INGA SIMPSON Once We Were Wildlife. Reviewed by Ann Skea
These stories from the author of The Thinning and Understory are driven by human interactions with nature – and nature’s response to us. More meltwater, more bright machines grinding back and forth, marking snow. There is panic in their colony, like the penguins. They...
ALAN FYFE The Cross Thieves. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Alan Fyfe’s second novel is a zany, punchy, circuitous literary picaresque set in the regional city of Mandurah on the southwest coast of WA. The story of The Cross Thieves works like a strange Rube Goldberg machine. One small act of kindness is followed by a tragic...
EMILY LIGHEZZOLO Life Drawing. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Through the stories of Charlie and Maisie, artist and model, Emily Lighezzolo’s award-winning debut explores body image and its consequences. The publicity for this book describes it as a ‘provocative novel about women’s bodies, sex, autonomy – and the power of the...
FIONA HARDY Old Games. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The morally flexible PI team of Alice and Teddy are back in a perfectly bonkers scenario in Fiona Hardy’s new novel Old Games. Alice and Teddy, introduced to readers in the excellent Unbury the Dead, are best mates and private investigators who work for ‘Choker’, a...
KATE MILDENHALL The Hiding Place. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Kate Mildenhall’s fourth novel takes a group of progressive urbanites into the bush and exposes the conflicts and contradictions among them. This novel moves from the familiar and domestic to a place of unimaginable horror with an ending that will make you gasp. A...
FRANCIS SPUFFORD Nonesuch. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Award-winning author Francis Spufford’s new novel is a historical fantasy set during the Blitz in London. Francis Spufford’s fourth novel, Nonesuch, is a beguiling combination of historical and speculative fiction. Spufford effortlessly blends the experience of living...
ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN Learned Behaviours. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
The new novel from the award-winning author of The Scope of Permissibility examines assumptions about class, connection and culpability. A common question on forums like Reddit goes something like this: What moment in your life was so pivotal that everything since has...
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...
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,...
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