What Am I Reading?
The Stranger at the Table – Cassie Hamer
Author Cassie Hamer is known for her dark domestic dramas, filled with the minutiae of family life immediately recognisable to anyone with small people in their orbit, every book touched with secrets, scandal, betrayal or regret. Her latest novel THE STRANGER AT THE...
First Lie Wins – Ashley Elston
FIRST LIE WINS (Hachette Headline 2024) is a propulsive, page-turning psychological thriller by Ashley Elston. The opening premise is simple but preposterous: you meet a stranger at a party who looks uncannily similar to you, and even shares your name; soon one of you...
You Could Make This Place Beautiful – Maggie Smith
Award-winning poet, author and teacher Maggie Smith shot to international fame with her short poem ‘Good Bones’ and the last line of that poem is the title of her much-anticipated memoir, YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL (Simon and Schuster Canongate 2024), a...
Red Dust Running – Anita Heiss
Is romance the highest selling fiction genre in the world? Yes, it is. And why is that? It’s because there’s nothing readers like more than a good comfort read, some hilarious rom-com, and a dash of loving. Author Anita Heiss knows this as well as anyone, and while...
Ghost Cities – Siang Lu
From the inventive and intellectual imagination of author Siang Lu comes the extraordinary novel GHOST CITIES (UQP 2024), a dichotomous tale of ancient China and a contemporary abandoned (or ghost city) set in modern-day China. Two very different stories that...
Out of the Woods – Gretchen Shirm
In OUT OF THE WOODS (Transit Lounge 2025), author Gretchen Shirm presents a well-researched, shocking, thought-provoking literary novel that explores the atrocities of genocide from the intimate perspective of a woman working at a trial at the Hague. Set in 2000,...
Vessel – Dani Netherclift
Vessel (Upswell 2024) by Dani Netherclift is a lyrical, poetic remembering and reimagining of the drownings of the author’s father and brother in an irrigation channel when she was 18 years old. Netherclift asserts she writes a ‘lyrical essay’ (a term I adore and...
First Name Second Name – Steve MinOn
Steve MinOn’s debut FIRST NAME SECOND NAME (UQP 2025) is part literary fiction, part autofiction, part literary horror, part coming of age story, part historical fiction. MinOn gathers together these many strands of writerly straw and spins them into a single gold...
The Ledge – Christian White
The Ledge (Affirm Press 2024) is another outstanding crime thriller by the multi-talented Christian White. Known as the master of the twist (the reveal in his book The Wife and The Widow is still my all-time favourite), White’s work encompasses film, TV and novels....
The Burrow – Melanie Cheng
Melanie Cheng’s third book THE BURROW (Text Publishing 2024) was on my TBR list but rapidly moved up when it was recently longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize. This slim novel packs a punch of emotional intensity. Cheng’s second novel (her first publication was a...
17 Years Later – JP Pomare
JP Pomare’s latest crime thriller 17 YEARS LATER is his best yet. Layered, complex and well-crafted, with compelling characters and an intriguing plot, 17 YEARS LATER – Who Really Killed The Primrose Family? (Hachette 2024) demonstrates Pomare at the height of his...
Groomed – Sonia Orchard
Author Sonia Orchard dedicates her book GROOMED: A memoir about abuse, the search for justice and how we fail to keep our children safe (Affirm Press 2025) to: ‘… my Mum and my girls, and for carers, children and survivors everywhere’. This arresting title and cover –...