Gleaner 2026.3 June-July

Gleaner

From David’s desk

First, some news and reflection. Our Dulwich Hill shop, established in 2010 by the redoubtable Morgan Smith and managed in recent years by the remarkable Letitia Davy, won the prestigious Australian Bookshop of the Year at the recent Australian Book Industry Awards ceremony. We are all very proud of this achievement and congratulate Tish and the hard-working and enthusiastic Dully booksellers who made it happen. A team effort by a group committed to good books, and wholeheartedly connecting with the community they serve. Congrats on behalf of the whole Gleebooks family.

We have also come through another Sydney Writers’ Festival, with ever-increasing amazement at the sustained growth of this massive event (more than 100,000 attendees this year), and its first-rate program management and organisation. We have been festival booksellers for more than 20 years, and the excitement and commitment from the book lovers who descend upon it is

remarkable. Also worth noting is the exceedingly popular schools program, which engages thousands of primary and secondary school kids across Sydney with appearances and performances from international and local authors. It’s terrific. As I’ve said in previous years, catch the podcasts on the SWF site, and put it in the diary for next May.

On a personal note, we are sad to lose our Glebe manager of the last couple of years, James Tierney, who is leaving us to take ownership of the Thirroul bookshop. Worth a drop-in and say hello next time you’re heading south. Thanks James, for all of your hard work as we reopened our Glebe shop post-renovations.

It’s been such a hectic period that I’ve had precious little time for reading. Never mind, books don’t go off. I have been enjoying an advance copy (due October) of Pip William’s next historical fiction, The German Ward, set in war-torn France in 1915. A bestseller, for sure.

- David Gaunt

All photos by Jacqui Manning

Clockwise from top: Authors tackle the big issues; Jacinda Ardern in conversation; Rhys Nicholson, Jennifer Wong and David Marr at the Great Debate; Annabel Crabb takes a selfie with fans. Opposite page: R.F. Kuang signs a book for a fan.

Lying Is My Love Language

Olivia Simons

Jamie Hayes lies to keep things light and casual. It’s a foolproof formula full of strong cocktails and even stronger exit strategies. That’s until she meets Luke at an outback wedding and discovers there’s one flaw in her strategy: he doesn’t believe a word she says. Devastatingly handsome and infuriatingly stubborn, Luke is completely immune to her city charm. So immune they end up in bed together. Twice. Their connection is electric, but it’s only a game. At least, that’s what she tells herself … until they crash back into each other’s lives and she’s forced to confront the one thing she’s always avoided – the truth.

$35, Penguin. Out July

Worry Doll

Laura McPheeBrowne

On an ordinary day, two women meet on a train. Heloise, the older woman, lives with her boyfriend in Melbourne. Lacey, the other woman, is from Aotearoa and studies the clouds. What follows is anything but ordinary, a passionate affair that will consume them both in mismatched and maddening ways. Propulsive and lyrical, Worry Doll examines desire, memory, and the delusion of love.

$30, Scribe. Out June

The Followers

Maree Spratt

Beautiful, manipulative Lacey is a lifestyle influencer who preaches self-love and body confidence to her million followers. But one of those followers is Teresa. She remembers Lacey as a prepubescent mean girl who kept the loyal members of her gang on a short leash. Twenty years later, she watches Lacey from afar with the ghost of her younger self and a copy of Lacey’s new self-help book for company. While Lacey seems to have rebranding down to an art form, Teresa can’t shake their past so easily. The Followers explores themes of peer pressure, girlhood, identity, social capital, and how schoolyard dynamics translate to social media.

$35, Allen & Unwin. Out June

Touch Grass

Mary Colussi

When her consciousness starts spontaneously ejecting from her body, Charlie becomes the first known case of a bizarre new phenomenon. As disembodiment spreads, corporations celebrate it, governments fear it, and Charlie can’t decide whether she’s losing herself or finally escaping. But the memories she worked so hard to delete won’t stay gone, and the only way to survive a world splitting at the seams may be to reclaim the self she tried to erase. Astute and inventive, Touch Grass explores identity, consent and the hilariously messy business of being a friend, sister and person.

$35, Penguin. Out June

Billie King

Shannon Kelly-White

In 1918, Australia’s last bushranger, Dulcie James, robs Anna King’s crumbling farmhouse but leaves deeply shaken. The next day, Anna vanishes. Twelve years later, her daughter Billie is struggling to survive with an alcoholic father, unpaid rent and mounting debts. When child services threaten to take her away, Billie must choose between searching for her missing mother and holding her fragile family together. Fast-paced, funny and fiercely Australian, this novel follows one gutsy girl caught in a bushranger’s dangerous quest for revenge.

$30, Harper Collins. Out June

Good Intentions

Jessy Wu

In the basement office of their university newspaper, Jake and Nadia uncover institutional corruption and fall in love. Then Nadia leaves. A decade later, she returns to Sydney as a formidable corporate strategist, while Jake has become a crusading investigative journalist known for destroying careers and companies. They collide again over Marjorie Ford, a biotech visionary who is both Nadia’s biggest opportunity and the target of Jake’s latest investigation. As old wounds resurface, both must decide how far they’ll go to protect the lives they’ve built – and whether goodness is possible in a morally grey world.

$35, MacMillan Australia. Out June

Mire

Matt Nable

Dan has spent his life chasing thrills – fast cars, easy money and cocaine-fuelled highs – until the 1987 stock market crash destroys everything. Starting over on the South Coast, he tries to settle into a quieter life mowing lawns, though he still dreams of getting his mojo back and mastering the market once again. Then a sudden turn of luck draws him back into dangerous territory, threatening both his family and his future. Moving between Sydney and New York, Mire is a tense, cinematic crime thriller about ambition, addiction and the cost of chasing more.

$35, Hachette Australia. Out July

How to Love the World Ilka Tampke

Nellika believes motherhood will heal and transform her, but as her children grow, the myth of perfect motherhood begins to unravel. Only the quiet refuge of the forest eases the strain of family life. When a falling manna gum branch leaves her gravely injured and alone deep in the bush, she is forced to confront her memories, fears and failures as night closes in. Lying between life and death, Nellika questions whether the accident is random or deserved – and discovers a powerful reason to keep living. A powerful meditation on nature and healing, How to Love the World finds hope where none seems possible.

$35, S&S/Summit Books. Out now

Fiction

AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE

I Made This Just for You

Chris Ames

The characters in I Made This Just for You are perfect avatars of modern life. They work in tech, take designer drugs, assemble IKEA furniture, pursue beauty matching, and rehabilitate their reputations – all while grappling with a perilous sense of unease, held hostage by economic forces beyond their control. This savage, sideways collection of short stories explores the tension between authenticity and performance, as characters navigate the anxieties of modern parenthood, the disorienting nature of loss and memory, and the absurd, often dystopian, intersection of the digital and the real. $35, Ultimo Press. Out June

Unspoken

Denise A. Fletcher

In the final week before a federal election, political adviser Francis McGuire is tasked with launching the Opposition’s flagship health policy – until a ruthless strategist sabotages the campaign and frames her for the fallout. Hounded by the media, Francis retreats to a small town on Western Australia’s south coast, where memories of her father’s fatal car accident still haunt her. But she soon uncovers organised crime, political corruption reaching the highest levels of government, and a murder that could destabilise the nation, forcing her to risk everything to expose the truth. $33, Ventura Press. Out now

Tight Lines

Allee Richards

Luke, Josh and Matty live for the summer: surfing, fishing, girls at the caravan park and drinking. But, like the wild coast they call home, the tide can change from safe to catastrophic in an instant, and one terrible decision will ruin the lives of all involved. We follow the characters into adulthood as they try to find their way back to the freedom they once took for granted. But life moves on, and they each discover they can never go back to the way things were. Set against the nostalgic backdrop of smalltown coastal life in the 1990s, this novel is funny, moving, confronting and deeply life-affirming.

$35, S&S/Summit Books. Out June

The Clinging Thing

Munira Tabassum Ahmed

After the loss of a pregnancy, Iqra returns to her mother’s home in the place where she grew up. The past is porous, her recollections fail her, yet she is suffocating with memory. A couple of hours out of the city, Seam River pulls Iqra back into a state of bewilderment. She revisits the stories of her parents and all the women before her, as dreams, memories, the uncertain and the impossible converge.

$35, Penguin. Out June

The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan

Omar Musa

A monitor lizard in Borneo tries to convince a boy not to kill a mafia boss. After Islam is banned, a man uses a time machine to visit “The Japanese Goebbels”. A suicidal Australian boxer is given one more chance at humanity. From Bosnia to Borneo, the United States to Australia to Mars, these are stories where lizards talk, cars fly and humans become birds; where Sufi mysticism and AI technology collide. The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan is an explosive collection of surreal short stories.

$35, Penguin. Out July

The Changeling

Kate Forsyth

On her 14th birthday, Caiti NicNeven learns she is the daughter of the faery queen of the Sidhe, who demands Caiti help reclaim Scotland’s stolen crown. Fleeing into the mortal world, Caiti finds refuge at the court of Mary, Queen of Scots as fear and religious fervour fuel Scotland’s first witch-hunt. When the faery queen curses Robbie, the man Caiti loves, to dance himself to death, Caiti must enter the faery realm, confront her mother, and embrace dangerous magic to save him. Inspired by the true story of Scotland’s first witch-hunt, The Changeling is a spellbinding tale of witchcraft, forbidden love and defying fate. $35, Penguin. Out July

No God But Us

Bobuq Sayed

A Short History of Longans

Mirandi Riwoe

In the winter of 2049, elderly Daniel lives in isolation until a devastating storm, a widowed neighbour and a young reporter investigating his past disrupt his fragile peace. Spanning the 1840s to 2000, the novel traces Daniel’s Irish-Chinese family history back to an orphan whose life becomes entwined with a Chinese bushranger. Richly layered and beautifully written, this sweeping story explores family secrets, memory and identity, asking what it truly means to belong – to place, ancestry and ourselves.

$35, UQP. Out July

Over to You

Georgie Tunny Carter is beautiful and bold, grabbing the spotlight with both hands. Naya is diligent and cautious, balancing ambition with loyalty. Greta is impulsive and driven, never afraid to speak her mind. As each woman juggles workplace pressures, romantic entanglements and family dramas, they soon learn that climbing the greasy pole of television news demands more than talent – it expects sacrifice. But how much of themselves, and each other, are they willing to betray for the top job? Georgie Tunny rips back the glossy curtain on television news in her gripping debut.

$30, Allen & Unwin. Out June

I Remember Everything

Fiona Wilkes

Beginning in Bristol and moving to 1980s London, this novel follows Billie, a young queer woman, as she navigates the highs and lows of life, coming out as queer, and finding her chosen family, only to lose them again during the AIDS epidemic. Thirty years on, Billie picks up her pen to celebrate the lives of these friends: quixotic Robert, Tolstoy the photographer, soft-spoken Eleanor, sweet-eyed Sasha, uncompromising Aggie, and Ted the dreamer. And, of course, Laura, the girl who has always captivated Billie, and the one person she can’t live without. This is a story of queer joy, queer tragedy, and the strength to love deeply.

$35, Fremantle. Out June

People Like Us

Sally Piper

When Tina finds work caring for a wealthy elderly woman, it is a welcome break from an ageist, sexist job market. But Mrs Bell is anything but predictable. Highly educated, acerbic and intimidating, she is not the straightforward charge that Tina had hoped for. As the two women form an unlikely friendship, they soon discover that financial security is about more than having money. Topical and absorbing, People Like Us celebrates the power of female friendships and the promise of new beginnings found in unexpected places. $35, UQP. Out June

After being publicly outed, Delbar – an aspiring drag queen from Washington, DC – escapes to Istanbul, where he finds refuge among dissidents, activists and queer outsiders. There he becomes drawn to Mansur, an Iranian refugee trying to survive under growing authoritarianism while supporting the family he left behind. When violence erupts at Istanbul Pride, the two are forced into dangerous intimacy and difficult choices about love, freedom and belonging. Told through alternating perspectives, No God But Us is a powerful story of exile, identity and life at society’s margins from Afghan-Australian author Bobuq Sayed. $35, Ultimo Press. Out June

Rat Daniels

Alex Sawyer

Jimmy Quinn is a boy when he befriends the wild, rebellious Rat Daniels at Edens Ridge. But there is a dangerous current in Rat that scares Jimmy sometimes. So do the things that happen in Rat’s house: the yelling, the violence and, most of all, Rat’s hatred for a man named Davey Callaghan. As they grow older, Rat is pulled into crime and darker ambitions. After a devastating fire leaves people dead and police investigating, Jimmy must confront the truth about Rat – and decide how far he’ll go to protect him. Rat Daniels is a luminous and deeply evocative debut novel from the 2023 Richell Prize winner, Alex Sawyer.

$35, Hachette Australia. Out June

The big steal

Museums are a place of learning, unearthing the wonders of the world from antiquity until today. But they don’t always tell the full story. Marc Fennell’s Stuff the British Stole reveals the truth behind remarkable objects in the world’s most celebrated museums. Here, the podcaster, filmmaker and awardwinning journalist explains how the past has been elided to conceal stories of power, resistance and survival that have shaped our modern world.

I’m instinctively suspicious of anyone with a neat, definitive take on history. The moment someone claims they know why the past unfolded the way it did, I get twitchy. History isn’t a set of tidy answers – it’s a collection of awkward questions. A long, unresolved conversation between clashing points of view, many of which are destined to glare at one another forever.

When we talk about the past, people tend to focus on either the good or the bad – especially when it comes to colonialism. I’m often told (usually in Facebook comments, which is always a good sign) that without British colonialism we’d have no railways, no legal systems, no civilisation. From the other end of the internet comes the undeniable counterpoint: colonialism also enabled genocide, tore children from families and caused cultural losses that can never be undone.

Across all its iterations, Stuff the British Stole has taught me one thing very clearly: the good and the bad don’t balance. They don’t cancel each other out. They simply coexist. The past is deeply unpoetic in that way. And that unresolved entanglement is what all of us inherit.

What stories like the ones in this book offer is not clarity but complexity. Because the world is a mess. And I want you to stand in that impolite mess with me for a moment – to feel what it’s like to live inside it, rather than rushing past it in search of something comforting.

We’re living through an extraordinary moment of historical reckoning, and trying to find clean answers in the past can feel overwhelming. For me, the anchor in all that turbulence is objects. I look for them as small doorways into much larger chapters of history. An object carries its own twists and turns, but its real value lies in what it reveals beyond itself – the bigger story it helps illuminate.

Objects don’t change, but the way we look at them does. And as that perspective shifts, many of us are starting to see that the version of history we grew up with was pretty uneven.

Take my home country of Australia. There are at least 60,000 years of Indigenous history here – some of the oldest continuous communities and cultures on Earth. But when I was growing up, all through school, that unbelievably long slab of time was consigned to maybe half a page: “There were Indigenous people in Australia and then Captain Cook arrived and that’s when history starts.”

Certainly in academic and historical circles, a closer examination of history has been happening for a long time. But I think it’s now well and truly pushed out into the wider world. People are looking around at the land on which they walk and going, “Huh. How did we get here?”

In Australia, you can point in almost any direction and uncover histories that sit just beneath the everyday landscape. Ask what was taken during colonisation and the answers are rarely pleasant. That discomfort has been whispering at the back of our national consciousness for generations.

Australia isn’t unique in that regard. Every former colony struggles with the violence and compromise baked into its foundations. It’s often easier to smooth it over. To be polite.

Around the world, movements like Black Lives Matter have dragged these conversations out into the open. One of the clearest pressure points has been public monuments, such as the fights over statues from the American Civil War or of British slavers.

Statues are a strange way to tell history. They’re extraordinarily confident. They feel like the private-school debating team captains of the past. Once someone’s on a plinth, you’re not leaving much room for ambiguity. Statues are made for heroes, after all.

The small plaque underneath is then asked to absorb everything that doesn’t fit that frame: brutality, exploitation, contradiction. It’s a polite summary standing in for an impolite reality.

Museums, it turns out, often rely on the same logic.

Stuff the British Stole is a book – mostly – about museums. And about how even the best, most beautiful museums in the world have not been honest enough. They’ve told careful stories designed to help us glide past discomfort.

Many of these mistruths are lies of civility. They aren’t told to deceive, but to smooth rough edges and allow everyone to enjoy a pleasant afternoon out. You don’t tell your toddler Santa isn’t real, so why tell millions of museum visitors that they’re looking at the remnants of war, conquest, genocide, pandemics and good old-fashioned murder?

I should say: I love museums. They’re the first places I visit in any new city. Sometimes I go alone, or we drag our kids along. And when they get sick of that, I talk a lot about museums.

In all my nerdy years, I assumed the objects in my beloved museums and galleries were purchased. Either by the museum itself or by a collector who eventually donated them. And that is often true. Except there’s usually a longer version that sounds more like this: “Taken from Country X by Captain Y during an expedition involving shooting, stabbing or being coughed on with smallpox – and then, later, sold.”

An extract from Stuff the British Stole by Marc Fennell, $37, Penguin, out June.

INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE

Whistler

Ann Patchett

When Daphne notices an older gentleman following her around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she doesn’t expect it to be Eddie, her former stepfather. Married to her mother for a short time when Daphne was nine, she hasn’t seen Eddie for many years; not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again now, Daphne and Eddie feel that time has fallen away. Their earlier relationship was brief but had a profound impact on both of them. Together, they consider not only their past, but the joys of the present and their commitment to face the future together’.

$35, Bloomsbury. Out June

Air

Christian Kracht

Two men venture through strange landscapes towards unknowable destinations. Paul, a feted designer, wanders the echoing corridors of a server farm in Norway, before, in a sudden blackout, he seems to vanish. In another time and space, a wounded stranger wakes in a forest, watched over by a young girl who helps him flee to an icebound settlement where perhaps he will find safety. Inventive, enigmatic and chromatically resonant, Air unfolds as a haunting journey through a layered universe that may be a dream, the afterlife or reality’s inverted twin.

$30, Serpent’s Tail. Out July

Contrapposto

Dave Eggers

Hello, Limerance

Momo Yamaguchi

Mika is about to turn 25, and all she has to show for it is a soulsucking office job and a terminal case of virginity. Between the pervy salarymen she works with and the pretty boys she pines after, Mika is ready to explode. But it’s summer in Tokyo – time to strut her stuff. So when her bestie sends her the invite for an upcoming beach party, Mika clicks “attending”. Just when she thinks real life is never going to live up to her wildest fantasies, someone new catches her eye. It could be limerence, or the beginning of something much less one-sided.

$33, Faber Fiction. Out June

Your Life Without Me

James Meek

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grownup daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police. He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul’s cathedral – and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap? Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman’s journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family.

$35, Canongate. Out June

Shy, art-obsessed Cricket falls instantly for the older, fearless Olympia after she draws him into an act of light vandalism. Together, they dream of changing the world through art, but adulthood brings unexpected futures, disappointments and competing ambitions. Across years and decades, they navigate the seductions of the art world, shifting ideas of love and friendship, and the challenge of staying true to their ideals without losing themselves. Sweeping and intimate, this is a wild and beautiful novel about creativity, ambition, beauty and what it means to build a meaningful life.

$35, Canongate. Out July

Cool Machine

Colson Whitehead

Set across 1980s New York, this sweeping crime novel follows Harlem businessman and fence Ray Carney as he is drawn back into the city’s criminal underworld. From a risky heist in 1981 to the violent downtown club scene of 1983 and a desperate rescue mission in 1986, Carney and his volatile partner Pepper navigate a city transformed by Reagan-era capitalism, corruption, and inequality. With vivid prose and sharp social insight, the novel captures New York in transition – where glittering ambition and brutal survival coexist just beneath the surface.

$35, Fleet. Out July

The Correspondent

Virginia Evans

In her letters to family and friends we come to know the life of Sybil Van Antwerp: stubborn, cantankerous, opinionated, always steadfast in her belief in the power of the written word. But as the clock begins to tick for Sybil, the need for a few postscripts to the life she’s led becomes apparent. Fixing her difficult relationship with her children. Taking a final chance at romance. Atoning for an old legal case which has come back to haunt her. And finally, reckoning with a devastating loss that she has spent the last 30 years holding close to her chest.

$25, Michael Joseph. Out August

The Typing Lady

Ruth Ozeki

A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches with tenderness and unease as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A longdeceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant during a sales meeting. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter’s romantic life. Spanning eras and geographies, The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we become.

$35, Text Publishing. Out June

Returns and Exchanges

Kayla Rae Whitaker

Fred and Fran Baker-Taylor have built a thriving Kentucky discountstore empire and the appearance of the perfect American family. But as their business expands, cracks begin to form beneath the success. Fred becomes obsessed with wealth and status, their children drift in troubled directions, and Fran finds herself falling for Wendy, a cashier at Baker-Taylor’s, risking everything she has built. Returns and Exchanges is a tragicomic tour de force exploring love, ambition, parenthood, and the fragile promises of the American Dream – where some losses cannot be undone. $35, Scribe. Out June

Before I Knew I Loved You

Toshikazu Kawaguchi

In Before I Knew I Loved You, Toshikazu Kawaguchi takes us back to the warm heart of the mysterious Funiculi Funicula Cafe, with another four guests whose stories of love, lost and won again, will reaffirm your belief in its eternal potential. In this book, we meet: the girl who wishes to make amends with the mother she never accepted; the man who waited for a reply from his girlfriend, and never heard from her; the woman anxious to travel ahead to know what her future holds; and the student who travels back to meet his father again, who passed away many years before. $23, Picador. Out June

Medea Sang Me a Corrido

Dahlia de la Cerda

In Northern Mexico, Paulina, Perla, Antonia, Reina, and Jordan struggle to survive a barrio shaped by cartel violence, poverty, and loss. Watching over them is Medea, a gothic spirit of the Chihuahuan desert – ancient, petty, and fiercely protective of her chosen mortals. She aids abortions, guides grieving mothers searching for missing children, and mourns victims of narco brutality. Through interconnected stories, Dahlia de la Cerda’s electric prose exposes the corruption binding cartels, government, and military, while Medea delivers the divine justice denied to women in a femicidal world.

$28, Scribe. Out July

This Immortal Heart

Jennifer Saint

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, holds power over every mortal and divine heart, wielding beauty and desire with dangerous intensity. Her opposite is Ares, the feared God of War, relentless in both violence and devotion. As passion draws them together, the two gods discover that even immortals are vulnerable to love, grief, and fate. But on Mount Olympus, desire comes with devastating consequences, and their relationship threatens to unleash both extraordinary devotion and catastrophic mistakes in this dramatic retelling of divine romance and conflict.

$35, Viking. Out June

Country People

Daniel Mason

Miles Krzelewski is drifting: years behind on his PhD about Russian folktales and increasingly convinced he’s failed his family. When his wife Kate takes a visiting professorship in rural Vermont, Miles hopes the move will help him finally rebuild his life. Instead, he becomes immersed in a strange community populated by eccentric figures, including a ghostly tree surgeon, a scythe-mad biochemist and a Shakespearean temptress. Then Miles stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all. Joyous, absurd, and lifeaffirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories.

$35, John Murray. Out July

Waiting on a Friend

Natalie Adler

East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who has the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS. So when her best friend Mark dies and she doesn’t see him again, she becomes concerned. Renata has other problems, too. A mysterious, police-like force has begun trapping ghosts. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends’ memories and the sanitising of her beloved New York. $35, Riverrun. Out now

Lovers XXX

Allie Rowbottom

Los Angeles, 1982: best friends Jude and Winnie are 18 and working at a strip club. Soon they progress to modelling for Penthouse and Hustler, then to shooting hardcore porn. When their friendship ends in a dramatic act of betrayal, Jude disappears. Thirty years later, newly divorced and down-on-her-luck, Winnie is ready to face her past. Determined to solve the mystery of what happened to Jude, she sets out to brave the dark underbelly of the adult industry. What follows is a gutsy, propulsive look at sex and power that builds to an unforgettable revelation about love. $35, Virago. Out June

All Them Dogs

Djamel White

People in Love

Claire Daverley

One bright blue day in February, Nora’s partner Robin proposes unexpectedly. They’d always agreed that they didn’t need a wedding. But after a happy decade together, Nora says yes. Why wouldn’t she? The answer lands on the night of their engagement party, when Bren turns up. Growing up, Bren and Nora were the sort of best friends who everyone swore would end up together. But when heartbreak struck, Bren left, Nora stayed, and the longing between them remained unspoken. Now, their spark reignites, leading Nora to remember feelings she’s spent 12 years trying to forget.

$35, Michael Joseph. Out June

Villa Coco

Andrew Sean Greer

Broke and uncertain about his future, a young archivist takes a job at Villa Coco, a decaying Tuscan mansion owned by the eccentric aristocrat Lisabetta, aka Coco. Expecting to catalogue the estate’s contents, he instead finds himself swept into Coco’s chaotic world of bohemian artists, ageing royalty, handsome relatives and increasingly bizarre adventures. As summer fades into autumn, Coco reveals her greatest ambition: reconnecting with the lost love of her life before it is too late. Set amid the beauty of the Italian countryside, this charming novel explores friendship, memory, love and reinvention.

$35, Sceptre. Out June

After five years away, Tony Ward returns to a transformed West Dublin underworld. His old mentor is dead, his best friend has gone straight, and Tony is eager to rebuild his place in the gangland hierarchy.

Working alongside feared enforcer Darren “Flute” Walsh seems like the perfect opportunity – until Tony realises the quiet boy he once knew has become dangerous, brooding, and unexpectedly magnetic. As violence, old grudges, and mutual attraction collide, Tony struggles to survive a brutal world where loyalty is fragile and desire can be just as risky as crime.

$35, John Murray. Out August

The Renovation

Kenan Orhan

Dilara is renovating her apartment so her father, whose dementia is worsening, can move in with her. But the builders make a bizarre mistake: instead of a bathroom, they construct a prison cell identical to one from Istanbul’s Silivri Prison. The daughter of Turkish political exiles, Dilara wants nothing to do with the homeland her family fled. Yet as financial strain, grief and marital tensions mount, she becomes obsessed with the cell, which seems to open a portal back to Istanbul. This haunting novel explores exile, memory, political oppression and the absurd heartbreak of love.

$35, Hamish Hamilton. Out June

Little Spark

Jess Kidd

Bodkin Bell – orphan, pickpocket, and former sideshow attraction known as “Little Spark” – possesses strange electrical powers she cannot explain. After landing in a London gaol, she is offered freedom in exchange for serving at Point Mote, a bleak mansion on the Kent marshes inhabited by eccentric inventors who create lifelike automata for wealthy collectors. But beneath the house’s mechanical marvels lie dangerous secrets tied to Bodkin’s own mysterious past. As she uncovers longburied truths, she discovers a revelation never meant to surface. Little Spark is an eerie gothic tale of invention, power, and identity.

$35, Penguin. Out July

Permanence

Sophie Mackintosh

Clara and Francis have been conducting a secret affair, escaping into anonymous hotel rooms far from their ordinary lives. One day they awaken in a mysterious city inhabited entirely by adulterers, where their relationship can exist openly and without consequence. In this strange paradise –filled with painted skies, perfect sunsets, and no contact with the outside world – they are forced to confront what their love truly means. As the city’s perfection begins to fracture, they must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice for desire, intimacy and the fantasy of lasting happiness.

$35, Hamish Hamilton. Out July

Last Day of a Prior Life

Andrés Barba

While preparing an empty house for sale, a woman encounters an unblinking seven-year-old boy, trapped there from another era, like an insect preserved in amber. Unable to articulate what he needs, the child draws her into an unsettling bond that neither can escape until they understand what has caused it. With incredible precision, this deeply disquieting novel weaves together doppelgangers and time loops in the tradition of a classic ghost story. Yet its contemporary sensibility – where lyricism meets cruelty – evokes the dark horror of Shirley Jackson.

$30, Scribe. Out June

Venus Vanishing

Rebecca Birrell

Berlin, 1928. Hannah is new to the pleasures and freedoms of the city. An artist, a runaway, she is building a new life, loving without boundaries and sketching with a cutting edge. But the party is ending. Hannah begins a recklessly consuming affair with a powerful man’s wife and it soon threatens to do more than ruin both of their reputations. Meanwhile, the shadows of something unspeakable are growing darker. Her art could be the thing that secures her survival – or will deny her any chance of escape. Venus Vanishing is a blisteringly passionate novel of desire, art and the stories lost to the darkness of history. $35, Picador. Out July

Land

Maggie O’Farrell

In 1865, surveyor Tomas and his young son Liam travel to a remote Irish peninsula mapping the land for the Ordnance Survey in the shadow of the Great Hunger. Determined to preserve evidence of the famine’s devastation, Tomas sees the maps as a record of loss and erasure. But after a mysterious encounter in a woodland copse, he begins to unravel, leaving 10-year-old Liam frightened and struggling to guide them home before British officers arrive. Blending history, folklore, ghosts, and buried secrets, Land explores memory, trauma and the enduring marks left by both people and place. $35, Tinder Press. Out June

The End of Romance

Maria Takolander

In a future where Earth yields only thorny plants and toxic fog, survival is brutal. A woman and her son live as scavengers on society’s margins, but like all boys, he is destined for military school and eventual deployment to a distant planet – the “Promised Land” – to fight a colonial war sold as humanity’s last hope. When the woman meets a mysterious young man who escaped conscription, she learns of a possible sanctuary beyond the collapsing world. Maria Takolander’s haunting novel explores survival, motherhood, and the fragile possibility of hope amid ecological ruin.

$35, Text Publishing. Out June

Frogs for Watchdogs

Sean Farrell

After years of instability, a young family settles in an isolated house in rural Ireland. Narrated through the vivid imagination of a young boy, the story follows his fierce attempts to protect his mother and older sister from the threatening presence of local farmer Jerry Drain. As strange phone calls, growing tensions, and unsettling truths creep into their lives, the boy struggles to make sense of the adult world closing in around him. Darkly funny and deeply tender, the novel explores childhood fear, blended family bonds, and the fragile safety of finding a home. $25, John Murray. Out June

FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS AND THE PROMISE OF NEW BEGINNINGS FOUND IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

‘Packed with nuance and warmth.’

JANE HARPER

A SWEEPING STORY OF AN IRISH-CHINESE FAMILY OVER FOUR GENERATIONS IN AUSTRALIA

‘Gorgeously kaleidoscopic.’ SIANG LU

Fiction Staff Picks

INTERNATIONAL

It Will Come Back to You

Sigrid Nunez

It Will Come Back to You takes in 13 stories –never before collected together – from a career spanning three decades, which has seen Nunez become one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive voices. Moving from an inappropriate teenage crush to a therapist’s second chance at love, in this collection Nunez maintains her irrepressible humour, bite, and insight, while exploring the philosophical questions we have come to expect from her writing.

$33, Virago. Out July

Tarantula

Eduardo Halfon

In 1984, 12-year-old Eduardo is sent to the mountains for what his parents describe as Jewish summer camp. What it turns out to be is an immersive re-enactment of a Nazi concentration camp. Decades later, on the other side of the world, Eduardo sits across a table from a stranger. This is Samuel Blum, the Jewish camp counsellor who transformed into a terrifying Nazi commandant all those years ago. Now he is an old man, and he is ready to talk. Tarantula is an extraordinary meditation on violence, conspiracy and the many complex afterlives of the Holocaust.

$25, Penguin. Out June

How to Make a Woman

Marie Darrieussecq

Rose, a psychotherapist, and Solange, an actress, are very different, one diligent and loyal, the other rebellious and self-centred, but they have been best friends forever, despite their contrasting social backgrounds. In How to Make a Woman, we follow the young women’s experiences of adolescence, love, sex, work and motherhood, as they negotiate their place in the world. This is a lively portrait of female friendship, of two identities under construction, of “what gets done to women” – it is also a snapshot of French provincial life in the ’80s and ’90s, written with humour and heart.

$35, Text Publishing. Out June

Peacock

James Hynes

Sparrow has flown from the confines of the Roman brothel where he was raised. Now older and smarter, and having learned the arts of deception and enticement from the women who raised him, he vies to become a player in the internal politics at Arcadia, the home of his new master, a man who is himself playing with political fire. Sparrow soon realises that the key to survival in this turbulent place is information, and he must gather it at any cost. Epic and intimate, spectacularly vivid, Peacock is the story of a boy becoming a man as an empire falters in the face of the rise of Christianity.

$37, Picador. Out June

Books we love

Whistler

Ann Patchett

$35, Bloomsbury

This is a beautiful, tender story about family, love and memories. Daphne, by chance, bumps into Eddie – the man who was briefly married to her mother and who she hasn’t seen for 45 years. The story unfolds slowly and surprisingly as their relationship rekindles and we learn of the event which changed their lives all those years ago. Another winner by Patchett. – Victoria

Sororicidal

Edwina Preston

$35, Picador Australia

Intense sisterly rivalry, care, love and cruelty in early 20th-century South Australia. Sororicidal navigates women artists, mothers and daughters, war, desire and ageing told in alternating first-person sections from both sisters. I ripped through it then rang my sister. – Sarah

Boy From the North Country

Sam Sussman

$35, Grove Press

A novel inspired by the author’s notion that Bob Dylan might be his father. In the search for an elusive father, a young man discovers that the love his mother has for him and he for her is the thing that has sustained him, that it is the thing that has fuelled his creativity as a writer and that he has developed a parental bond that transcends his search for a father. Extraordinary and heartbreaking. – Jody

Fringe to Famous

Tony Moore, Mark Gibson, Chris McAuliffe & Maura Edmond

$60, Bloomsbury Academic

No, this isn’t a book about how far good hair can get you (although someone should write that). Rather, it’s an academicleaning exploration of how “fringe” cultural production and mainstream, money-driven culture intersect in Australia, featuring interviews with people like Paul Fenech and Reg Mombassa (Chris O’Doherty), both of whom were at the book’s Sydney launch at Gleebooks. There’s some good stories in there, and some smart musings on the tension between staying true and selling out. – Maeve

Mad Mabel

Sally Hepworth

$35, Macmillan Australia

A terrific homegrown cosy murder mystery. Within these pages you will discover plenty of stereotypes being slyly subverted, and genuinely unexpected plot twists left, right and centre. It is also impossible not to fall in love with our heroine, Mabel, a sweary, mistrustful, charming older woman. I was surprisingly moved. – Isabel

Possible Springs

Samantha Ross

After nearly drowning as a child in the remote Australian town of Possible Springs, Jimny Adams survives with a strange psychic ability that allows her to hear people’s thoughts. Now 18, quirky and deeply watchful, she hides her gift from family and friends, knowing that difference can make someone an outcast in their tightknit community. But Possible Springs is filled with buried secrets, and Jimny’s unwanted insight draws her dangerously close to uncovering the town’s hidden truths. Blending coming-of-age fiction with mystery, this debut explores isolation, secrecy, and the cost of truly knowing others.$35, Penguin. Out June

Where Truth Ends

Mark Smith

When a peaceful climate protest ends with a violent explosion in the city centre, every member of the protest group becomes a suspect. The incident is declared a terrorist attack. Scared and alone, Meg seeks refuge with her father, knowing that every word she says puts him in danger too. But as the terrorism investigation closes in, Meg is forced to question everything: her friends, her cause, even herself. Was her group of activists infiltrated from the start? Where Truth Ends is a taut thriller about what happens when the fight for change becomes a fight for survival.

$35, Macmillan Australia. Out now

The Bookshop Detectives 3: Murder and Mojitos

Gareth & Louise Ward

Booksellers Garth and Eloise Sherlock, along with their timid dog Stevie, are hosting a glamorous Art Deco literary festival featuring Cuba’s famed queen of crime fiction. What should be a breakthrough event for their bookshop quickly turns deadly when mysterious packages arrive and a body is discovered on a nearby beach. The clues all point to Arthur Pinter, the literary-obsessed serial killer from the Sherlocks’ past. Amid cocktails, costumes, and festival chaos, Garth and Eloise must unravel a dangerous web of betrayal and intrigue before the celebration ends in murder. $35, Penguin. Out July

The Parkwood Murders

Chris Chibnall

Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a tranquil escape – until, early one summer morning, a body is discovered in the pool complex. Detective Nicola Walker, already stretched by troubles at home, faces a resort full of suspects. Guests and staff alike are hiding secrets: a husband with an alibi that doesn’t hold, a high ropes instructor with unexplained scars, a new manager with a dark past. But as Nicola digs deeper, she uncovers a chilling truth – this isn’t the first murder at Parkwood. And if she doesn’t catch the killer, it won’t be the last. $35, Michael Joseph. Out July

Night Swimming

Sharon Kernot

January Clare Colson is unravelling under the weight of insomnia, pills, and the lingering trauma of her best friend’s drowning years earlier. Then he walks back into her life, changed but the same, and the events of long ago take a new grip on her. Desperate for answers and driven by obsession, desire and grief, January sets out to uncover what really happened – but her fragile state distorts the line between justice and destruction. This psychological thriller plunges deep into the mind of a tormented protagonist, exploring memory, guilt, and the unsettling blur between victim and aggressor. $35, Text Publishing. Out June

Cold River

Margaret Hickey

Detective Constable

Sally White is troubled by the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young journalist who vanished while hiking Victoria’s Mount Viking. Louis had been investigating the region’s illegal tobacco trade, and his final interview subject has since been brutally murdered. As the search stalls, Sally reluctantly accepts the possibility of an accident – until she discovers striking similarities to the earlier disappearance of lawyer Astrid Marlowe in the same mountains. As connections emerge, Sally begins to suspect both cases are linked to something far more sinister lurking beneath the isolated landscape of Victoria’s high country.

$35, Penguin. Out July

The Lineup

Nicholas Timms

Former surfing champion Bo Curren is adrift at 28, isolated in his apartment and numbing himself with whiskey while obsessively watching live surf webcams. One day, a camera overlooking a deserted Byron Bay beach appears to capture a murder. Police dismiss his claims when no bodies are found, but Bo is convinced the crime was real. Armed only with the memory of the killer’s distinctive surfboard, he plunges back into the insular surf world he left behind. As he investigates, Bo discovers that beneath the laid-back culture lies dangerous secrets and unwritten rules.

$35, Penguin. Out July

A Murder in Springtime

Martin Walker

Bruno Courrèges, chief of police of the Dordogne town of St Denis, is no stranger to murder. But when he receives a phone call from his friend, Pamela, reporting a fatal attack on her newly arrived lodger, he is forced to recuse himself from the investigation due to his close ties to the case. Bruno focuses instead on reviving the town’s struggling historic market while adjusting to being sidelined by a younger detective. But when the victim’s hidden past begins to emerge, Bruno cannot resist returning to the investigation. This atmospheric mystery blends crime, small-town politics and the rich rhythms of rural French life. $35, Quercus. Out June

The Subtle Pleasures of Indiscretion

Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel Dalhousie leads a seemingly peaceful life in Edinburgh, editing a philosophical journal while raising her family with her husband Jamie. But complications soon arise: Jamie attracts the attention of a manipulative woman during a prestigious London engagement, academic intrigue threatens Isabel’s editorial board, and an old school acquaintance seeks help after uncovering troubling DNA test results. Balancing domestic life with ethical dilemmas and emotional entanglements, Isabel must rely on her characteristic tact and wisdom to navigate the delicate consequences of truth, loyalty, and human relationships.$33, Abacus. Out June

Answer in the Negative

Henrietta Hamilton

Frank Morningside, assistant at The National Press Archives on Fleet Street, is receiving nasty poison pen letters. His superior Toby Lorn wants to put a stop to it, so he calls on his friends Sally and Johnny Heldar. Married amateur sleuths, the Heldars agree to go undercover, posing as researchers to scout out the many suspects in the archives. But, soon after they begin, they find a body – bludgeoned to death by a box of glass negatives. Suddenly, the genteel world of the archives is a tangled web of suspicion. When another murder swiftly follows, the Heldars worry that one of them may be next. Answer in the Negative is a forgotten female classic from the Mermaid collection. $29, Michael Joseph. Out June

Red Lake

Jason Summers

Sergeant Harper Quinn has returned to her sleepy hometown of Koorinda in search of a quieter life. Then she learns that the town’s once glittering waterpark is being reopened, on the shores of its famous Red Lake: the place where her little brother vanished 30 years ago. And then Harper receives a call: a body has been found at the park. Once again, Harper finds her family at the centre of a shocking criminal investigation. This time, she is determined to find her own answers. But when secrets run this deep, the truth can drag you under. Red Lake is a thrilling and propulsive novel from the author of the Nick Vada series.

$35, Macmillan Australia. Out June

Icarus 17

Charles Cumming

Max Radinsky’s seemingly perfect life in Athens collapses when his girlfriend Yasmine is forced to flee the city, pulling him into a desperate escape across Greece. Soon the couple become the targets of an international manhunt, surviving only through instinct and luck that cannot hold forever. Meanwhile, intelligence chief Lachlan Kite is drawn back to a former lover, Martha Raine, when she asks for help finding her missing son. The truth they uncover is far worse: Yasmine carries a secret capable of destabilising the Middle East, with assassins already closing in to silence her.

$35, Hemlock Press. Out June

The Intrigue

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In 1940s Mexico, charming con artist Ulises survives by seducing lonely women through letters and stealing their money. Hoping for one final, life-changing score, he targets Perla, the owner of a boardinghouse in Veracruz. But the scheme becomes complicated when Perla’s sharp, restless niece Ines discovers his intentions and proposes joining forces. As deception, greed, and attraction intertwine, Ulises realises neither woman is as simple as he imagined. Venture into the streets of a small town where the patina of convention and good manners conceals a cauldron of avarice and lust.

$35, Arcadia. Out July

Green City Wars

Adrian Tchaikovsky

In a solar-powered future, humans live in pristine green cities maintained by genetically enhanced animal “Little Helpers”, bound by one rule: never bother the humans. Beneath the utopian surface, however, lies a dangerous world of animal crime and political intrigue. Skotch, a freelance raccoon investigator, takes on a case involving a fugitive mouse scientist whose secrets could destroy their fragile society. Pursued by gangsters and assassins alike, Skotch must survive a deadly underworld race to stop a catastrophe that could shatter the balance between humans and animals forever. Green City Wars is a crimeinspired adventure that will draw you deep into an incredible new world.

$35, Tor. Out June

Sublimation

Isabel J. Kim

When you emigrate, you leave a version of yourself behind. Literally. One instance crosses the border; the other instance stays trapped behind it. Some instances synchronise their lives and minds in the hopes of resuming a life as one person. Other instances, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at age 10 and never speak to their other selves again. When her grandfather dies, Soyoung, her Korean instance, summons her home for the funeral. But Soyoung’s motives aren’t as innocent as Rose imagined, and the consequences of Rose’s return to Seoul will change her forever. Sublimation is a story of doppelgängers and corporate intrigue, heartbreak and betrayal. $35, Picador. Out June

The Children

Melissa Albert

Guinevere Sharpe is preparing to publish a memoir celebrating her seemingly idyllic childhood as the daughter of beloved fantasy author Edith Sharpe. Raised in a bohemian Vermont household filled with artists and imagination, Guin presents her family as joyful and closeknit. But with her brother Ennis – now a troubled, infamous artist – announcing a provocative new installation titled Mother, long-buried tensions and secrets begin surfacing. Moving between 1990s Vermont and present-day New York, this haunting family drama explores artistic ambition, memory, resentment, and the lasting damage hidden beneath a carefully crafted myth of childhood.

$35, Bloomsbury. Out June

FANTASY

Exodus: The Helium Sea

Peter F. Hamilton

For thousands of years, the Celestials have ruled the Crown Dominion, keeping humanity in a near-serf existence across the Centauri Cluster. But when an exiled faction returns from beyond the Helium Sea seeking vengeance after seven millennia, the fragile balance of power begins to collapse. Caught at the center of the conflict, Finn and his human allies see a rare chance to challenge Celestial dominance and secure independence for humankind. To survive, they must uncover and master ancient artifacts of immense power while evading enemies determined to eliminate them before rebellion can take hold.

$43, Tor. Out June

Daggermouth: The Heart Duology Book 1

H.M. Wolfe

Greyson Serel, heir to a brutal regime, lives divided between his polished public image and the dangerous secrets that could destroy his family’s regime. Forced into a political marriage, he is bound to Shadera, a deadly mercenary sent to assassinate him. After her mission fails, survival traps her inside the corrupt heart of the city as both prisoner and unwilling wife. Their relationship quickly becomes a battle of mistrust, desire, and power. As conspiracies deepen and rebellion brews, Greyson and Shadera must choose between destroying each other – or joining forces to bring the regime down. $35, Tor Bramble. Out June

Fishbone Cinderella

Elizabeth Lim

In 1940 Guangdong, Ha Yut Ying discovers she can turn invisible after narrowly escaping Japanese soldiers during the war. Fearing the consequences of her mysterious power, her mother warns of a family curse and gives her a protective gold bracelet shaped like fishbones. After the war, Yut Ying is sent to wealthy relatives in Hong Kong, where her jealous stepmother forces her to work in the family shoe factory. But when she loses the bracelet after colliding with Tommy Yeung, heir to a soymilk empire, their chance meeting sets both their lives on an unexpected path. $35, Hodderscape. Out July

The Traveler

Joseph Eckert

Scott Treder’s ordinary Monday morning takes a terrifying turn when he suddenly slips forward in time, losing an entire day. Soon, every morning at 7.52 am, he jumps ahead in ever-growing intervals – days, weeks, then decades – hurtling uncontrollably into the future. As Scott watches his young son Lyle age into adulthood and old age within days, he becomes increasingly disconnected from the life he once knew. Refusing to let his father disappear forever, Lyle devotes his life to an impossible mission: finding a way to catch the man continually vanishing ahead of him through time.

$35, Tor. Out June

I Hear a New World

Alan Moore

In 1958 London, Dennis Knuckleyard is determined to leave behind the Great When, a hidden magical shadow-city he escaped years earlier. But when an enchanted iron key he once discarded falls into the wrong hands, occult creatures begin spilling into London, fueling chaos and riots. Learning that his first love, Grace, has returned to the Great When to investigate the disturbances, Dennis follows her back into the dangerous alternate city. As the Great When tightens its grip, Dennis and Grace must confront mythic forces or risk losing both Londons – and themselves – forever.

$33, Bloomsbury. Out June

HORROR

Honeysuckle

Bar Fridman-Tell

Rory’s happiness begins to unravel when he learns that his beloved friend Daye is a seasonal creature who must be magically rewoven each season or literally fall apart. When his sister fails to return home in time to save her, Rory becomes determined to master the process himself. As he leaves home and descends into obsessive experiments to end Daye’s endless cycle of bloom and decay, his desperation grows increasingly dark. Blending horror, fairy tale, and gothic fantasy, this feminist reimagining of Frankenstein explores love, obsession and the dangerous desire to conquer mortality. $35, Tor Nightfire. Out now

From the Blackheathens

Can you believe that we have made it to halfway in the year! The kiss of summer is a cooling memory as we start hunkering down for our winter hibernation. The reading challenge for all of us at Gleebooks Blackheath is considering what we would read if we were stuck in a bunker. The crash and boom of the world outside can always be silenced a little with a carefully chosen book.

Marg’s go to is On the Calculation of Volume I-IV by Solvej Baille. Tara Salter manages to turn a very difficult situation –constantly waking into the 18th of November – into a “life”. And by volume IV she has found others in the same predicament. There will be seven books in the series. The next is due in November. Let’s hope we’re out of the bunker before then so we can get our hands on a copy.

Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester is Tiff’s salve for a complicated world. A stylish and pacy psychological thriller dripping with wicked black wit. You’ll be hooked from the very first page. Lanchester is a chameleon of a writer. If you haven’t discovered him yet, kick off your readfest with this.

Reading for Victoria is like meditation. Her mind is taken elsewhere and this is certainly the case when reading Elizabeth Strout’s latest, The Things We Never Say. Readers are introduced to Artie Dam, a high school history teacher who is loved by everyone. He is a kind man and despite an outwardly happy life, he feels as if the whole world is changing in ways he can’t understand, and the upcoming 2024 US election fills Artie with dread. Artie wants to know if there is still such a thing as free will, and we are taken on his journey to find out. This is a powerful story about friendship, trust, connections and grief.

Victoria also adores everything Niall Williams writes and had missed the memoir he wrote with his wife Christine Breen in 2021. In Kiltumper:

A Year in an Irish Garden is more than a book documenting a year in a garden. It is as exquisitely written as you would expect; it’s uplifting, inspiring, heartfelt and poignant. It will resonate with anyone who loves nature, Ireland and beautiful writing.

Lucky Victoria also managed to fangirl with Niall and Christine when they were at a Sydney Writers’ Festival gig at the NSW State Library.

If Bron was confined to a bunker with unlimited time to read, she would take a doorstopper of a book to keep herself thoroughly amused and distracted. Waiting patiently on Bron’s TBR for just such a time is The Remembered Soldier by Dutch writer Anjet Daanje. Longlisted for the International Booker prize this year thanks to its stunning English translation by David McKay, it promises to be “an extraordinary love story”. Just when you think that everything that could possibly be written about WWI and its aftermath had been written, along comes a book to knock your socks off. An exploration of memory and marriage, trauma and trust, identity and ambiguity.

Jody can’t stop thinking about The Mother Is Restless & She Doesn’t Know Why by Gemma Parker. This astonishing memoir is made up of fragments of self-reflective writing, musings, interpretations of Nietzsche and personal reflections on parts of her life and is thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking. Before you run screaming from the bunker, away from the

question of “Where does a humanitarian nihilist turn when she cannot raze it all and start again?” Gemma Parker reels you in with brilliant interrogations of notions of self, desire, and motherhood. This book fizzes with life and humour. It will keep you enthralled for however long you may feel you are stuck in your metaphorical bunker.

The second book Jody would sneak into the bunker would be The Poems of Seamus Heaney – the definitive edition of his life’s work. His poems make us understand that the outside world is not outside, but what we are made of. This collection of poetry brings the everyday to life and love, making you thrill to the power of language and the realisation that words can help you escape whatever confines you might find yourself within.

Don’t forget that we are gearing up for book events in Blackheath. Get yourself signed up to the Blackheath events newsletter and check out the events coming up on the website. Until then, you will find us tucked up somewhere quiet and warm, gently snoozing.

Follows us on Instagram @gleebooks_blackheath

Victoria with Christine Breen, one of the authors of In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden.

Kids @ Sydney Writers’ Festival

This year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival was bigger than ever and Gleebooks was there to revel in the fun. Thousands of children packed the Sydney Town Hall to celebrate reading for the school program, which also included breaking the record for the biggest ever goal line dance with football player Andrew Redmayne. Meanwhile, thousands of secondary kids turned out to hear Amy Doak, Tristan Bancks, Jasmine McConaghy, Josh Silver and Alexandra Moody give tips for budding writers.

Once again, there was a stellar lineup of free events for all to enjoy, including drawing, crafting, storytelling, and dancing. Author Mick Elliott broke a record for bestselling book at the festival of all time for his very funny graphic novel Uranus FC, The Greatest Goal in The Galaxy. The Gleebooks gang were there to enjoy it all! The festival may be over but the Gleebooks team still has plenty of books to recommend, so drop into one of our bookshops and talk to one of our staff.

Saturday Mornings

Rachel hosts a free storytime every Saturday morning at 10.30am for younger book lovers. All ages are welcome –we’ve never grown out of picture books, and nor should you! We sometimes have some very special guests at these free storytime sessions. Keep an eye open.

Saturday Afternoons

Our Saturday afternoons are free and all ages are welcome to join in the mischief, but please RSVP so we can look after you properly! For more information about our Saturday fun, contact Rachel at rachel@gleebooks. com.au and be sure to follow our @ gleebooks_kids Instagram page for last minute updates.

PICTURE BOOKS

Once Upon a Time in the Woods

Anthony Browne

Once upon a time in the days when wolves roamed the land, there lived three boys, who one day wandered deep into the woods and came across a little cottage they’d never seen before … At first, they were curious, but soon they started to tease the inhabitant, with surprising consequences … Exploring bullying, peer pressure and making assumptions, this new tale weaves an empathetic moral among stunning artwork and storytelling.

$30, Picture Puffin. Out July

The Mushroom and the Flower

Sally Soweol Han

“I am the mushroom with the coolest hat. No one else has a hat like mine.” In a peaceful forest, a bright pink mushroom loves being the centre of attention. Can she learn how to share the spotlight when a flower begins to grow beside her? From an award-winning author-illustrator comes this story about giving friendship time to bloom.

$27, Thames & Hudson Australia. Out June

Some Days

Daniela Sosa

Life is full of all kinds of days, and no two are quite the same. Some days feel rushed, some are rainy, and some are so special you’ll remember them forever. Some Days is a beautifully illustrated, heartwarming exploration of the many experiences that shape our lives, big and small. $25, Simon & Schuster Children’s UK. Out now

Clockwise from top left: Annabel Crabb; author Dav Pilkey with Gleebooks’ Elissa, Rachel and Ella; the illustrator battle; and a packed Sydney Town Hall.

PICTURE BOOKS

The House That Walked Away

Simon Howe

In this simple, surreal and stunning story, a house sets off on a journey to find a home.

Dissatisfied and restless, the house wanders from place to place, hopeful but uncertain. But everything changes when a curious family notices the house, and decides to follow. The House That Walked Away is a reminder that not only is home where the heart is, but that we can be a home for the hearts of others.

$25, Little Hare. Out now

Others

Kobi Yamada illus. Charles Santoso

Standing by the hedge that divides them, two children wonder what the people on the other side are like. They’re not like us, one child insists. The other wonders – how are they different? Are they machines? Do they have tentacles? Or are they human? Maybe, just maybe, the people here and the people there are not so different after all. Others is a thoughtful exploration of how our assumptions can prevent us from connecting with each other.

$33, Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed. Out July

Brave Like Bunji

Jake Gablonski, illus. Samantha Campbell

When Bunji runs away from school, he doesn’t realise that a rainbow lorikeet is about to take him on an incredible adventure. As he soars over Nitmiluk Gorge and feels the rhythms of the environment supporting him, Bunji discovers that he can be brave if he shows his true colours with pride. A big-hearted story about identity and belonging by Wiradjuri man Jake Gablonski and beautifully illustrated by acclaimed Dagoman artist Samantha Campbell. $25, A&U Children. Out June

MIDDLE GRADE

Hunt for the Nighthawks

Felice Arena

When Jake meets the ghost of a young Roman, he is sent on a mission to recover stolen treasure from a group of thieves known as the Nighthawks. It will take all their detective skills and courage, but Jake and his friends Tilly and Rabbit will uncover much more than gold and silver, and the stakes are higher than they could ever imagine. Hunt for the Nighthawks is a thrilling middle-grade adventure of friendship and bravery, combining mystery, history and the supernatural. $18, Penguin. Out July

The City of Lost Cats

Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Fiona discovers an abandoned harbour mansion inhabited by stray cats and two parakeets, and feels an immediate connection to its residents. Since losing her parents, she has struggled to find her own place in the world. When developers threaten to demolish the mansion for luxury condos, Fiona joins forces with the animals – including the self-proclaimed cat king Cot and his rival Piper – to save their home. As demolition looms, Fiona searches the city for help, hoping that together they can protect The City and build a better future. $17, Tundra. Out July

The Epically Awesome Odyssey

R.A. Spratt

Finally, Nanny Piggins sets the record straight and reveals what really happened 3,000 years ago on the most epically awesome journey of all time, The Odyssey! Spoiler alert – Homer totally left out the fact that Odysseus was a staggeringly beautiful woman and a pig. Travel with Odysseus and her crew as they face man-munching monsters, Greek Gods with rage issues, Sirens brandishing cake batter to tempt sailors to their doom and a forbidden sausage sizzle on the Island of Helios. $17, Penguin. Out June

Kid

Peter Carnavas

This is the story of a small goat called Kid. Ever since his parents chased away a fox and never returned, Kid has stayed with Audrey the hen in the chook yard. Audrey tells him stories of his mum and dad’s daring and bravery. She says they live on the nearby mountain, and Kid longs to leave the farm to find them. And then, one day, he discovers he is big enough to jump the fence … Will a wild adventure up the mountain help Kid find where he belongs? Kid is a modern-day classic with delightful hand-drawn illustrations.

$23, UQP. Out June

Funny Fairytales

Tim Harris illus. Christopher Nielsen Strap yourself in for five hilarious illustrated fairytales told with a twist: Jack’s magical beans are really not what he expected, Goldilocks is chasing influencer fame, Hansel and Gretel meet trouble head on and Red Riding Hood’s Big Bad Wolf is a pun-loving vegetarian. $17, Penguin. Out July

FICTION 5-8

Mega Rich Guinea

Pigs: Witless Protection

Kate & Jol Temple

The mega rich guinea pigs are in trouble! Lunk, Hot Head, G-Chip and Big Pig have received a threatening letter from a mysterious villain. To keep themselves and their fat stacks of cash safe, they are whisked away to a Witless Protection Program. But something doesn’t seem quite right ... Have they walked into a trap? The guinea pigs’ latest adventure delivers laugh-outloud fun in a new ridiculous crime caper. $17, HarperCollins. Out June

NOVELS

Detective Beans and the Map of Mystery

Li

Chen

Your favourite kitten detective is back with a new mystery to solve – and treasure to find! When Captain Scuttlebeard gives Beans a treasure map, Beans is determined to find the prize at the end. The clues take him all over Cat Town – to places he doesn’t expect. With Biscuits by his side, and with help from some other familiar faces, can Beans find the treasure … and get home in time to clean up his room?

$18, Penguin. Out June

Billie B Brown’s Secret Mystery Club: Spooky House

Sally Rippin illus. Aki Fukuoka

There’s nothing Billie loves more than a good adventure with her best friends! So she starts the Secret Mystery Club, and they take on their very first case: who lives in the spooky house at the end of the street? But when Billie discovers that a witch lives there, her friends don’t believe her. Can she convince them she’s telling the truth while keeping the club together? This graphic novel reimagining of the beloved and bestselling Billie B Mysteries series is filled with friendship, fun and neighbourhood adventures. $18, Figment. Out June

The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue

Zoulfa Katouh

Joining an exclusive high school should be a fresh start for Jihad after her mother’s sudden death. But she’s the only Muslim student there; her hijab and even her name make her new classmates suspicious. Only one person treats her with kindness but Jihad can’t help questioning his motives. As tension mounts, she finds refuge in an old sketchbook and the stories her mama used to tell her. This is a heartwrenching story of friendship, loss and identity from the author of As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow. $18, BLM YA. Out June

Eleanor Jones Is Not Drowning

Amy Doak

Eleanor Jones is over the rain. The drought has finally broken, and the Cooinda River is rising – fast. When fellow student Letisha Sabri asks her to prove her boyfriend’s death was not an accident or suicide, but rather murder, Eleanor is thrown back into detective mode. The more Eleanor investigates, the more it seems like Letisha might be right. As the riverbank starts to spill over and reveal its secrets, it becomes increasingly difficult for Eleanor to keep her head above water.

$20, Penguin. Out June

Shadow Reaper

Lynette Noni

The city of Aravell is threatened by a deadly blackmist and reapers who steal magic from children. Seventeen-year-old Viridia Solace has spent years hunting them, driven by a desire to avenge her parents’ murder at the hands of the Reaper Priest. When the Priest’s trusted lieutenant, Reeve Ashton, is captured, he offers Viri a path to revenge. Reluctantly, she joins forces with the charming criminal, venturing into the blackmist forest to stop a plot that could destroy the city. But trusting Reeve – and her own heart – may prove the greatest risk of all. $28, Penguin. Out June

Lightfall: A Place Between

Tim Probert

After surviving a shipwreck on the Fuerre Sea, Cad washes ashore on Pellidyr seeking Lorgon, the Water Spirit. Instead, he is drawn to A Place Between, a mysterious realm between life and death, where he must uncover why he was summoned and whether the planet Irpa can be saved. Meanwhile, Bea awakens in Pellidyr’s capital, hailed as a hero but uncertain of her path. As she searches for her crew and reaches A Place Between, she uncovers a revelation that reshapes her understanding of the past – and the future. The fourth installment of the award-winning, critically acclaimed Lightfall series. $23, HarperCollins. Out now

EARLY LEARNING

Search-andFind: Alphabet of Alphabets and Number of Numbers

A.J. Wood & Mike Jolley illus. Allan Sanders

Children can practise their letters and numbers in this interactive activity book designed to engage and entertain. There are more than 50 fully illustrated activities, each themed on a number or letter of the alphabet to hone essential maths and literacy skills. Through it all, Allan Sanders’ weird and wonderful drawings are packed full of funny things to spot and plenty of Where’s Wally-style humour, making this the best way to learn your ABCs and 123s.

$27, Wide Eyed Editions. Out June

Nonfiction

BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR

The Other Girl

Annie Ernaux

One Sunday in Yvetot, August 1950, Annie is playing outside in the sun. Her mother steps out of the grocery to chat with a customer, a few metres from her. The two women’s conversation becomes etched forever in Annie’s memory. Before she was born, her parents had another daughter. She died at the age of six from diphtheria. Annie will never hear another word from her parents about this unknown sister. In The Other Girl, brilliantly translated for the first time into English by Alison L. Strayer, Annie Ernaux explores the meaning of this family secret, and the insurmountable distance that separates the two sisters. $23, Fitzcarraldo. Out June

Can You Handle a Girl Like Me?

Bek Condello

Bek Condello was raised in a strict patriarchal Pentecostal movement in a sleepy Canberra suburb. The influence of the Geelong Revival Centre extended deeply into the lives of the congregation, promoting discipline and dictating how girls and women behaved, who they socialised with and who they would marry. Anyone who leaves the GRC is cut off from family, identity, history. After enduring a tumultuous marriage, Bek Condello made the courageous decision to start her life again. Can You Handle a Girl Like Me? chronicles Bek’s journey of challenges and transformation as she navigates dating and friendships. With little experience, she is rebuffed and exploited. Through embracing healing and selfempowerment, Bek is now embarking on a second life of adventure and joy. $37, Penguin. Out July

An Ocean and a Day

Hannah Richell

In 2014, author Hannah Richell was living a happy and fulfilled life in Sydney. Married, with two young children, she was in the middle of writing her new novel when the police knocked at her door to tell her that her husband, Matt, had been killed in a surfing accident at Tamarama beach. An Ocean and a Day is the riveting, intimate and poignant story of the journey she travelled over the first two years of loss, but it is also, more uniquely, an account of what happens beyond those early years, when time and distance offer perspective and hope. $35, 4th Estate. Out June

The Infinity Machine

Sebastian Mallaby

This biography traces the rise of Demis Hassabis, the chess prodigy and scientist who founded Google DeepMind to pursue artificial superintelligence. Drawing on extensive access and interviews, author Sebastian Mallaby explores Hassabis’s journey from working-class North London to becoming one of the central figures in the global AI race. The book examines DeepMind’s competition to build artificial general intelligence, the transformative potential of AI, and the ethical fears surrounding technologies that could reshape humanity as profoundly as the atomic age.

$40, Allen Lane. Out June

Mother Shadow

Cynthia Banham

Becoming George Fiona Sampson

Becoming George reexamines the life and legacy of George Sand, born Aurore Dupin, one of 19thcentury France’s most celebrated and controversial writers. By her 30s, Sand’s novels rivalled those of Victor Hugo in popularity. Her unconventional and promiscuous lifestyle, including cross-dressing and smoking cigars, shocked Parisian society. Biographer Fiona Sampson portrays Sand as a radical intellectual and literary force far ahead of her time.

$55, Doubleday. Out June

Is It Too Early to Bitch?

Grace Rouvray

Grace Rouvray and Katie Lees become inseparable during their first week studying drama, building a friendship sustained by shared humor, ambition, and years of mutual support. Across 13 years, they navigate bad jobs, heartbreak, creative projects and long-distance life, becoming each other’s closest companion and emotional anchor. When Katie dies suddenly, Grace is left devastated and questioning how society values friendship compared to family or romantic love. Both funny and deeply moving, this memoir explores grief, identity, and the profound impact a friendship can have, arguing that a friend can truly become the centre of a person’s world. $37, Macmillan Australia. Out now

Mother Shadow intertwines family history, memoir, and cultural reflection to explore motherhood, disability and social judgment across generations. After discovering her great-grandmother was abandoned at a Bologna foundling home rather than orphaned, the author becomes determined to uncover the story of the unnamed woman who relinquished her child. At the same time, she confronts her own fears and insecurities as a mother living with disability after a lifechanging plane crash. Travelling to Bologna with her family, she begins to understand the pressures and tragedies that shaped her ancestor’s choices, while questioning society’s rigid ideals of what makes a “good mother”.

$33, Upswell. Out now

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

Australia Fair?

James Walter & Carolyn Holbrook

In Australia Fair? Democracy, Bureaucracy and the Making of Modern Australia, James Walter and Carolyn Holbrook examine how public servants and political advisers have shaped modern Australia since World War II. Focusing on immigration, Indigenous affairs and housing policy, the book explores the evolving relationship between elected leaders and bureaucrats, asking how effectively governments have responded to public needs. Through debates over power, ideology, and social change, the authors investigate how policy decisions have transformed Australian society and what they reveal about the nation’s future direction. $40, Melbourne University Press. Out July

Neighbours

Joanne

Wallis & Jack Corbett

Australia has a long history in the Pacific. Many Australians might have forgotten it, but the region has not forgotten us. This book provides a new vision of the way Australia might relate to its Pacific neighbours. It replaces amnesia with storytelling that emphasises common ancestors, interests and language. It replaces Australian ambivalence with recognition, humility and respect. The authors argue that Australia can only work towards being a better neighbour if it understands its history in the Pacific Islands, and the ideas that have guided its foreign policy in the region for the last two centuries.

$37, La Trobe University Press. Out July

POLITICS

A Tight Grip:

The Light on the Hill

Ross McMullin

An updated edition of Ross McMullin’s acclaimed history of the Australian Labor party, The Light on the Hill is a warts-and-all narrative full of illuminating pen-portraits and vivid anecdotes featuring all of Labor’s prime ministers. The sweeping storytelling blends their governments’ achievements and tribulations with those of ALP state branches, conflicts over organisation and policy, and intrigue and intimidation behind the scenes. Labor’s most spectacular controversies are also examined: the Whitlam government’s dismissal, and the fierce Hawke-Keating and Rudd-GillardRudd leadership contests.

$55, Scribe. Out June

State Power and Control in Modern China

Wen-Hsuan Tsai

A Tight Grip examines how Xi Jinping has strengthened his rule over China by concentrating political authority while maintaining control over society. Political scientist Wen-Hsuan Tsai explores the mechanisms Xi uses to manage elite power-sharing, reward loyal grassroots officials and expand social control at lower cost to the regime. The book analyses the institutional and ideological tools underpinning modern Chinese governance, offering a detailed assessment of their effectiveness, limitations, and longterm implications for China’s political development and authoritarian stability. $33, Melbourne University Press. Out July

The Beginning Comes After the End

Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit maps the extraordinary revolution of ideas and rights that we’ve experienced over the past 50 years, which has profoundly changed our world. In recognising the interdependent and symbiotic relationships in nature and among humans, this revolution is beginning to overturn capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the human domination of nature – despite the best efforts of the old world to fight back. The Beginning Comes After the End offers a unique perspective on our politics and our humanity, to urgently remind us that the power to change the world is within our reach. $33, Granta. Out August

Lost at Sea: The Real Costs of AUKUS

Jonathan Pearlman

The next issue of Australian Foreign Affairs explores the costs, risks and potential benefits of Australia’s plan to buy, build and operate a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Lost at Sea looks at the ways in which the AUKUS undertaking is set to reshape the nation’s military, economy, diplomacy and foreign relations, and at the consequences and alternatives if the project does not go according to plan. With essays by Saul Eslake, Peter Khalil and more.

$30, Australian Foreign Affairs. Out June

Bytes and Bullets

Steve Feldstein

A new tech cold war is coming into focus fast and restrictions and sanctions are no longer enough to maintain international stability. In Bytes and Bullets, Steven Feldstein explains how technology is transforming geopolitics, upending the ways that countries compete and how they wage war. Through captivating stories and original field research, he shows how the West’s dominance is being undercut at every turn by a combination of commercialisation, authoritarian convergence led by China and Russia, and the emergence of new regional powers hungry for more influence.

$35, Monoray. Out July

Children of the Third Reich

Catrine Clay

In Children of the Third Reich, historian Catrine Clay follows the lives of three people shaped by the legacy of Nazi Germany: Renate, the daughter of an SS officer; Joe, born to Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp; and Dan, the son of German Jewish immigrants in Palestine. Raised amid silence, trauma and hidden histories, each struggles to understand the impact of the Third Reich on their identity and family. Spanning Germany, Israel and the US, the book explores memory, inherited guilt, survival and the difficult search for reconciliation across generations. $35, W&N. Out July

Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old

Mary Beard

The life, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome have something to offer everyone. They are not the property of wealthy white men only. They make us wonder how to make sense of people who lived long ago (from angry landlords to giggling senators), and to think harder about our own world, to look at it differently. It’s not compulsory, Mary Beard argues, to be excited by antiquity, but it’s a shame not to be. After half a century teaching and studying classics, she has written a book filled with lively stories, curious facts and some good gossip.

$37, Profile Trade. Out August

FIRST NATIONS

Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945

Ian Buruma

In this powerful historical account, Ian Buruma explores life in Berlin under Nazi rule from 1939 to the end of World War II. Beginning with a city that outwardly adapts to dictatorship, the narrative traces how ordinary life deteriorates into fear, destruction and survival, amid bombing raids, military collapse and the advance of Soviet forces. Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labour along with 400,000 other imported workers. Stay Alive portrays resilience and moral compromise in extreme conditions, showing how most people adapt to oppressive regimes rather than resist them. $55, Atlantic. Out June

Musquito: The Real Story of a Legendary Colonial Warrior

Naomi Parry Duncan

Musquito was just a boy when a convoy of 11 British ships assembled in the waters of Port Jackson in January 1788. Seventeen years later, he was a warrior fighting for Country west of Sydney, hunted by white colonists. Exiled in Van Diemen’s Land he joined local Aboriginal people as they began the resistance that ignited the colonists’ Black War. Wrongly accused of being the ringleader, he was executed in 1825. Historian Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the real story of this remarkable man. Searching the archives for evidence, she realised the lives of convicts in her family tree intersected with Musquito in disturbing ways. $37, Allen & Unwin. Out June

The First Inventors

Billy Griffiths, Larissa Behrendt & Sean Ulm

For more than 65,000 years, people have made this continent their own through language, song, water and fire. The First Inventors: How People Shaped a Continent explores how people managed and engineered entire landscapes, and how they orchestrated seascapes according to the stars, tides and relationships with animal kin. It is grounded in the idea of Country: a transformative way of seeing, and relating to, the world. It honours old ways of knowing and relates fresh insights from cutting-edge collaborative research: from astronomy, navigation and ancient memory systems to archaeology, pottery and international trade. $37, Allen & Unwin. Out June

ENVIRONMENT

Contaminated Country

Jessica Urwin

During the 20th century Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear programs of numerous global powers. From uranium extraction to weapons testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development and was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. Aboriginal communities, bearing the brunt of these processes, resisted, reclaiming their rights to Country and demanding reparations. As Jessica Urwin shows, extraction, testing and waste disposal have caused incalculable physical, spiritual, and cultural harm to Aboriginal communities and lands. $40, Melbourne University Press. Out June

A Brief History of Climate Folly

Tim Flannery & Emma Flannery

What to do about the climate? If emissions reduction is too hard and too slow, maybe science can engineer a solution. It turns out this line of thinking is as old as humanity. From shamanism to cloudseeding to Cold War plans to nuke the Arctic ice cap, humans have been trying – or claiming – to influence the weather for millennia. In this entertaining overview of history’s grandest and silliest attempts at climate change, Tim and Emma Flannery address a very serious question: can we do better in the Anthropocene?

$27, Text Publishing. Out June

The Dark Frontier: Unlocking the Secrets of the Deep Sea

Jeffrey Marlow

In The Dark Frontier, marine microbiologist and deep-sea explorer Jeffrey Marlow journeys into the mysterious depths of the ocean, revealing ecosystems filled with extraordinary life – from translucent shrimp and giant crabs to the towering hydrothermal formations of the Lost City. Blending scientific discovery with environmental urgency, the book explores how the deep sea preserves clues about Earth’s past while facing growing threats from exploitation and climate change. Marlow examines humanity’s evolving relationship with this hidden world, highlighting both the astonishing resilience of life and the responsibility to protect fragile underwater ecosystems. $37, Faber. Out July

GENDER STUDIES

The Queer Bookshelf

Layla McCay

Drawing on the author’s own journey as a queer reader and book club host, and packed with recommendations from authors, booksellers and book lovers around the world, The Queer Bookshelf is a celebration of the books that have helped generations of LGBTQ+ people find themselves on the page. From literary fiction to memoir, to crime, fantasy, and young adult, and even cowboy romance, it is a warm, entertaining companion for anyone beginning or deepening their own queer reading adventure.

$40, Scribe. Out June

RELIGION

Rome’s Age of Revolution

Tim Whitmarsh

How did Christianity, starting out as a minor offshoot of Judaism, grow into an international faith that shaped the world as we know it? Tim Whitmarsh shows that Christianity would never have succeeded if it had not taken advantage of the infrastructure and culture of the Roman Empire; in turn the new religion was indelibly shaped and transformed by Roman beliefs and ideas, especially those circulating in the Greek-speaking, or Hellenistic, eastern parts of the empire. This radical transformation, Tim argues, can only be described as a revolution. The consequences are with us to this day.

$37, Jonathan Cape & BH. Out June

Honeybees

Mary Trumble & Henry Fried Passionate beekeepers Mary and Henry left behind established careers to pursue a life devoted to honeybees and the vital role they play in our ecosystems. What began as a risk turned into a deeply rewarding journey. Bees’ impact extends beyond their hives: they sustain entire ecosystems, make modern agriculture possible and uphold biodiversity that supports countless other species. But bee populations are in decline, habitats are shrinking and colony health is under pressure worldwide. Blending science, storytelling and practical advice, this lavishly illustrated book shows you how to support bees and contribute to a healthier, more sustainable planet.

$35, Hardie Grant. Out June

MEDIA

Getting Murdoched

Andrew Dodd & Matthew Ricketson

For decades, Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire has shaped political landscapes, influenced elections and fuelled public opinion. But behind the headlines lies a darker story – of targeted campaigns, smear tactics, and relentless attacks on those who don’t fit the Murdoch mould, from LGBTQ+ communities and women’s rights advocates to progressive politicians, human rights defenders and conservatives deemed “not right enough”. Getting Murdoched: How Murdoch’s Media Wields Power and Punishment exposes how dissent is silenced and reputations destroyed.

$40, Hardie Grant. Out July

A Bird’s IQ

Louis Lefebvre

Surveying a wide variety of birds, including crows, finches, tits and parrots, Louis Lefebvre, a worldrenowned expert in animal behaviour, describes the remarkable innovations and problemsolving abilities of species often dismissed as “featherbrains”. From crows using cars as nutcrackers to cockatoos crafting tools, Lefebvre reveals how birds exhibit creativity, social learning, and even cultural transmission – traits once thought to be exclusive to humans and other primates. $37, Scribe. Out June

REFERENCE

Catalogue

Penguin Classics

From Achebe and Austen to Zola and Zweig, and from the Epic of Gilgamesh to 21st-century dystopias and autofiction, here is the complete list of every Penguin Classic in print. The list is arranged alphabetically by author and also includes key bibliographic information such as sub-series, genre and ISBN. Comprising 3,500 entries, this is the essential reference guide to the world’s largest and best-loved classics list.

$15, Penguin. Out June

After the Tall Timber

Renata Adler

As a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1963 to 2001, Renata Adler reported on the defining political and social events of the time, from civil rights in Alabama to the wars in Biafra and Vietnam; from the Watergate scandal to the Clinton impeachment inquiry. She wrote brilliantly, too, about films (as chief film critic for The New York Times), books, television and pop music. After the Tall Timber brings together 20 of Adler’s essays – including previously uncollected work – to showcase her nonfiction at its very best. $27, W&N. Out July

The Land and Its People

David Sedaris

In The Land and Its People, David Sedaris reflects on travel, friendship, caregiving and ageing through his signature blend of sharp humour and emotional honesty. From caring for his partner after surgery to awkward encounters abroad, Sedaris recounts adventures across Guatemala, Kenya and Vatican City, while contemplating family, mortality and the passing of time. Whether confiding in a Duolingo bot, enduring strange social interactions, or delighting in life’s absurd details, these essays balance wit and tenderness, revealing the wonder and fragility of ordinary human experience.

$33, Abacus. Out now

The God We Made: Quarterly Essay 102

Anna Goldsworthy

AI may be our most persuasive God yet. At the same time, it forces a confrontation with what it means to be human: bodies, fragility, memory. It raises questions about human connection, leisure and learning. And it brings new existential and ethical risks. In this dazzling essay, Anna Goldsworthy explores the implications of AI for art, culture and the self.

$30, Quarterly Essay. Out June

SOCIOLOGY

Angertainment

Ed Coper

Angertainment shows how our emotions are being hijacked to build political and cultural capital by those who know how to game the outrage economy. How “rage bait” – the 2025 Word of the Year – can change how you vote, what you buy and who you hate. In this high-stakes, highly entertaining journey through our new reality, Ed Coper unmasks the architects of this new power – from manosphere gurus to political demagogues – who have realised that in the attention economy, your anger is the only currency that matters. Darkly funny and terrifyingly urgent, Angertainment is a groundbreaking manual for dismantling the outrage machine.

$37, S&S/Summit Books. Out now

HEALTH

Chronic: Understanding Pain

Gillian Best

Humans: The Evolution of a Species

Alice Roberts

This illustrated exploration of human evolution examines how the body shaped humanity’s survival, creativity and adaptability across radically different environments.

From the dexterity of our hands to the endurance of our bodies and the complexity of our brains, the book investigates the physical traits that allowed humans to thrive around the world. Drawing on the latest fossil and archaeological discoveries, it challenges long-held assumptions about prehistoric life, including gender roles in hunting and survival. Combining scientific insight with vivid illustrations and diagrams, it presents an accessible and thought-provoking account of what makes humans uniquely capable and endlessly adaptable.

$55, Dorling Kindersley. Out June

The Shortest History of Reality

Geraint F. Lewis

In The Shortest History of Reality, the idea of “what is real” is traced from its everyday, commonsense beginnings to the mindbending discoveries of modern physics. Along the way, we encounter the great shifts in thought that reshaped our view of existence – from ancient philosophy to the rise of science, from Newton’s universe to the strange probabilities of the quantum world and beyond. Blending science, history and philosophy, this is a brisk and lucid tour through humanity’s changing grasp of reality.

$28, Black Inc. Out July

Chronic pain is one of the great public health crises of our age – virtually nobody is untouched, either living with it themselves or witnessing the discomfort and struggles of loved ones. Yet it is a topic that remains in the shadows, too often brushed aside or treated as an afterthought. Chronic: Understanding Pain is an urgent and vital answer to this deafening silence. In this fascinating investigation, Gillian Best seeks out the scientists and clinicians carrying out the cutting-edge research that could be the key to finally understanding and effectively treating this mysterious and debilitating condition. $50, Icon Books. Out June

PSYCHOLOGY

How to Use a Fork

Orlando Swayne

As a medical student, Orlando Swayne was taught that a broken brain doesn’t mend. But as a junior doctor, he began to meet patients for whom this was clearly not the case. Intrigued by what he saw, he delved into the emerging neuroscience of brain reorganisation, and discovered that over time brain tissue creates new networks and regenerates. The key to recovery after brain injury lies in neurorehabilitation: painstaking work that rebuilds shattered lives. In How to Use a Fork, the beautiful science of brain plasticity meets remarkable human stories of survival and recovery. $32, Picador. Out June

SELF-HELP

Being: Why It’s Harder to Be Human than a Hamster or a Herring

Rachel E. Menzies & Ross G. Menzies

Psychologists Rachel E. Menzies and Ross G. Menzies explore the existential challenges that define human life, from mortality and uncertainty to identity, meaning, and self-criticism. Examining how awareness of death shapes our fears, relationships and choices, they consider why being human is uniquely difficult – and how acceptance, purpose, and hope can help us live more authentically. Blending psychology and philosophy, the book reflects on how we cope with loss, regret, inner conflict and the unpredictability of life while searching for connection and understanding.

$37, Allen & Unwin. Out June

Soul Magic: A Century of Psychotherapy

Steve Ayan

This is the enthralling story of how Freud, Jung, Adler and their contemporaries revolutionised the way we understand ourselves, giving rise to psychotherapy, a field that would forever reshape Western culture. With captivating storytelling and deep insight, Ayan unpacks the dreams, rivalries, and obsessions of these early visionaries. More than simply a historical account, this book explores the lasting legacy of their work, revealing how the promise of personal transformation became a modern fixture of society – and how the questions they raised still echo in our lives today. $55, Pushkin. Out July

How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work

Jodi Kantor

In How to Start, journalist Jodi Kantor offers practical guidance for young people navigating uncertain careers and a rapidly changing world. Reflecting on her own uneven beginnings – including being kicked off her college newspaper – Kantor rejects empty motivational cliches in favor of thoughtful advice about work, ambition, money and risk. She argues that meaningful careers emerge from combining personal craft with social need, whether in politics, science, art or business. Addressing challenges such as economic instability and AI, the book provides a realistic yet hopeful framework for building a purposeful working life. $23, Bloomsbury. Out June

The Prosperous Heart

Julia Cameron

In this dynamic creative renewal program, the celebrated author of The Artist’s Way draws on decades of experience to confront the vulnerabilities of modern life. Granting readers courage to reflect on how our values are grounded in our art, Cameron offers tools, insights and prompts to help us tune into our inner wisdom and achieve spiritual fulfilment alongside creative purpose. Guiding us back to prosperity, this generous volume places us on track to pursue our true passions and live in abundance. $40, Souvenir Press. Out June

The Energy Game

Dr Amantha Imber

In 2024, organisational psychologist and bestselling author Dr Amantha Imber hit rock bottom. Despite two decades of consulting to clients like Google, Apple and Disney on productivity and wellbeing, no colourcoded calendar system or morning routine could fix what was wrong. She was completely and utterly burnt out. Sound familiar? Drawing on cutting-edge science and more than 50 research-backed challenges, The Energy Game gives you a system for rebuilding your vitality without a wellness retreat or life overhaul. $37, Penguin. Out July

I Eat the Stars

Sarah Wilson

It can be hard to escape the feeling that something is deeply wrong … that life has become precariously off-balance. We are hit hourly with headlines about catastrophic wildfires, unprecedented flooding, record heat waves, collapsing democracies, AI and nuclear threat, rising economic inequality, widespread unrest and more. So how do we continue to live as sensitive humans amidst such a tumultuous shift? What does life look like when the systems we rely on deteriorate? Should we be having kids? How do we make financial decisions? And, most importantly, how do we avoid succumbing to doom and despair? In I Eat the Stars, Sarah Wilson argues we are undergoing what every complex civilisation before us has: systemic collapse. Drawing on many years of research and wisdom gained from more than 200 conversations with philosophers, poets, game theorists and spiritual leaders, Wilson lays out a path for living fully, meaningfully and beautifully through these troubled times.

$37, Penguin. Out now

COOKING

Native Ingredients

Every Day

Nornie Bero

Chef and author

Nornie Bero, a proud Meriam woman from the Torres Strait, introduces readers to 10 key native ingredients – from warrigal greens, wattleseed and pepperberry to sweet potato and strawberry gum – each explored in its own dedicated chapter. Alongside stories of culture and Country, Nornie shares practical tips for sourcing, preparing and using these ingredients in everyday cooking. With more than 80 recipes for all occasions, the book moves effortlessly from nourishing weeknight meals and hearty comfort dishes to clever sides and show-stopping desserts.

$45, Hardie Grant. Out July

Something Sweet

Jessica Holmes

Welcome to the wonderful world of baking. Here to guide you on this sweet journey is Jessica Holmes, creator of cult online baking hub Sweetest Menu. In Something Sweet, you’ll find easy-tofollow recipes for one-bowl tea cakes, lunchbox-friendly cookies and an array of showstopping desserts. Jess’s helpful tips and friendly advice will guide you every step of the way to ensure your next sweet bake is a raging success. $45, Plum. Out June

Family

Claudine Boulstridge

Today most people work long hours, meaning that it can be hard to find the time to cook meals from scratch. Claudine Boulstridge’s Family will transform the way you eat as a family without upending your daily routine. With one-pot dishes, prepare-ahead meals, and minimal washing up, it is the perfect solution for health-conscious, timepressed families. From tips on cooking with your children to making homemade snacks and treats, this book is your go-to guide for healthy, flavoursome, stress-free meals. $55, Bluebird. Out August

Epic Veg

Jessica Prescott

Fresh, zingy, hearty, nourishing – Epic Veg will help you put delicious vegetarian food on the table every time, no matter what you’re craving. Whether you need a quick midweek meal, are entertaining guests, or pulling together lunch while working from home, Epic Veg has you covered. Following on from the bestselling Epic Salads, Epic Veg is an essential kitchen bible with more than 80 delicious vegetable-centred dishes – including creamy mushroom pasta, brothy baked chickpeas, zesty edamame salad and simple traybake with halloumi – that are low cost, low effort, and big on flavour. $50, Hardie Grant. Out July

TRAVEL

In Nigeria

Michael Palin

Middle Eastern Simple

Fatimah Omran

In Middle Eastern Simple, Fatimah invites you to enjoy the flavours and traditions she grew up with, now brought to life in a way that fits into any kitchen. Every bite will feel like you’re strolling through the streets of Fatimah’s home city in Lebanon. Learn how to make a Tripoli-style meat pie alongside a tangy fattoush salad, or a red lentil soup that pairs perfectly with a hearty one-tray lamb bake. There are also delectable desserts, from a palace bread pudding to a traditional semolina slice soaked in sweet sugar syrup. Then wash it all down with a smoothie, tea or lemon mint mocktail. $45, Penguin. Out July

With his 80th birthday looming, it crossed Michael Palin’s mind that now might be the time to hang up his boots, to lounge about at home, to take things easy. Then the opportunity to visit Africa’s most populous nation arose. A few weeks later, he was at Lagos airport. The journal he kept during his trip offers a kaleidoscopic view of a country where some 500 languages are spoken and which contains within its borders everything from tropical rainforests to grasslands to desert plains. Illustrated with colour photographs and brimming with wry humour and fascinating insights, this is a vivid and varied portrait of a complex country.

$50, Hutchinson Heinemann. Out June

Chasing the Northern Lights

DK Travel

You’ve seen the stunning photographs and the breathtaking videos, and now it’s time to experience the magic of the northern lights for yourself. But where on earth can you see them? When’s the best time to travel to see the lights in action? And what even are the aurora borealis? If “seeing the northern lights” has always been on your bucket list but you don’t know where to start, then Chasing the Northern Lights is the book for you.

$45, Dorling Kindersley. Out July

The Years of Travelling Anxiously

Tom Sykes

Over the past 20 years, writer and academic Tom Sykes has been lucky enough to travel all over the world. But his trips have often been marred – if not ruined – by anxiety. Sykes might hold a world record for the most panic attacks in the most places around the globe – from Lagos to Tokyo, Accra to Antalya, Manila to Portsmouth. Part travelogue, part wellbeing memoir, The Years of Travelling Anxiously hopes to solve a lifelong conundrum and in so doing help other anxious travellers, or indeed anyone who gets anxious about anything, wherever they go. $50, Icon Books. Out June

Mary Sims: A Retrospective

Marina Pacini

A painter and printmaker, Mary Sims (1940-2004) was an exceptional colourist whose meticulously constructed compositions are at once both whimsical and off-beat, displaying an idiosyncratic viewpoint and sly sense of humor. This volume spans her entire career, from her elegant intaglio prints made in the late 1950s, through spare, optically flat portraits of isolated figures on monochrome backgrounds from the 1960s and 1970s, monumental religious paintings that draw on Old Testament stories and mythology to riotous, maximalist still lifes from the 1980s and 1990s. Featuring 64 works, this publication also includes an illustrated biographical essay by art historian Marina Pacini. $85, Giles. Out July

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting

Edited by Sarah Howgate

Drawing into Painting explores how drawing remained central to Freud’s artistic practice throughout his life. From quick sketches to finished works in charcoal, pastel and etching, his drawings offer a rare window into his process, revealing shifts in style, experimentation, and his evolving way of seeing. Spanning his childhood and final years, the book traces the unconventional path from his drawing practice to his painting, and back again.

$90, National Portrait Gallery Publications. Out June

Jak Ihmalyan

This richly illustrated monograph, published alongside his exhibition at Istanbul’s Dirimart Pera, examines the life and work of Jak Ihmalyan. Born in Istanbul in 1922, Ihmalyan was a promising Armenian artist forced into exile in 1949 because of his Communist party affiliations. The book traces his artistic journey across Beirut, Warsaw, Beijing and Moscow, where he continued painting despite political pressure and displacement. Drawing from family, private and institutional collections, it highlights how his socially engaged art reflected both personal conviction and the broader cultural and ideological currents of the 20th century.

$325, Dirimart. Out June

Japan: A History in Objects

Angus Lockyer

This spirited visual account of life in the Japanese archipelago spans more than 15,000 years. It explores the history of the region through artefacts, from the lengthy prehistoric record, through the rise of Buddhism and a military elite in Japan’s classical and medieval periods, to the economic and cultural developments of the early modern and modern eras. A wide range of ceramics and sculpture, metalwork and lacquerware, paintings, prints and textiles provides a rich and compelling portrait of a society and culture that occupies a special place in the imagination of its citizens and visitors.

$75, Thames & Hudson. Out June

My Heart Is This: Tracey Emin on Painting

Martin Gayford

Richly illustrated with photographs of the artist and her art, here is a vivid and intimate portrait of Tracey Emin’s life and work in her own words, in conversation with art critic Martin Gayford. Emin reflects on painting – how she approaches it, why it matters to her, and how it connects to her life – and how everything has changed since her cancer diagnosis. $55, Thames & Hudson. Out June

To Catch a Fish

Mark Kurlansky

For as long as there have been humans, there have been humans trying to catch fish. Guiding readers through the waters and into the mind of the fish, Kurlansky considers why they behave the way they do and explores the many approaches to catching a fish, their ecology, and the ins and outs of cooking and eating your catch. Whether you’re a seasoned angler or a novice, or simply want to explore the world of fish, the 40 short essays in this collection and the dazzling illustrations by Bri Dostie, shed new light on these creatures and our relationship to them. $45, Storey. Out now

The FIFA World Cup Pop-Up Book

Edited by Daniel Melamud

From the first kick-off in 1930 to unforgettable finals that united billions of viewers around the globe, the story of the World Cup unfolds in spectacular pop-up form. Young-atheart readers will delight in pulling tabs, lifting flaps, and discovering surprises hidden in every corner, while devoted fans will appreciate the wealth of details – from rarely-seen referee match reports on legendary matches to personal recollections from tournament winners. With its vivid illustrations, intricate paper engineering, and engaging text, the book captures not only the game itself but also the culture, atmosphere, and passion that make the World Cup the pinnacle of global sport. $130, Rizzoli. Out now

Nonfiction

Letizia Battaglia

Walter Guadagnini

Letizia Battaglia was a Sicilian journalist and photographer who gained international recognition documenting Mafia violence for the newspaper L’Ora between 1976 and 1991. Witnessing assassinations, corruption, and some of Italy’s bloodiest years, she rejected being defined solely as a “Mafia photographer”, insisting her work was about life itself. Beyond scenes of violence, Battaglia captured intimate portraits of women, children, poverty and everyday Sicilian life with deep compassion and humanity. Her photographs reveal both the suffering and resilience woven through the experience of living in Sicily. $35, Thames & Hudson. Out August

ARCHITECTURE

A House in Japan

Edited by Iris Hempelmann & François- Luc Giraldeau

A House in Japan explores the home as a space where ideas of dwelling are constantly reimagined. In a culture shaped by precision and restraint, domestic projects become sites of quiet experimentation. These houses privilege clarity over excess, intent over display. Rigorous yet flexible, they adapt to daily rhythms while proposing fresh ways of living. This book reveals how Japanese homes, understated yet radical, show that even the everyday can be transformed into something unexpected.

$110, Gestalten. Out June

A Night at the Disco

Alice Harris

A Night at the Disco is a celebration of groundbreaking dance music from 1970 to 1979. An unprecedented collection of photographs of more than 100 artists, it illuminates the styles and sounds from a decade that sparked a global phenomenon in music and culture. Exclusive comments from Donna Summer, Barry Gibb, Debbie Harry, Giorgio Moroder, members of CHIC, Labelle, The Trammps, Village People, Earth, Wind & Fire, and dozens more artists, songwriters and producers offer fascinating insights that tell the story behind the beat.

$90, ACC Art Books. Out June

ACTIVITY

Colorwork Knitting from Head to Toe

Carmen Jorissen

Transform your knitting with a collection of 20 beautiful stranded colourwork knitting patterns. Whether you’re brand new to stranded colourwork or looking to deepen your skills, Colorwork Knitting from Head to Toe offers 20 thoughtfully designed patterns for hats, cowls, mittens and socks. Begin with simpler patterns like hats, and build your confidence toward more intricate mittens, all while learning techniques that are clearly explained and supported by video tutorials accessed through an included QR code.

$53, David & Charles. Out June

How to Draw Like Hokusai

Katsushika Hokusai

Celebrated for his dramatic and beautiful Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji landscape

woodblock prints, which included Under the Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai also applied his artistic skill to creating a series of drawing lessons. These lessons capture the beauty and style of his art, yet can be easily followed by beginners. Learn to draw more than 60 different animals, figures and objects, including swooping cranes, cherry blossom trees, butterflies and people. By breaking each subject down into simple lines and shapes, this drawing book for adults demonstrates with clear steps that even detailed drawings can be easily recreated.

$27, Michael O’Mara. Out July

POETRY

Black Life

Jack Davis

From award-winning playwright, author and activist Jack Davis comes this important and essential poetry collection. Black Life is a powerful and unflinching exploration of Aboriginal identity, resilience and resistance. Through vivid imagery and lyrical honesty, Davis gives voice to the struggles and triumphs of First Nations people, confronting themes of dispossession, cultural survival, and the enduring strength of community. His poetry is both deeply personal and profoundly political, weaving together stories of pain and hope to challenge readers and celebrate the richness of Aboriginal heritage.

$20, UQP. Out June

Song of the Shadow of a Seed

Luisa Mitchell

Mitchell’s debut collection is divided into different cycles around the life of a seed – elders, memory, language, hunger, burning, flowering, flight – and the poems within reflect the ways in which a seed, a person and a nation can contain the long history of what has been, as well as the promise of what is to come. These poems open conversations about connection to Country, the resilience of culture, and the complex articulation of identity as a First Nations descendant.

$30, Fremantle. Out June

Staff Picks Nonfiction

INTERIOR DESIGN

Mindful Living

Daniela Santos

Featuring emblematic projects by renowned architects and interior designers, Mindful Living celebrates spaces that foster wellbeing through natural materials, soft light, thoughtful proportions, and a deep connection to place. Each project reflects a mindful approach to living, where architecture becomes a quiet backdrop for daily rituals, contemplation, and harmony. More than a visual journey, Mindful Living invites readers to slow down, reconnect with their surroundings, and rediscover the beauty of spaces designed with purpose, serenity and human experience at their core.

$70, Loft Publication. Out July

PERFORMING ARTS

If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation

Daniel Hahn

Daniel Hahn, seasoned translator and Shakespeare fanatic, will change the way you think about language itself. Ranging widely across Shakespeare’s works, and across the world’s languages, this book explores why we choose the words we do and what effect they have. No knowledge of any particular language is required, though a bit of patience for the nerdiest of close reading is desirable. This micro-attention to detail reveals anew the joy of Shakespeare, celebrates creativity and revels in the power of words themselves.

$55, Canongate Trade. Out now

We Did OK, Kid

Anthony Hopkins

Born in the Welsh steel town of Port Talbot during wartime hardship, Anthony Hopkins was dismissed as a poor student with little promise. Everything changed when he saw the 1948 film adaptation of Hamlet, igniting a passion for acting that led him from obscurity to international acclaim. In this candid memoir, Hopkins reflects on pivotal moments in his career, including training at RADA, working with Laurence Olivier, and creating unforgettable performances such as Hannibal Lecter and King Lear. He also confronts the personal costs of addiction, fractured family relationships, and his long journey to sobriety.

Illustrated with personal photographs, We Did OK, Kid is an honest portrait of a remarkable life and career.

$27, Simon & Schuster. Out June

Books we love

Surviving Autocracy

Masha Gessen

$25, Granta Paperbacks

This was the first book by Gessen I picked up, and it was impressive how accurate and prophetic it was. Published in 2020, it focuses on the Trump presidency and slices through the fog of “alternate facts” that Trump thrives on, giving a searing insight into why the US is in such a sorry state today. Many of Gessen’s ideas are equally applicable to Australia, and despite being a relatively old book it felt shockingly timely. – Imogen

John of John

Douglas Stuart

$35, Pan Macmillan

Twentysomething Cal reluctantly returns to the Scottish Isle he was raised on, a place ravaged by Thatcher, Calvinism and community gossip. Here, the life he has envisioned for himself clashes with his father’s expectations, and his father is hiding secrets of his own. A layered exploration of familial obligation, Stuart’s latest work is quietly profound, deliciously sordid and unafraid of taboo. – August

The Trap

Fiona Kelly McGregor

$35, Picador Australia

Fiona Kelly McGregor is an amazingly inventive and original writer. Her previous book, Iris, was a one-of-a-kind book that is matched by her latest, The Trap, a pitch-perfect evocation of Sydney’s WWII-era of criminality, grimy corruption and repression. – David

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

Rabih Alameddine

$35, Corsair

A rather silly (and overlong) title and a cover that makes it look a bit like a cosy crime belies this fantastic novel of a Beirut school teacher and, yes, his relationship with his mother. There is a fantastically acerbic wit to the narrator, but the novel has a shockingly dark core and the book also acts as a history and love letter to the city from the ‘60s through to the present day. As bombs yet again drop on this warbattered city, it is both timely and intensely moving. – Andrew

Helm

Sarah Hall

$25, Faber Fiction

Beautifully written, Helm is told from the mercurial and elemental perspective of a Cumbrian wind from Neolithic times until the present. Notwithstanding its curious premise and narrative range, I found Hall’s novel a dizzying and provocative ride through the human historical relationship with the power of nature and I was more than happy to be buffeted and challenged. – Jennifer

Ancient Africa Christopher Ehret

How to Talk About Love Plato

Ants: A Visual Guide

Heather Campbell & Benjamin Blanchard

India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent

Audrey Truschke

$70

Prophet Song Paul Lynch

Snakes of Australia Tie Eipper & Scott Eipper

Radical by Nature James T. Costa

So Shall You Reap Donna Leon

Lessons Ian McEwan

Natural Magic Renee Bergland

Literary Journeys Ed. John McMurtrie

Parachute Women Elizabeth Winder

The Invention of International Order Glenda Sluga

The World the Plague Made James Belich

The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives Danna Staaf

Twelve Caesars Mary Beard

Reid All About It

Winter closes in and I turn – as always – to my preferred nocturnal reading: the Uncanny and Supernatural

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

Edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner & Robert Wise

$80,

Penguin

It is always a pleasure to revisit a classic collection. Originally published in 1944, this unique anthology was reissued in 1994 for the 50th anniversary, when I finally obtained a copy. It reappeared in 2024, to celebrate an 80th birthday. Do not be deterred by either the size –1056 pages – or the price. This is the foundation volume to begin your literary investigation – and possible addiction to – a unique literary genre. There are 52 stories contained within: 20 are deemed “terror”, 32 are “supernatural”. I opened it up once more – for the first time in over a decade –for a thorough read. Some forgotten stories were recalled with surprise: Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1927) being one. Another was F. Marion Crawford’s The Screaming Skull (1908): horrible screaming sounds, supposedly made by a human skull kept in a hatbox, eventually drive a retired captain, living alone in a seaside cottage, to madness.

Here, I select my favourite few – in no order.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea (1872) The Reverend Jennings, a respectable society man, is hounded by a fearful,

mysterious, simian creature. One of which is summoned by the overindulgence of a favourite beverage. I first read this story while travelling on a night train to Munich in the 1980s. A conductor suddenly opened the compartment door to collect tickets – and I jumped out of my skin!

Guy de Maupassant – The Horla (1887) The diary entries of a young man that – over time – describe either possession by a malevolent spiritual entity or a descent into depression and hallucinatory madness.

M.R. James – Casting the Runes (1911) A diabolic ritual used by a practitioner of the dark arts to exact revenge on a critic eventually rebounds upon the summoner. Some things are more easily started then stopped.

Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan (1894) A scientific experiment upon a young woman is intended to pierce the veil of the divine realm. A child born as a consequence grows to maturity. Using several identities, this mysterious, alluring female wreaks havoc – financial ruin, suicide or madness – to all men who enter her orbit. Machen’s novella is told over decades, from multiple viewpoints, with numerous evidentiary clues – diaries, letters, manuscripts.

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural is a masterpiece of indirect and inferred horror and has influenced writers from H.P. Lovecraft (also represented here with The Dunwich Horror) to Stephen King.

– Stephen Reid

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3. Babel

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4. Son of Nobody

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5. Flashlight

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7. Katabasis

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8. Rejection

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9. Endling

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10. Heart the Lover

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4. A Different Kind of Power

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6. Fire in Every Direction

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7. Boy Friends

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8. For the People

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9. I Eat the Stars

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10. Eight Million Ways to Happiness

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1. The Greatest Goal in the Galaxy

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2. The Epically Awesome Odyssey R.A. Spratt

3. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Manga

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4. The Serpent Rider Yxavel Magno Dino

5. Romeo v Juliet R.A. Spratt

6. Freddie Jones: The Mystery of the Troublesome Trees

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7. The Firefly Crown Yxavel Magno Dino

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10. The Adventures of Captain Underpants

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