SAMANTHA HARVEY Orbital. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
It may be set on the International Space Station, but Samantha Harvey’s fifth novel is grounded in the beauty and fragility of Earth. Samantha Harvey’s new novel Orbital is an extended love letter to the Earth. It charts the 16 orbits made by the International Space...
VIDYA MADABUSHI The Days Toppled Over. Reviewed by Sanchana Venkatesh
Exploitative work and striving for a visa: Vidya Madabushi’s novel highlights the plight of international students in Australia. Thirty-six-year-old Malli lives in a home for the elderly in Bangalore. Young and fit, unlike the other residents, her only ailment is her...
LEAH KAMINSKY Doll’s Eye. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Part literary romance, part cultural odyssey, Doll’s Eye is a lively challenge to the tropes of contemporary Australian Holocaust fiction. Author, physician, Jew, lover of science, nature and language: these bright strands of Leah Kaminsky’s real-life identity...
EMILY PERKINS Lioness. Reviewed by Ann Skea
In this new novel from the author of The Forrests, a woman who appears to have it all begins to question her life choices. Therese and Claire live in the same four-storey former sewing factory once wholly owned by Therese’s husband’s family – but they have very...
SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA Silver Nitrate. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Mexican horror movies, a Nazi occultist and dark magical powers – Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel has them all. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has not yet written two books in the same genre. Though that statement may depend on how you understand genre. Her latest novel,...
ANN PATCHETT Tom Lake. Reviewed by Ann Skea
A mother tells her daughters the story of her past – or some of it – in this new novel from the author of The Dutch House. ‘Wait, wait, wait, you wanted to be a vet?’ Maisie shakes her head. ‘You never wanted to be a vet. You never said that before.’ Maisie will begin...
TASHA SYLVA The Guest Room. Reviewed by Ann Skea
In Tasha Sylva’s debut novel a young woman obsessively investigates her sister’s murder … and her houseguests. ‘33-year-old woman found dead in a London park’ The woman was Tess’s sister, Rosie, and in her grief Tess has become obsessed with finding...
SUE ORR Loop Tracks. Reviewed by Mary Garden
Sue Orr’s new novel brings a timely personal dimension to debates around abortion. Sue Orr’s Loop Tracks has been a bestseller in New Zealand since its release in 2021. Published by Victoria University Press (now Te Herenga Waka University Press), the novel has flown...
AK LARKWOOD The Unspoken Name and The Thousand Eyes: Books 1 and 2 of The Serpent Gates. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
AK Larkwood’s debut fantasy series combines a death cult, magical artefacts, and an accomplished assassin. ‘Only I am without end, for desolation is my watchword. Yet nothing is to be forgotten that belongs to me. All things that are lost come into my keeping.’...
ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT Dark Mode. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This fierce, unflinching thriller asks timely questions about threatening behaviour. Why don’t we recognise it? Stop it? Dark Mode is a novel, as the note at the beginning makes clear: While the characters and their precise circumstances are fictitious, the...
KATIE KITAMURA Intimacies. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Within the layers of Katie Kitamura’s fourth novel are questions of agency, identity and interpretation. This exquisite novel charts many different intimacies, both physical and metaphorical – intimacies of confidences and private rituals, of eating and touching, and...
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