Books

Somehow we’re three months into the year and Easter is just around the corner. So it’s time for another look into our most anticipated books of 2021. This time we’ve taken a deep dive into the books set to be published April through to June.  With so many books published each week and month, this…

Shopping mall beauty pageants and wedding anniversaries meet true crime and Victorian taxidermy in Night Rooms, a stunning personal essay collection from Gina Nutt. There’s likely an expectation that, given that she’s writing about it, Nutt’s life is packed with adventure or trauma or something generally monumental. It isn’t. But Night Rooms is no less…

This morning the Stella Prize have announced their 2021 shortlist live on ABC Radio National’s Breakfast program.  The 2021 shortlist spans fiction and non-fiction and showcases the extraordinary talent and ingenuity on display across the Australian literary landscape. The 2021 prize saw the judges receive over 160 entries from Australian women and non-binary writers.  Earlier…

For the second year the Indie Book Awards have been announced online, with The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams announced as Australian independent booksellers’ favourite book of the year. On winning the award, Pip Williams hailed the work of Australia’s independent booksellers as they adapted to working in a pandemic lockdown: “The Dictionary…

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…

US ebook and audiobook subscription service Scribd has officially thrown its hat into the Australian ring – and it’s got Amazon and Audible firmly in its sights. For $13.99 month, Scribd users will get unlimited access to a vast library of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, podcasts, and sheet music. And to sweeten the deal, the Scribd…

In the tiny tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, brother and sister Rafa and Rufina are slowly unravelling in the aftermath of their mother’s death. But, although Rosalinda has passed away, she is yet to pass on, making her presence known by banging pots and pans and kicking the walls. Rufina sees and hears…

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…

After having to cancel last year’s festival due to COVID, Sydney Writers Festival is coming back stronger and bolder in 2021.  According to Artistic Director Michael Williams, who joined the Festival last year, the theme for the 2021 Festival is “Within Reach”, and will highlight the writers who are shaping Australian literature right now.  “It…

Cornwall, December 1972. Three lighthouse keepers vanish from a remote offshore lighthouse. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. And, the Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm that never happened. This is the set-up for Emma Stonex’s The Lamplighters. The Lamplighters is inspired by real events, despite its…

Early this morning the longlist for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced. This year’s sixteen strong longlist honours and celebrates a selection of both new and well-established writers. The list also draws from across a range of genres, and the sixteen novels explore a variety of themes, from family and motherhood, to themes…

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…

Poetry and prose, critique and compassion all come together in Dropbear, the debut collection from award-winning writer, poet and editor Evelyn Araluen. It’s a remarkable collection; smart, thoughtful and articulate. To put it frankly, it comes as a surprise that this is Araluen’s debut book. Dropbear explores the imagery and mythology surrounding popular ideas of…

Now in its eighth year, The Stella Prize is the latest award to announce its 2021 longlist. Named for celebrated author Miles Franklin, prize’s goal is to address gender imbalances in Australian literary awards, and to celebrate the work of the country’s finest female and non-binary writers. Over 160 entries were whittled down to just…

Kira Navárez is a xenobiologist working as part of a team of scientists who survey planets before they are colonised. All her life she’s dreamed of first contact with an alien race but when, on a routine survey mission, Kira makes the discovery of a lifetime, things don’t turn out at all the way she…

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…

Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike and their younger brothers Peter and Andrew live a comfortable life in 1990s Lagos. But when their mother loses her job and abandons them, and their father gambles away their home and disappears shortly after, it is the twins who slowly take control of the newly orphaned family’s destiny. Switching…

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…

Well, it’s that time of the year again, book fans! The Australian Book Industry Awards have just revealed the contenders for the 2021 prizes! Here’s all the nominees – get ready to grow your bookish wishlist! Biography Book of the Year A Bigger Picture – Malcolm Turnbull (Hardie Grant Publishing, Hardie Grant Books) A Repurposed…

‘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…

Covering a century of Australian literature, author and editor Craig Munro has assembled a somewhat motley crew of characters, to celebrate a handful of key figures from the world of publishing and editing. From A.G. Stephens, the “three initialled terror” of the critic world, to Munro’s former colleague, the late Roseanne Fitzgibbon, Literary Lion Tamers…

These crazy Covid times have most likely left people feeling as though they were living the wrong life. For those of you questioning and soul-searching, never fear as life coach, Kate James is here to help. She is an author who has worked in the realms of positive psychology and meditation practices for some time….

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…

The Moroccan Daughter, the new novel from bestselling author Deborah Rodriguez, will take you on a journey through the streets of Morocco. Introducing you to the sights, smells and tastes of the culture, and the traditions and dynamics of family and country. Amina Bennis returns to Morocco and her childhood home for her sister’s wedding….

Rock and roll ain’t easy on the artists. It’s no picnic for the roadies either, as Tana Douglas’s memoir, Loud proves. Douglas was the world’s first female roadie. Her first book gives us a fly on the wall account of her life and career in music. She and her fellow crew members worked hard, played…

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…

Love Is An Ex-Country is the compelling new memoir from Arab American writer and academic Randa Jarrar. The book (much like its author) is provocative, powerful and utterly unabashed. Presented as a travel memoir, Love is an Ex-Country begins with Jarrar heading on a cross-country road trip, emulating a similar trip taken by celebrated Egyptian…

The Tasmanian landscape and a whole host of engaging, charming and well drawn characters populate the stories that make up Born Into This, the debut short story collection from Adam Thompson; an emerging Aboriginal (pakana) author from Tasmania.  The collection comprises sixteen stories, often brief, but always impactful. In spite of this brevity, Thompson is…

Over half a million sad ghosts follow artist Lize Meddings‘ Sad Ghost Club on Instagram. With a focus on positive mental health and making sure even the saddest of ghosts never feels alone, Meddings’ art has transitioned from screen to page, in the first volume of The Sad Ghost Club. Aimed at younger readers, the…