In Victoria Lee’s A Lesson in Vengeance, eighteen-year-old Felicity Morrow has returned to Godwin House; the oldest and most haunted of the student houses at Dalloway school, a girl’s academy set high in the Catskill mountains in the U.S. She has returned after a year away, a year in which she was recovering from the…
The Cairndale Institute isn’t like other schools. Taking in children with specific skills, known as Talents, it’s not only a chance to grow and learn; but also a refuge from a world not ready for their powers. Charlie Ovid can heal himself from just about any injury. Komako can manipulate dust to do extraordinary things….
Holly Black breaks away from YA and into adult fiction in her latest novel Book of Night, a gritty urban fantasy about a woman who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. After a life of petty crime nearly gets her killed, Charlie Hall decides it’s time to go straight. But when she stumbles…
Runaways is the true story of two powerful modern day woman who escape the confines of culture and history. In this memoir, co-authors Shelley Davidow (from South Africa) and Shaimaa Khalil (from North Africa) delve into their pasts and recall how their friendship has shaped them as individuals. Over two decades their loving friendship has…
Gina Rushton’s debut book, The Most Important Job In The World, explores a simple question where the answers are anything but. The award-winning journalist goes on a deep dive to ask whether we should be parents. The result is something that will resonate with both parents and non-parents alike. Writers are often told to write 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…
Holden Sheppard‘s sophomore novel The Brink is a tension-filled, hormone-fuelled, no-holds-barred deep dive into a group of teenagers experiencing their first week of freedom from parents, teachers, and society. It’s told from the alternating perspectives of three of the group – Leonardo, Kaiya, and Mason – a car-load of WA school leavers who end up…
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…
Stone Town is an Australian rural crime novel set in rural South Australia. It’s the second Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti crime novel from Margaret Hickey. Ariti has moved back to his home town near the historic gold rush-era Stone Town and is working as the local police officer. Three teenagers have just discovered the body…
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…
For many of us, home is where the heart is. A safe environment and the epitome of ‘homely.’ But, for Janine Mikosza it was more complicated than that. In her memoir, Homesickness, she explores the many childhood homes she lived in before turning eighteen. Mikosza has previously published essays and short stories. She brings some…
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,…
A.G. Slatter‘s The Path of Thorns begins with the arrival of our heroine, Asher Todd, at the large wooded Morwood estate where she is to be governess of the three Morwood children at the estate’s manor. From her arrival it is clear that things at Morwood are not as they seem. But, Asher holds many…
The sorceress Ailbhe Ahriddin is continuing her onslaught. As plague ravages the land, she has thrown open the gates of Death, setting her demons loose to claim the corpses left behind. For Gwyn and her comrades, still reeling from the events of Jhabahabi, it’s yet another huge setback. But all is not lost. Deep in the…
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…
Issue 85 of the Quarterly Essay is a timely one. The Trauma Cleaner’s Sarah Krasnostein offers a well-researched and insightful look into Australia’s mental health care systems, and its intersection with other institutions. The essay draws upon extensive research and first-hand case studies with vulnerable individuals who fell through the system’s cracks when they should…
The Language of Food is a book with a tasty premise. It is based on the true events involving cook book author Eliza Acton, a woman who inspires chefs to this day. With its strong female characters working hard in a male dominated world, it is one that will appeal to fans of Natasha Lester’s…
For twelve years, Aina and Whitney have lived in exile. Imprisoned on an isolated island, their lives are measured by the clock in the kitchen that dispenses the pills that keep them alive. Hobbies keep them busy while they await their release. Whitney tinkers, sculpts, maps the island. Aina does jigsaws, gardens, writes music. But,…
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…
Kate Murray’s debut novel We Who Hunt the Hollow is a wholesome, angsty YA dystopian urban fantasy about who we are and who we want to be. Perfectly drawing on the awkwardness and fear of the late teenage years, Murray uses the anxiety and anticipation of becoming an adult to address issues of identity, family,…
As a psychology graduate and serial online dater the premise of Speaking in Thumbs was appealing. A psychiatrist – herself a fellow dater – dons the best friend cap to decipher text messages and uncover what is REALLY being said. It’s a great idea, but I found it difficult to relate to this, as some…
The new novel from award-winning author Emily St. John Mandel traverses time and space to tell a multifaceted story of love, endurance, human nature and reality. Sea of Tranquility is set within the same universe as her previous novels Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel offering fans of her earlier works plenty of ‘a-ha’ moments….
Diane Connell’s The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird is about twelve-year-old Ricky Bird, whose life is slowly but surely falling apart during the summer that she becomes a teenager. Her parents have separated and her mother is moving Ricky and her six-year-old brother Ollie from Brixton to Camden to be closer to their mum’s boyfriend,…
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…
