TIM AYLIFFE Dark Desert Road. Reviewed by Viv Ronnebeck
Tim Ayliffe’s new thriller Dark Desert Road delivers claustrophic tension as twin sisters navigate extremists in the outback. The prologue to Tim Ayliffe’s Dark Desert Road begins with a woman trapped in a stranger’s suitcase, but the even more arresting detail...
CAMERON SULLIVAN The Red Winter. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Australian Cameron Sullivan’s debut fantasy features a demon, a monster, dark humour and a reimagining of French history. While romantasy is having a moment, another corner of the fantasy world – ‘grimdark’ – is also in good shape. Grimdark is a subgenre of fantasy...
MICHAEL BURGE Dirt Trap. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Twenty years have passed since the brutal death of James Brandt’s beloved cousin. Will an inquiry into gay hate-crimes offer any resolution? In 2021 journalist Michael Burge released his first novel Tank Water, a coming-of-age thriller that tackled the issue of...
DENNIS ALTMAN Righting My World: Essays from the past half-century. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Dennis Altman’s splendid essays span the gay liberation movement, sexual politics, AIDS activism, and glimpses of his personal life. Dennis Altman was born in 1943 and has been a leading gay intellectual and activist for more than half a century. With degrees from the...
JUDITH NANGALA CRISPIN The Dingo’s Noctuary. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Judith Nangala Crispin fuses poetry, prose and striking works of art in this illustrated account of her journeys across Australian deserts. But still, at night, I imagine the caravans of the Mongrels pausing under the Pleiades’ heliacal rise – on the eve of winter,...
2026 Summer Surprise Giveaway
Surprise! Here’s a very special giveaway of four recent novels. Take your mind off the heat and humidity and enter the draw to win them all. To win all four of these titles, simply email editors@newtownreviewofbooks.com.au with ‘Summer′ in the subject line and...
WRIGHT THOMPSON The Barn: The murder of Emmett Till and the cradle of American racism. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Wright Thompson’s account of the 1950s murder of a Black teenager in Mississippi is also a reckoning with the history of his own family. Wright Thompson was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1976, about 35 kilometres from the barn in Drew where Emmett...
JOSHUA BLACKBURN The Language-Lover’s Lexipedia. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Joshua Blackburn has compiled a treasure-trove of the humorous, the obscure, the trivial and the surprising in this survey of our language. The Language-Lovers Lexipedia: An A to Z of Linguistic Curiosities began as a quiz game invented by Joshua Blackburn to relieve...
MARIAN WILKINSON Woodside vs The Planet: How a company captured a country. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Australian governments are addicted to fossil-fuel exports that harm the climate and return little to the country. How did this happen? In this Quarterly Essay Marian Wilkinson examines Australia’s contribution to global warming and greenhouse pollution, in particular...
CHRISTOPH BAUMER and THERESE WEBER Rock Art and its Legacy in Myth and Art. Reviewed by Ann Skea
This account of ancient rock art in Eurasia, Arabia and the Sahara attempts to discover the beliefs of the people who created it. This is a big, beautiful and fascinating book. It is a weighty tome, not just because there are large colour images on most of its glossy...
ESTHER ANATOLITIS When Australia Became A Republic. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Esther Anatolitis reveals just how closely Australia’s constitution ties us to the whims of the English monarch, and makes the case for change. It is a safe bet that, other than constitutional lawyers and the odd eccentric, most Australians have not, and probably...
Recent Posts
ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN Learned Behaviours. Reviewed by Sally Nimon5 March 2026The new novel from the award-winning author of The Scope of Permissibility [ … ]
TIM AYLIFFE Dark Desert Road. Reviewed by Viv Ronnebeck3 March 2026Tim Ayliffe’s new thriller Dark Desert Road delivers claustrophic tension [ … ]
CAMERON SULLIVAN The Red Winter. Reviewed by Robert Goodman26 February 2026Australian Cameron Sullivan’s debut fantasy features a demon, a monster, dark [ … ]
MICHAEL BURGE Dirt Trap. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm24 February 2026Twenty years have passed since the brutal death of James Brandt’s beloved [ … ]