Steven Rowley’s The Guncle is a great read – funny, and with loads of quirky moments. Hollywood star, Patrick or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP) escapes from the rat race from Hollywood, instead hiding away in Palm Springs to help get over a big loss in his love life. Patrick doesn’t have much time to wallow…
In her latest book, author Joan Beaumont brings us fresh insight into a major part of Australian history. Australia’s Great Depression offers a comprehensive history of a fledgling nation, shattered by the Great War, and how it survived the worst economic crisis of its history. In telling this story Beaumont uncovers the sources of resilience…
We all have it. But how much do we know about it? Writer and publisher, Phillipa McGuinness offers us a comprehensive text about skin in her latest book. Across twelve chapters, she covers many different topics in what can feel like a tad dense read at times. This is a well-researched book and McGuinness is…
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…
It was twenty years ago that many of us first saw author Nigel Marsh at play. Back then Marsh was the self-proclaimed “Fat, Forty & Fired” corporate type whose career had derailed. Many people could relate, so he followed up his debut with Fit, 50 & Fired Up. Another decade on, and he comes to…
– 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 his memoir What Goes Unsaid, critically acclaimed Mexican author Emiliano Monge has turned his attention to his own family tree and decided that it’s time to write about his grandfather’s deceit, and the affect it had on his family. In March 1958, Carlos Monge McKay drives to a quarry and fakes his own death. Four…
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…
Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes is the long awaited biography of the heralded fantasy author Terry Pratchett, written by his PA and close friend of several decades, Rob Wilkins. It is a captivating and in-depth account of Pratchett’s early life, family, (often reluctant) schooling, career before books, career during books, and many achievements over…
