ROSALIE HAM The Year of the Farmer. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
The author of The Dressmaker returns with The Year of the Farmer – a novel of romance and skullduggery in a small farming community. Part mystery, part romance, part social comedy and part slapstick, The Year of the Farmer brings together an engaging cast...
TRENT DALTON Boy Swallows Universe. Reviewed by Chris Maher
Boy Swallows Universe is a first novel rich in adventure, description and plot. Mark Twain famously said that truth is stranger than fiction, and the parts of Boy Swallows Universe that draw on Trent Dalton’s actual boyhood are as intriguing as the fictional plot...
RICHARD HOLT What You Might Find. Reviewed by Alexander Wells
Richard Holt explores the possibilities of microfiction with great inventiveness and style. The short short stories collected in Richard Holt’s startling first book, What You Might Find, are precisely constructed and darkly surprising. With impressive economy and...
ROGER AVERILL Relatively Famous. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
A playful real-but-fake fictional world is conjured in Relatively Famous. The title of Roger Averill’s new novel establishes the theme and slightly arch tone that underlie this intriguing metafictional fiction. Narrator Michael Madigan is the son of famous...
KIM KELLY Lady Bird and the Fox. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
An Australian Pride and Prejudice? This love story spans race and class in colonial Australia. In Kim Kelly’s new novel, her seventh, a simple scaffold of romantic historical fiction allows for a more sophisticated commentary on race, privilege and the place...
CHRISTOPHER SEQUIERA (Ed.) Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
An accessible dip into the world of fan fiction, these 16 illustrated short stories are not just for lovers of Sherlock Holmes. Seventeen different authors have contributed to this collection, including the overall editor Christopher Sequiera, himself a Sherlock...
TRACY SORENSEN The Lucky Galah. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
There’s much more to Tracy Sorensen’s impressive debut than just an original premise. In Port Badminton, a tiny coastal town in Western Australia that’s watched over by a towering satellite dish, Evan Johnson, a radar technician in horn-rimmed glasses, is about...
WENDY SCARFE The Day They Shot Edward. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
A slim volume but vast in scope, The Day They Shot Edward is a novel that asks who the grownups really are. Beautifully original historical fiction, The Day They Shot Edward is an intricately layered story of life and death and love set in Australia during the First...
EVA HORNUNG The Last Garden. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Eva Hornung shows us that the story of the Garden of Eden can have a different ending. The Last Garden is set in an unnamed New World, most likely South Australia, where many Germans settled in the 19th century seeking relief from religious persecution. The...
TONI JORDAN Our Tiny, Useless Hearts. Reviewed by Robin Elizabeth
If Toni Jordan were allowed to write a season of Dynasty, the result would be akin to Our Tiny, Useless Hearts. International bestselling, Indie Award-winning Toni Jordan’s fourth novel is a laugh-out-loud look at relationships, break-ups, breakdowns, and hook-ups....
JESSE BLACKADDER Sixty Seconds. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Sixty Seconds gives a powerful insight into how ordinary people cope with extraordinary events. ‘Christ. The whole lot’s fucked. You think life is OK … but everything can go to shit in a second.’ And in those words lies the essence of Sixty Seconds. This book is not a...
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