Image of cover of book City of Others by Jared Poon, reviewed by Robert Goodman in the Newtown Review of Books.

JARED POON City of Others. Reviewed by Robert Goodman

by NRB | 22 January 2026 | Fiction, SFF | 0 Comments

Set in Singapore, Jared Poon’s first novel is fantasy fiction that asks whether our brains only register what we want to see around us. Over the last few years there has been a proliferation of Asian authors drawing on their own cultures to make significant inroads...

Image of cover of book Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes by Barry Nicholls, reviewed by Bernard Whimpress in the Newtown Review of Books.

BARRY NICHOLLS Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress

by NRB | 20 January 2026 | Non-fiction | 0 Comments

Barry Nicholls turns in a masterly review of the 1972 Ashes series, arguing that Australia’s tour of England reflected societal change. Test series have an inbuilt structure, and Nicholls builds on that in his opening chapter with a discussion of the end of the...

Image of cover of book The Season by Helen Garner, reviewed by Michael Jongen in the Newtown Review of Books.

2025 Readers’ Favourites

by NRB | 8 January 2026 | Fiction, Non-fiction | 0 Comments

With the new year barely begun, take a look back at our top ten reviews of 2025. It's always fascinating to see which reviews have attracted the most interest from readers. While this 2025 list leans slightly more towards fiction than non-fiction, it does include...

Image of writer Jean Bedford wearng a dark shirt, her head resting on her hand.

Tributes to Jean Bedford

by NRB | 18 December 2025 | Non-fiction | 2 Comments

Writer and editor Jean Bedford died after a long illness on 11 December 2025. She leaves a considerable literary legacy. Author of eight novels, including Sister Kate and a trio of Anna Southwood detective novels, two collections of short stories (one written with...

Image of cover of book Salt Upon the Water by Liz Dickens, reviewed by Ann Skea in the Newtown Review of Books.

LYN DICKENS Salt Upon the Water. Reviewed by Ann Skea

by NRB | 11 December 2025 | Fiction | 0 Comments

Lyn Dickens’s award-winning debut novel of an independent woman in colonial South Australia explores prejudice, power and identity. Salt Upon the Water is an historical fiction; also, according to the blurb on the back cover, ‘an epic love story’. Both are true, but...