Award-winning Australian author Stephanie Bishop published her fourth novel The Anniversary in late March, though you may be forgiven for having missed it given the proliferation of big names with novels due out around the same time. (Pip Williams, anyone?) Centring on the relationship between a novelist J B Blackwood and her filmmaker husband, Patrick (who […]
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2022 has been a great year for settling in with a good book and escaping the world outside. We’ve reached that part of the year where we all start agonising over our ‘lists’ –best albums, best films, and of course best books. We in the Books team have looked back over the year’s releases and […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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If you thought it was too soon for a pandemic novel, you might just be put off by the premise of Toni Jordan’s newest book, Dinner with the Schnabels…don’t be! Known for her versatility across both the contemporary and historical genres, the Melbourne-based novelist has just published her first novel with Hachette. Schnabels follows down-on-his-luck former-architect Simon […]
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Somehow it’s April already, with Easter coming up just next week. And in our opinion nothing pairs better with a chocolate egg and a long weekend like a good book. To help you decide what to read next, we at the AU Books Team are here to pick out some choice cuts from the many […]
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Norwegian author Lars Mytting and his English translator Deborah Dawkin transport readers back to the modest village of Butangen in The Reindeer Hunters, the second book in Mytting’s Sister Bells Trilogy. If you haven’t read the first book in the trilogy, The Bell in the Lake, I heartily recommend you do so before starting on […]
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Inspired by real acts of resistance in France during the Second World War, Sarah Steele’s latest novel The School Teacher of Saint-Michel is sure to keep you turning pages long past lights out thanks to its twin timelines of two women on a mission, eighty years apart. Hannah Stone is a teacher on the verge […]
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Kerri Maher’s latest novel, The Paris Bookseller, is bound to appeal to fans of bestselling author, Natasha Lester. Not only does it take as its setting Paris during the 1920s, but it features at its core the little known history behind the setting up of the iconic Shakespeare and Co bookshop. Readers may be interested to […]
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“Two women set sail for a new life in Australia, bound by a secret that will change everything.” In Julie Brooks‘ debut work of historical fiction, The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay, amateur historian Molly is gifted an historical mystery by her late grandmother, Queenie. Amongst Queenie’s possessions, Molly finds a photograph of two young women […]
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The last two years have been tumultuous ones and have left people reeling. You can either dwell on the hopelessness of it all, or try and seek out the light. Poet and writer, Maxine Beneba Clarke does both of these things, but mostly the latter, in her fourth poetry collection, How Decent Folk Behave. This […]
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2021. We had high hopes. But it’s been another year of uncertainty and upheaval – albeit perhaps not as bad as last year. It has been another strong year for books and publishing, with some big names returning with new books: Colson Whitehead, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Sally Rooney to name just three. It’s also […]
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The story of how Sara Sheridan’s latest book The Fair Botanists came to be is a fascinating one. Or one to envy if you are trying to get a book published yourself. In an author’s note at the back of the novel, Sara tells of how she was eating at a restaurant when she got a text […]
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Bestselling historical fiction author Natasha Lester is back with her sixth foray into the genre and it’s safe to say that her star is continuing to rise. Once again returning to World War Two-era France, Lester’s latest novel is The Riviera House, a multiple timeline romance and adventure story of art, espionage and war. This new offering […]
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In Small Joys of Real Life, the debut novel by Allee Richards, main character Eva is coming to terms with some big changes in her life. Though she’s moderately successful in her acting career, she’s never felt as passionate about it as she feels perhaps she should. When she confides this information to Pat, a friend of […]
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It feels strange to be writing a review of a novel in which the catalyst is a negative book review. In Palace of the Drowned, Christine Mangan (Tangerine) returns to the literary thriller genre with a story of writers block and obsession. It follows Frankie Croy, a career author whose first book was one of those […]
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Imagine reading Picnic at Hanging Rock at the same time as The Handmaid’s Tale, and you’ll get somewhere close to understanding the experience of Phoebe Wynne‘s debut novel, Madam. This is the story of Rose, a twenty-six year old classics teacher who is plucked from obscurity (or, from teaching at public schools) and made the head of the […]
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Since the release of Daisy Jones and the Six back in 2019, narratives about fictional bands, singers and songwriters have undergone something of a renaissance. Dawnie Walton’s debut The Final Revival of Opal & Nev builds on the oral history format of Daisy Jones, and takes the next step. Walton succeeds in telling a story […]
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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 […]
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There are few things that will turn a woman to becoming an outlaw faster than the threat of being hanged as a witch. So it is for Ada, the protagonist of Anna North’s latest novel, Outlawed. Described as a mash up of The Handmaid’s Tale with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Outlawed takes place in “the year of […]
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By now it goes without saying that 2020 has been a rough year. From wildfires to a global pandemic there has disruption and upheaval on a scale rarely, if ever, seen in “peacetime”. Pretty much every sector of society has taken a hit this year. And the publishing world, as with much of the Arts […]
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To the End of the World: Travels with Oscar Wilde is the latest memoir from actor, author, and now director Rupert Everett. In the book Everett, recounts the story of how he set out to make the film of Oscar Wilde’s last days, 2018’s The Happy Prince. The book, then, is part memoir, part travelogue, […]
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Fetch Phillips, the noirish rouge for hire from Weatherly, is back. It’s been less than year since his last case. And, it’s aftermath is still rippling through Sunder City. People have got the idea that the magic might be coming back. They’ve also got into their heads that Fetch is working to figure it all […]
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The Billymil family have lived in the small town of Darnmoor for three generations, and expectant parents Celie and Tom are preparing to welcome the newest addition. But tensions between Darnmoor’s Indigenous and settler families are rising. And the divide between the white run town and the Campgrounds, where the Billymils call home, is growing. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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David Cullen, author of the definitive bestseller Columbine, returns with a second book, this time detailing the story of the events surrounding the Parkland, Florida school shooting in February 2018, the extraordinary teenage survivors and the March For Our Lives (MFOL) campaign that followed. In Parkland, Cullen takes the readers inside the school in the […]
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We’ve come to that point of the year where things begin to wind down for the year, and where those of us in the business of reviewing and writing about art, music, books and films stop and begin to agonise over our “Top 10” or “Best of” lists. 2018 has been another great year in […]
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