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On Drugs (Chris Fleming, Giramondo)
Released August 2019
Philosopher Chris Fleming’s memoir is a searching, considered account of drug and alcohol use and the mechanisms of addiction. Fleming traces his history of marijuana, codeine-based painkillers and alcohol consumption,... Read more
Taking Tom Murray Home (Tim Slee, HarperCollins)
Released July 2019
This debut novel and winner of HarperCollins’ Banjo Prize is based on the ingenious premise of a funeral-protest that raises awareness of the pressures facing dairy farmers from banks, supermarkets... Read more
Love and Other Battles (Tess Woods, HarperCollins)
Released July 2019
Tess Woods’ latest novel follows the lives of three generations of women: Jess is a flower child who falls for a soldier under the shadow of the Vietnam war; Jamie... Read more
Guinea Pig in White Wine Sauce (Alan Rochford, Affirm)
Released July 2019
Guinea Pig in White Wine Sauce is the memoir of restaurateur Alan Rochford, whose cottage bistro is tucked away in the Adelaide Hills. Told as a series of anecdotes, the... Read more
Fortune (Lenny Bartulin, A&U)
Released July 2019
Lenny Bartulin—who cut his teeth with the Jack Susko crime series—made a dramatic shift with his rollicking 2013 historical novel Infamy. But the visceral energy and dirty, real descriptions that... Read more
The Yield (Tara June Winch, Hamish Hamilton)
Released July 2019
The Yield unpicks intergenerational trauma and redacted histories in prose that glimmers. The word ‘yield’ has a dual meaning: in English it refers to the harvest reaped from the land... Read more
A Constant Hum (Alice Bishop, Text)
Released July 2019
Alice Bishop’s debut is a collection of short stories linked by the central theme of bushfire, specifically Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday fires, which killed and injured hundreds of people, decimating... Read more
The Warming (Craig Ensor, Ventura)
Released July 2019
There’s a lot of climate change-inspired fiction around at the moment—sci-fi, apocalyptic, hopeful and despairing. The Warming has elements of all these but it’s really just about people. People who... Read more
Something to Believe In (Andrew Stafford, UQP)
Released July 2019
This memoir is rock journalist Andrew Stafford’s first book since his 2004 milestone Pig City, which mapped Brisbane music ‘from the Saints to Savage Garden’. Named after a Ramones song,... Read more
Fake: A startling true story of love in a world of liars, cheats, narcissists, fantasists and phonies (Stephanie Wood, Vintage)
Released July 2019
In 2017 journalist Stephanie Wood penned a piece for Good Weekend magazine in which she detailed a relationship she’d had with a man she met online. The relationship went awry,... Read more
Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories (ed by Michael Earp, Walker)
Released June 2019
Among the boon of recent #LoveOzYA anthologies (Begin, End, Begin; Meet Me at the Intersection; Underdog), Kindred takes the unique position of being entirely devoted to stories by and about... Read more
Fox & Bird (Edwina Wyatt, illus by Alice Lindstrom, Little Hare)
Released June 2019
Edwina Wyatt’s picture book is about testing the bonds of new friendship. Fox’s loneliness lends him to do strange things. He tries to befriend a bird but she has a... Read more
One Careless Night (Christina Booth, Black Dog)
Released June 2019
Christina Booth is an award-winning author and illustrator who has previously collaborated with well-known Australian authors such as Colin Thiele and Jackie French. In One Careless Night, Booth recreates the... Read more
Lights Out, Leonard (Josh Pyke, illus by Chris Nixon, Puffin)
Released June 2019
This book has a perennial theme—a child who’s scared of the dark—but with a really original twist: parents who write a manual on how to scare monsters. Chris Nixon’s illustrations... Read more
So She Did: The Story of May Wirth (Simi Genziuk, illus by Renée Treml, Affirm)
Released June 2019
Born in Bundaberg in 1984, May Wirth showed an unusual knack for acrobatics at an early age. So much so that she was adopted by an equestrienne from the famous... Read more
Cheeky Dogs: To Lake Nash and Back (Dion Beasley & Johanna Bell, A&U)
Released June 2019
Dion Beasley’s illustrated memoir details his early life moving between a couple of remote communities in the Northern Territory before settling at Tennant Creek. Both profoundly deaf and suffering muscular... Read more
My Book (Not Yours) (Ben Sanders, Lothian)
Released June 2019
This is the first in what is slated to be a series of picture books featuring Lento (a sloth) and Fox (a fox). It joins the growing trend of books... Read more
Secrets of a Schoolyard Millionaire (Nat Amoore, Puffin)
Released June 2019
In her first children’s book, Nat Amoore has created such a likeable heroine in Tess Heckleton, entrepreneur and life advice-giver, that her unlikely adventures and somewhat unlikely personality are entirely... Read more
Mindcull (K H Canobi, Ford Street)
Released June 2019
Eila, a rising social media star, is shortlisted to become the new face of Pearl, a virtual reality tech company. She is invited to spend three days in England trying... Read more
Split: True Stories of Leaving, Loss, and New Beginnings (ed by Lee Kofman, Ventura)
Released June 2019
Author and editor Lee Kofman sent a callout for personal essays about breaking up. The essays could be about any kind of separation: with people, objects, whatever. Split: True Stories... Read more
