INGA SIMPSON Once We Were Wildlife. Reviewed by Ann Skea
These stories from the author of The Thinning and Understory are driven by human interactions with nature – and nature’s response to us. More meltwater, more bright machines grinding back and forth, marking snow. There is panic in their colony, like the penguins. They...
ALAN FYFE The Cross Thieves. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Alan Fyfe’s second novel is a zany, punchy, circuitous literary picaresque set in the regional city of Mandurah on the southwest coast of WA. The story of The Cross Thieves works like a strange Rube Goldberg machine. One small act of kindness is followed by a tragic...
GEMMA PARKER The Mother is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
For Gemma Parker, Nietzsche and nihilism were surprisingly liberating during lockdown, as she recounts in her memoir. I’ve long been interested in nihilism because I find the concept of a meaningless existence intoxicating, liberating. The Mother is Restless opens...
FIONA HARDY Old Games. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
The morally flexible PI team of Alice and Teddy are back in a perfectly bonkers scenario in Fiona Hardy’s new novel Old Games. Alice and Teddy, introduced to readers in the excellent Unbury the Dead, are best mates and private investigators who work for ‘Choker’, a...
TIM AYLIFFE Dark Desert Road. Reviewed by Viv Ronnebeck
Tim Ayliffe’s new thriller Dark Desert Road delivers claustrophic tension as twin sisters navigate extremists in the outback. The prologue to Tim Ayliffe’s Dark Desert Road begins with a woman trapped in a stranger’s suitcase, but the even more arresting detail...
CAMERON SULLIVAN The Red Winter. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Australian Cameron Sullivan’s debut fantasy features a demon, a monster, dark humour and a reimagining of French history. While romantasy is having a moment, another corner of the fantasy world – ‘grimdark’ – is also in good shape. Grimdark is a subgenre of fantasy...
DENNIS ALTMAN Righting My World: Essays from the past half-century. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Dennis Altman’s splendid essays span the gay liberation movement, sexual politics, AIDS activism, and glimpses of his personal life. Dennis Altman was born in 1943 and has been a leading gay intellectual and activist for more than half a century. With degrees from the...
JUDITH NANGALA CRISPIN The Dingo’s Noctuary. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Judith Nangala Crispin fuses poetry, prose and striking works of art in this illustrated account of her journeys across Australian deserts. But still, at night, I imagine the caravans of the Mongrels pausing under the Pleiades’ heliacal rise – on the eve of winter,...
LYN DICKENS Salt Upon the Water. Reviewed by Ann Skea
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...
STUART EVERLY-WILSON The Maskeys. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey
Set in a small Australian town dominated by a family of drug dealers, Stuart Everly-Wilson’s new novel is full of memorable characters. Possibly you’ve always been intrigued by the kind of people who feature prominently in Stuart Everly-Wilson’s The Maskeys, but never...
ERIN HORTLE A Catalogue of Love. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
Neika – scientist, surfer, and irresistible protagonist of A Catalogue of Love – attempts to classify emotions in Erin Hortle’s new novel. Neika is a scientist, an ornithologist studying the migration of the shearwater population of her beloved Bruny Island, where she...
Recent Posts
FIONA WRIGHT Kill Your Boomers. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell16 April 2026Poet and essayist Fiona Wright’s funny and furious debut novel tackles [ … ]- INGA SIMPSON Once We Were Wildlife. Reviewed by Ann Skea14 April 2026These stories from the author of The Thinning and Understory are driven by [ … ]
ALAN FYFE The Cross Thieves. Reviewed by Paul Anderson9 April 2026Alan Fyfe’s second novel is a zany, punchy, circuitous literary picaresque set [ … ]
RACHEL PERKINS, STEPHEN GAPPS, MINA MURRAY and HENRY REYNOLDS (Eds) The Australian Wars. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck7 April 2026The Australian Wars presents the confronting facts of white settlement, the [ … ]