LEAH SWANN Sheerwater: extract
This week’s extract is from Leah Swann’s novel Sheerwater, a gripping story of missing children. When it opens, Ava is on the Great Ocean Road, driving to a new life in the little town of Sheerwater with her two young sons, Max and Teddy, her car jammed with their...
LAURA JEAN MCKAY The Animals in That Country: extract
How could Laura Jean McKay know that her novel about a pandemic would be published during an actual pandemic? Unlike Covid, however, the pandemic in her debut novel gives sufferers bright pink eyes and an ability to understand the language of animals. Jean Bennett is...
SUJATA MASSEY The Satapur Moonstone. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Sujata Massey’s 1920s crime series featuring lawyer Perveen Mistry continues in the absorbingly tangled mystery of The Satapur Moonstone. India 1922: The Crown Prince of Satapur, Jiva Rao, is only 10 years old. His father and his elder brother have died, so he...
LAURA SOUTHGATE The Boyfriend. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Laura Southgate’s first novel highlights questions of agency and serves as a warning against allowing others to make choices for you. At seventeen, here’s what I know: a boyfriend falls desperately in love. It’s an affliction. He tells you he loves you, how much...
JULIE JANSON Benevolence: extract
This week we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Julie Janson’s new novel Benevolence. In this vivid and very moving novel, Indigenous author Julie Janson takes us back to the early days of Sydney and reveals them to us through the eyes of a young...
CHRIS FLYNN Mammoth: extract
In the storeroom of an auction house in New York in 2007, a mammoth and a dinosaur settle in for a chat … At least, their bones do. This unlikely conversation is the premise of Chris Flynn’s entertaining and thought-provoking new novel that ranges from prehistory to...
EMUNA ELON House on Endless Waters. Reviewed by Ann Skea
A successful Israeli writer unexpectedly finds himself dealing with his family’s wartime past in Emuna Elon’s new novel. The image flickered on the wall for just a heartbeat, but even in that fleeting second, Yoel managed to discern that the woman in the...
LAVIE TIDHAR By Force Alone. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Lavie Tidhar reimagines the Arthurian myths in this new novel, foregrounding the quest for power over chivalry and romance. Israeli science fiction and fantasy author Lavie Tidhar has a wide and varied bibliography. He has won and been shortlisted for numerous...
POLLY SAMSON A Theatre for Dreamers. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Polly Samson’s novel imagines life in the artists’ colony on the Greek island of Hydra with Leonard Cohen, George Johnston and Charmian Clift. The boat turned, and there it was! Hey presto, the sudden flourish, conjured from bare rock by the gods and lit...
KARINA KILMORE Where the Truth Lies. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Shortlisted for the Unpublished Manuscript Award in the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Karina Kilmore’s debut has got a lot of Australian crime fiction fans talking. She was slipping away. The further she fell, the closer the clouds seemed to come....
MIRANDI RIWOE Stone Sky, Gold Mountain: extract
Mirandi Riwoe’s second novel (her first, The Fish Girl, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize) is set on the Palmer River goldfields of far north Queensland, and the neighbouring settlement of Maytown. Gold was discovered on the remote Palmer River in 1873, and the...
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