by NRB | 30 May 2019 | Fiction |
Melina Marchetta has come a long way since Looking for Alibrandi; in her new novel she explores themes of home, family and belonging. Melina Marchetta has written a story about home in The Place on Dalhousie. Home is both a place — where you live, the geography, the...
by NRB | 11 Oct 2018 | Non-fiction |
The victim of a random unsolved shooting, in this memoir Gail Bell offers a sober contemplation of the ramifications of gun violence. As 17-year-old Gail Bell walked home from the train station at Toongabbie, New South Wales, on a dark night in April 1968, a vehicle...
by NRB | 19 Jun 2018 | Non-fiction |
The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, the new biography of Australia’s second, fifth and seventh Prime Minister, is a magnificent sweep of a book that demanded to be written. Deakin has been the subject of previous biographies and author Judith Brett quickly establishes her points...
by NRB | 14 Jun 2018 | Fiction |
Eleanor Limprecht’s new novel explores themes of love, resilience, and courage – the courage to make critical life changes and to endure the loss of what must be left behind. In The Passengers, Limprecht cleverly mixes fictitious elements with real events and the...
by NRB | 7 Jun 2018 | Non-fiction |
In Tracker (winner of the 2018 Stella Prize), hundreds of stories are told to build up the portrait of an immensely complex and gifted man. This is a big book about a big personality but it’s not a traditional biography. Most of it consists of transcribed...
by NRB | 29 May 2018 | Non-fiction |
Writing with raw energy and cool intelligence, in Eggshell Skull Bri Lee reminds us of the prevalence of abuse and injustice in our communities. The first pre-trial hearing Bri Lee worked on as a judge’s associate in the Queensland District Court involved a...
by NRB | 17 May 2018 | Non-fiction |
There’s an antidote to loneliness, one Kate Leaver believes in powerfully, as her debut book The Friendship Cure shows. There is serious competition for the title of most pressing health epidemic of our time, including workplace stress, mental illness...
by NRB | 15 Mar 2018 | Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 8 Feb 2018 | Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 25 Jan 2018 | Crime Scene |
Too Easy continues an absolutely terrific series that falls on the noirish side of comic farce. In 2015 JM Green’s debut novel Good Money launched social worker – and accidental detective – Stella Hardy onto the mean streets of Melbourne’s inner suburbs. It was...
by NRB | 28 Nov 2017 | Fiction |
Half Wild is heart-warming, confusing and deeply unsettling all at the same time. This debut novel by Pip Smith is based on the life of the person variously known as Eugenia Falleni, Harry Crawford and Jean Ford. It is a work of impressive scope, covering three...
by NRB | 7 Nov 2017 | Fiction |
Kaz Cooke’s Ada is like a heartbreaking firecracker, full of fun and history and emotion. The world of the theatre provokes a constant fascination. The razzle-dazzle of performance, whether dramatic or flash, is for the audience an exciting experience. But we...
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