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 […]
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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 […]
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Happy New Year! 2023 is already in full swing and we in the AU Books Team are back and ready to look ahead at some of this year’s most anticipated books. With so many books published each week, month and year, it’d be impossible to read them all. So this is only the briefest snapshot […]
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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 […]
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If it’s seemed this year like Ultimo Press are the ones to watch, then this latest novel by Eliza Henry-Jones is no exception. Pick it up for its gorgeous, moody cover, but stay for the complex and well thought-out plot and its cast of intriguing characters who almost seem to walk off the page. Salt […]
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My Heart is a Little Wild Thing is the sophomore novel from Australian writer, Nigel Featherstone. It is the story of Patrick, the beleaguered youngest son of a family from country New South Wales who has suppressed his own needs and desires for most of his life. Now the only member of his family in […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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It is easy to imagine Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, the new novel by Shankari Chandran becoming an amazing television miniseries. On first glance at its beautiful green cover, the reader might be forgiven for thinking that they are in for a sweet, gentle, heartwarming novel about relatively harmless retirees living in a nursing home. Instead, […]
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It was a blissful relief to be reading Robyn Mundy‘s latest novel, Cold Coast, over a humid Perth week. The novel is set on Svalbard in 1932, and follows a year in the life of Wanny Wolstadt (pronounced Vanny Voldstadt), who was Norway’s first female trapper. Wolstadt, a young widow, is already unconventional for a woman of […]
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Diana Reid was well on her way to a career in theatre, when COVID-19 saw the cancellation of 1984! The Musical, a production she co-wrote and produced. In lockdown, she decided to turn her hand to writing a book. The result is Love & Virtue, a masterpiece of ‘millennial fiction’ which is already garnering comparisons to Sally […]
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