SUSANNA FREYMARK Losing February. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
A fearless and riveting debut novel about love, obsession and redemption. Most people have someone they think of as ‘the one that got away’, the person who could have been the love of their life if only the circumstances, the timing, had been different. Maybe, years...TREVOR SHEARSTON Game. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
Trevor Shearston presents a fresh view of bushranger Ben Hall in this spare and beautifully written novel. Ben Hall is beginning to tire of life on the road. It isn’t as easy as it used to be and he isn’t getting any younger. He is starting to feel...MAX BARRY Lexicon. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
This is fiction on the edge of the now – a contemporary thriller that moves backwards and forwards in time. Wil Parke prays it’s a case of mistaken identity when he’s waylaid in an airport toilet by a couple of guys who stick a needle in his eye and propose...DOMINIC KNIGHT Man vs Child. Reviewed by Suzanne Rath
Dominic Knight’s third novel is a return to the snappy observational humour and romance of his debut Disco Boy. In today’s celebrity-obsessed world, we can imagine the pumped-up egos and diva behaviours encountered by those working in the entertainment...ANDREA GOLDSMITH The Memory Trap. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
An evocative novel of memory, music, family and betrayal from the author of Reunion. Australian-born Nina Jameson has made a satisfying life for herself in London: she has a successful job as a consultant on memorial projects; a city house and a country cottage; and a...HANNAH RICHELL The Shadow Year. Reviewed by Jody Lee
The second novel from the author of Secrets of the Tides explores the sinister legacy of an idealistic experiment. It is 1980 and five university students coming to the end of their studies are facing the uncertainty of their future. In the haze of summer they...RICHARD BEASLEY Me and Rory Macbeath. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
No, it’s not OK to hit your wife: this coming of age story has a devastating heart. It’s summer, 1977, when 12-year-old Jake and his best friend Robbie meet Rory Macbeath, whose family have just moved from Glasgow to their suburban Adelaide street. Rory may not be...HANNAH KENT Burial Rites. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This novel of a condemned woman in nineteenth-century Iceland grips like a northern winter. It is March 1829 and Agnes Magnúsdóttir has been sentenced to be beheaded for murder. Her crime has made her notorious, and she is aware of the impact she now has on those...GRAEME SIMSION The Rosie Project. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
This delightful story revives the screwball comedy in a very 21st-century way. Associate professor of genetics Don Tillman knows the best way to solve a problem is to approach it rationally and systematically. So when he decides it’s time to get married, he applies...KATE FORSYTH The Wild Girl. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
Kate Forsyth’s new novel takes us beneath and beyond the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. This novel offers the reader an enormous surprise. What seems a simple but richly told story of enduring love arising in childhood opens into an imaginative and wrenching...MELISSA LUCASHENKO Mullumbimby. Reviewed by James Tierney
This sure, funny novel of an Indigenous woman and her land is alive with the tensions of new ways of belonging. Meaning is a messy act. Its fusing of memory, testimony and narrative is a selective one that shapes cadence and line out of life’s awkward arrhythmia....
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