HEATHER ROSE A Great Act of Love. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The bestselling author of The Museum of Modern Love turns to historical fiction in her new novel set in convict-era Van Dieman’s Land. Do not be fooled by the cover of this book. In spite of the pretty young woman gazing at you through a tangle of ribbons and the...
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...
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...
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 Rhett Davis burst onto the Australian literary scene in 2020 with the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book...
JENNIFER TREVELYAN A Beautiful Family. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Jennifer Trevelyan’s debut novel is both a coming of age story and a mystery full of secrets set within a 1980s New Zealand beach holiday. All sorts of things might have happened to the girl’s body after it had drowned, Kahu said. It might have been carried out to...
JESSICA DETTMANN Your Friend and Mine. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
The new novel from the author of Without Further Ado and How to be Second Best is a story of friendship and second chances. Margot, you’re my best friend. I will take care of you. You are going to live to be a very old lady in a horrible nursing home where your...
TAN TWAN ENG The House of Doors. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, Tan Twan Eng’s novel reimagines the events in Penang that inspired a famous Somerset Maugham story. Those familiar with Tan Twan Eng’s writing, and that of Somerset Maugham, will know they are in for pleasant reading when in...
BEN PEEK The Red Labyrinth. Reviewed by Lucy Sussex
Slim but richly imaginative, Ben Peek’s new novella combines dystopia and dark fantasy to hold a mirror to current times. In 1958, Patrick White decried Australian literature’s tendency to be the ‘dreary dun-coloured offspring of journalistic...
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