What Am I Reading?
Tin Man – Sarah Winman
TIN MAN (Tinder Press 2017) by Sarah Winman has been on my TBR list ever since I read STILL LIFE, years ago now (still one of my favourite ever books). I had no idea what TIN MAN was about, only that it was written before STILL LIFE and everyone had good things to say...
All Her Lives – Ingrid Horrocks
ALL HER LIVES (UQP 2025) by Ingrid Horrocks is a collection of nine very different stories – varied times and settings – that all have in common revolutionary and feminist themes. Many of the stories are loosely connected either through situation or through the casual...
Rite of Spring – Kris Kneen
When author Kris Kneen releases another book into the world, you are guaranteed of evocative, atmospheric, literary writing. The variables are genre – they write in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and memoir. And if as with their latest novel, RITE OF SPRING (Transit...
Three Reasons for Revenge – Dervla McTiernan
Dervla McTiernan is known for her twisty, complex plots and her superb characterisation, and her latest crime novel THREE REASONS FOR REVENGE (Harper Collins 2026) once again gives readers a curious and intoxicating crime to unravel using the clues and hints she...
You Girls Play Nice – KD Aldyn
YOU GIRLS PLAY NICE by KD Aldyn (Poisoned Pen Press 2026) is a darkly unhinged murder mystery and psychological thriller where almost everyone is a suspect, everyone has a motive and yet the police can’t seem to pin the crime on anybody. Set in contemporary Melbourne...
Where Truth Ends – Mark Smith
Is it ever okay to do the wrong thing for the right reason? Or to do the right thing for the wrong reason? In author Mark Smith’s fifth book (his second crime novel for adults) WHERE TRUTH ENDS (Pan Macmillon 2026), he explores these questions amidst the contemporary...
Phantom Days – Angela O’Keefe
What an extraordinary, spare, glittering literary gem is PHANTOM DAYS (UQP 2026) by Angela O’Keefe. In her trademark prose style – ethereal, strange, beguiling and with a whimsical sense of wonder, O’Keefe presents a story of two women, mother and daughter, Maggie and...
Once We Were Wildlife – Inga Simpson
Indisputably one of the top wildlife and environmental writers in Australia, Inga Simpson (also an accomplished photographer) captures Country, land, climate issues, species extinction, habitat and the sheer wonder of individual animals, birds, fish, insects, plants,...
Life Drawing – Emily Lighezzolo
Emily Lighezzolo’s debut novel LIFE DRAWING (UQP 2026) explores the female body from a multitude of perspectives: the physical changes of puberty, childbirth, menopause and aging; how females consider their own bodies over time; the male gaze and how it affects...
One Night at Silver Lake – Katherine Scholes
ONE NIGHT AT SILVER LAKE (Penguin Random House 2026) by Katherine Scholes is a fascinating insight into life in the 1960’s in the dual settings of Tanzania (gaining independence) and Tasmania. The author’s work is informed by her own experiences of growing up in...
Frogsong – Melissa Manning
I opened the first pages of FROGSONG (UQP 2026) with somewhat anxious trepidation, because how could author Melissa Manning have written a novel as wonderful as her first book SMOKEHOUSE (an impossibly good collection of interlocked short stories)? But my worries were...
Idaho – Emily Ruskovich
IDAHO (Penguin Random House 2017) by Emily Ruskovich is such a delightful, masterful, brilliant, expansive, heartbreaking jewel of a novel, and the rightful winner of the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award (decided by librarians and readers the world over). This...