Allen and Unwin

Book Review: Voices in the Dark sees family secrets come to light in the South Australian outback

Best-selling rural fiction author Fleur McDonald takes us to the South Australian outback with her latest novel Voices in the Dark. A family drama at heart, the book is an authentic exploration of grief, family estrangement, and life on the land. Upon receiving the news that the grandmother who raised her is dying, Sassi Stapleton…

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The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023: Jul – Sep

Somewhat inexplicably we are over half way through the year. This means, for publishers at least, it’s time to start thinking about Christmas, with September often seeing some of the year’s biggest titles drop.  We in the AU Books Team aren’t thinking about Christmas just yet, but we are here to bring you some more…

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The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023: Apr – Jun

2023 is flying by and somehow it’s the other side of Easter already. So we in the AU Books Team are back with some more of our most anticipated books of the year; this time for April through to June.  With so many books published each month it would be impossible to cover them all….

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Best Books 2022

The Best Books of the Year: 2022

2022 has been a great year for settling in with a good book and escaping the world outside. We’ve reached that part of the year where we all start agonising over our ‘lists’  –best albums, best films, and of course best books.  We in the Books team have looked back over the year’s releases and…

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Australia's Great Depression

Book Review: Joan Beaumont’s Australia’s Great Depression is a comprehensive look at a major part of Australian history

In her latest book, author Joan Beaumont brings us fresh insight into a major part of Australian history.  Australia’s Great Depression offers a comprehensive history of a fledgling nation, shattered by the Great War, and how it survived the worst economic crisis of its history. In telling this story Beaumont uncovers the sources of resilience…

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The Stranger

Book Review: The Stranger introduces a new voice in the emerging Feminist Western genre

Question: What do you get if you mash up Charlotte Wood‘s The Natural Way of Things, Anna North’s Outlawed and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? Answer: Kathryn Hore’s latest novel, The Stranger.  Set in an unspecified frontier-like future on an unnamed continent, in a small, gated town called Darkwater, The Stranger is a twist on the classic story prompt, a stranger comes…

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Book Review: A delightfully spooky new series enters the arena, with Reece Carter’s A Girl Called Corpse

Off the coast of a tiny forgotten town called Elston-Fright, lies a rock-that-doesn’t-exist. On that rock live three wicked child-snatching children. But someone else lives there too. A ghost. She’s fashioned a body made of wax with seaweed for hair and abalone shells for eyes. She’s found a friend, a huntsman spider named Simon. And…

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Fancy Meeting You Here

Book Review: Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus’ Fancy Meeting You Here is a quirky and ‘poppy’ rom-com

Many readers will be familiar with Melbourne authors Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus thanks to their wonderful debut novel, The Book Ninja. The clever pair have now written their third book, another contemporary rom-com with a fun twist. Fancy Meeting You Here has some of the intriguing elements from their stellar debut; however, its execution…

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League of Liars

Book Review: Astrid Scholte’s League of Liars asks the hard questions about justice

Astrid Scholte’s League of Liars is a YA fantasy thriller full of twists and turns; in which no one can be trusted to tell the truth and everyone’s motives are questionable. It’s a suspenseful page-turner with an interesting cast, told in alternating points of view. But despite its young protagonists, the book doesn’t shy away…

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Best Books 2021

The Best Books of The Year: 2021

2021. We had high hopes. But it’s been another year of uncertainty and upheaval – albeit perhaps not as bad as last year. It has been another strong year for books and publishing, with some big names returning with new books: Colson Whitehead, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Sally Rooney to name just three.  It’s also…

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The Countess from Kirribilli

Book Review: The Countess From Kirribilli delves deep into the life of a complicated woman

Former arts editor turned biographer Joyce Morgan turns her pen to one of Australia’s most famous literary ex-patriots in her latest biography. The Countess from Kirribilli is an in depth look at the life and career of Mary Annette Beauchamp- a.k.a. Elizabeth von Arnim, the beloved author of classic novels like The Enchanted April and Elizabeth and her…

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The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021: Oct – Dec

2021 is coming into the final stretch, the final quarter, and with that comes more books – all vying for the Christmas market. It’s 81days to go, if you were curious.  So we’re back for our final instalment of our AU’s Most Anticipated Reads feature for this year. Though we’ll be back just before Christmas…

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The Shut Ins

Book Review: Katherine Brabon’s The Shut Ins is a subtle take on a different kind of social isolation

The Shut Ins – the second novel from 2016 Vogel Award winner, Katherine Brabon – takes its readers to Japan, pre-pandemic but post tsunami, and is a meditation on the all too timely and relevant themes of loneliness and isolation. Using a frame narrative of an Australian writer travelling Japan and feeling increasingly disconnected from…

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She is Haunted

Book Review: Paige Clark’s debut collection She is Haunted might just be one of the best books of the year

A mother cuts her daughter’s hair because her own starts falling out. A woman leaves her boyfriend because he reminds her of a corpse; another undergoes brain surgery to try to live more comfortably in higher temperatures. A widow physically transforms into her husband so that she does not have to grieve. This is She…

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Anticipated Books

The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021: Jul – Sep

We’re over halfway through the year. How are your 2021 reading goals going? Have all the mini snap lockdowns around the country had you turning to a good book? We’re back to take a look at a handful of the new titles coming out across the next couple of months. With so many books published each…

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The French Gift

Book Review: The strength of female friendship is celebrated in Kirsty Manning’s The French Gift

Kirsty Manning‘s historical fiction always features two things: an intriguing mystery in the past that must be uncovered by characters in the present day, and sumptuous descriptions of food and drink. Her latest novel, The French Gift is no exception. And no wonder, as Kirsty Manning is the co-owner of the Bellota Wine Bar and the…

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Best Books of 2020

The 14 Best Books of 2020

By now it goes without saying that 2020 has been a rough year. From wildfires to a global pandemic there has disruption and upheaval on a scale rarely, if ever, seen in “peacetime”. Pretty much every sector of society has taken a hit this year. And the publishing world, as with much of the Arts…

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Australian Book Industry Awards

Bluey: The Beach makes history at the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards

This afternoon, the 2020 ABIAs (Australian Book Industry Awards) were live streamed into the homes of book lovers across Australia. Winners were toasted, writers celebrated, and history was made, in more ways than one. Thanks to COVID-19 2020 saw the Award’s Gala held virtually for the first time in the event’s history. 2020 also marks the…

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The Rich Man's House

Book Review: Man and nature collide in Andrew McGahan’s final work, The Rich Man’s House

South of Tasmania sits The Wheel. It is the largest mountain in the world, almost triple the height of Everest. Accompanied by a small island, complete with its own formidable peak, The Wheel has been conquered by only one man – American billionaire climber Walter Richman. It’s been more than fifty years since Richman stood…

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Fauna

Book Review: Donna Mazza makes a spectacular return with Fauna

It’s been thirteen years since WA writer, Donna Mazza, won the prestigious City of Fremantle T.A.G. Hungerford award for her novel, The Albanian. But her second book, Fauna, out earlier this year through Allen and Unwin was certainly worth the wait. Set in 2037, in an Australia which shows only subtle differences from our own,…

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Book Review: Amanda Niehaus’ The Breeding Season is an impressive debut about sex, death and darkness

It is not often that we see science threaded into popular fiction plots. Even less common is to have this domain accompanied with an exploration of art. But that’s what we find in Dr. Amanda Niehaus’ debut novel, The Breeding Season, and it’s like a breath of fresh air. Niehaus is a scientist by trade. She leans…

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Book Review: Lenny Bartulin’s Fortune is a cinematic romp through time

In 1806, after conquering Prussia with his armies, Napoleon Bonaparte led a procession into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate. Watching in the crowd is an eighteen year old man named Johannes Meyer who will soon find himself swept up in the tide of history. Fortune is a novel which traces its way around the big…

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Book Review: Rohan Wilson’s Daughter of Bad Times presents a disturbing view of the future

Rohan Wilson’s latest novel, Daughter of Bad Times is a novel with an extremely global outlook, but this may just be its problem. The novel follows two protagonists, Rin Braden and Yamaan Ali Umair, two lovers from very different circumstances. Rin is the daughter of Alessandra Braden, the CEO of Cabey-Yasuda Corrections, a company which owns…

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Book Review: Take a trip through the history of cinema with Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel

Pioneering French filmmaker Claude Ballard has lived at the Hotel Knickerbocker for almost half a century. It’s a quiet existence, by Hollywood hotel standards at least, and Claude fills his days taking photographs and keeping an eye on the hotel’s more vulnerable residents. But when an enthusiastic young film student arrives, keen to discover the…

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Book Review: Monica Tan’s debut Stranger Country may inspire you on your own adventure around Australia

Monica Tan’s first novel, Stranger Country, will take you on a 30,000km journey of discovery around selected parts of Australia. Tan is Chinese Australian, but at thirty-two, felt that she didn’t know as much about Australia’s history as she did about China’s. In a bid to change that, Tan embarked on a journey around parts…

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Book Review: Forty Years on, Joy Williams’ The Changeling is finding a new audience

Changelings, or babies swapped with supernatural beings in their infancy, permeate the mythology of a number of cultures throughout Europe. Often, it was believed that fairies had taken the child and left one of their own behind- a sign of bad luck for the family. The idea of a changeling may have been used to…

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The 16 Best Books of 2018

We’ve come to that point of the year where things begin to wind down for the year, and where those of us in the business of reviewing and writing about art, music, books and films stop and begin to agonise over our “Top 10” or “Best of” lists.  2018 has been another great year in…

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Book Review: In Minette Walters’ The Turn of Midnight plague and political intrigue collide

Crime writer Minette Walters once again turns her hand to historical fiction, picking up where last year’s The Last Hours left off. As the Black Death continues its march across Europe, the small demesne of Develish owes its survival to the policies of cleanliness and isolation, put in place by Lady Anne and her closest…

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Book Review: In Sarah Perry’s hauntingly beautiful Melmoth, thought provoking contemporary fiction meets Gothic horror

Twenty years ago, Helen Franklin did a terrible thing. Unable to forgive herself, she lives a life of self-imposed penance, scraping together a living as a translator in Prague and denying herself the simplest of pleasures. But when her friend Karel hands her a strange manuscript, detailing sightings of a tall woman in black haunting…

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Five Books You Need To Read This Month: October

If you’ve stepped into any store over the last couple of weeks you’d probably have noticed that the countdown for Christmas is well and truly on. This also means there are no shortage of new books being released into the world. Earlier this month, on the so-called “Super Thursday” there were 544 new books released…

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