OWEN CLAYTON and IAIN MCINTYRE (eds) The Popular Wobbly: Selected writings of T-Bone Slim. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
T-Bone Slim’s critiques of early twentieth-century America resonate with contemporary US attacks on healthcare, unions, and immigrants. Born Matti Valentin Huhta in 1880 to Finnish immigrant parents in Ashtabula, Ohio, T-Bone Slim was a man who lived on the margins –...
MATTHEW HOOTON Everything Lost, Everything Found. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Longlisted for the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize, Matthew Hooton’s novel traces memories of Henry Ford’s experimental settlement in Brazil. I know my grandson, Nicholas, thinks of my personal history as an exaggeration or tall tale. And why shouldn’t he? He cannot...
IAN McEWAN What We Can Know. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
How will the future judge us? Ian McEwan’s new novel looks back at our world from the perspective of 2119. In a year that has already delivered some fascinating climate fiction, one of England’s best, Ian McEwan, enters the fray. What We Can Know is a book about a...
KA LINDE The Robin on the Oak Throne. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
KA Linde continues her Oak and Holly fantasy series with plenty of intrigue, engaging characters – and a content warning. As another orphan in the aftermath of the war between monsters and humans, Kierse has never had time to worry about being unable to remember her...
TRACEY LEE HOLMES The Eye of the Dragonfly. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
In this memoir of her life as a sports journalist, Tracey Holmes views the human condition through the lens of sport. Tracey Lee Holmes has had a long and distinguished career as a sports broadcaster. She began her career with the ABC in the late 1980s, and has...
RF KUANG Katabasis. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The bestselling author of Yellowface returns to dark fantasy with her new novel set amid university life – and Hell. RF Kuang burst into the global literary scene with her satirical work Yellowface. But for some she was already there, following a debut trilogy of...
CHLOE DALTON Raising Hare. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Chloe Dalton’s memoir of raising an orphaned hare in the English countryside is both beautiful and unsentimental. Chloe Dalton never expected to raise a hare. In her professional life as a foreign policy specialist and political advisor, she spent her time in offices,...
SEAN SCALMER A Fair Day’s Work: The quest to win back time. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
How many hours comprise ‘a fair day’s work’? Sean Scalmer charts the history of Australian campaigns for shorter hours. Sean Scalmer has provided us with a history of working hours in Australia. Like other conditions of employment, what is worked in a given day or...
MICHAEL ADAMS They’ll Never Hold Me. Reviewed by Tom Kelly
A charismatic criminal, corrupt cops, and the brutality of Grafton Gaol – the story of Kevin John Simmonds is more than compelling true crime. In 1959 most people in Australia would have known the names ‘Simmonds and Newcombe’. They were the two prisoners who...
LAURA ELVERY Nightingale. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Award-winning short story writer Laura Elvery’s first novel delivers a vivid portrait of Florence Nightingale and the horrors of war. Bodies fall apart. Things come to an end. Everyone wants to make me comfortable, I know that. How many times have I murmured...
RHETT DAVIS Arborescence. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The new novel from the award-winning author of Hovering asks big questions about the environment, AI, and what it means to be human. Rhett Davis burst onto the Australian literary scene in 2020 with the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book...
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