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If You Tell Anyone, You’re Next (Jack Heath, Scholastic)
Released October 2023
Bestselling author Jack Heath has written 40 books for children, teenagers and adults. He returns with a pulse-racing psychological thriller set in a suburban high school. Zoe’s best friend Jayden... Read more
Salt River Road (Molly Schmidt, Fremantle)
Released October 2023
Radio producer, journalist and now award-winning writer Molly Schmidt has poured her heart into her first book Salt River Road. ‘Write what you know’, they say, and having lost her... Read more
The Modern (Anna Kate Blair, Scribner)
Released September 2023
Art aficionados and literary enthusiasts will feel at home in The Modern, in which Anna Kate Blair navigates New York City’s modern art institutions. Sophia is a MoMA fellow in NYC, who grapples with her instinct to sentimentalise her... Read more
Back to the Storks (Cressida Gaukroger, illus Andrew Joyner, Little Hare)
Released October 2023
Back to the Storks plays on the old wives’ tale that babies are delivered to homes by storks. Otis is such a loud baby that when his parents are at... Read more
Bennelong and Phillip: A history unravelled (Kate Fullagar, Scribner)
Released October 2023
Bennelong and Phillip: A history unravelled is an important book for our current time. In 2023, Australians will vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum to decide whether to recognise Aboriginal... Read more
Finding My Bella Vita (Pia Miranda, Hachette)
Released September 2023
Pia Miranda’s memoir, Finding My Bella Vita, is like a long phone call with a friend. Based in Melbourne, Miranda is an actor best known for her role as Josie... Read more
Faking It: Artificial intelligence in a human world (Toby Walsh, La Trobe University Press)
Released October 2023
In his opening chapter, Toby Walsh says Faking It is about ‘the artificiality of artificial intelligence’. At a time when venture capitalist-backed hustlers dominate the field and try to make... Read more
In Times of Bushfires and Billy Buttons (Steven Herrick, Ford St)
Released October 2023
With his parents in jail for drug dealing, high-school student Ethan goes to live with his Aunt Helen, a supermarket stacker who dreams of the Greek Islands. He gets by... Read more
Summer of Blood (Dave Warner, Fremantle)
Released October 2023
Ned Kelly award-winning author and musician-songwriter Dave Warner revisits characters from his 1999 novel Big Bad Blood. Set two years after the events of that book, in 1967, Summer of... Read more
Me, Her, Us (Yen-Rong Wong, UQP)
Released September 2023
Yen-Rong Wong’s Me, Her, Us encapsulates the Asian female body experience in a post-pandemic world. Wong oscillates between belonging and unbelonging in this bold-yet-anxious slice of Asian-Australian diaspora experience. The work is broken... Read more
The Sugar Palace (Fiona McIntosh, Michael Joseph)
Released October 2023
Set in 1920s Sydney, The Sugar Palace is a pacy historical adventure with the perfect dose of romance, and shifts between the shadows of Sydney’s criminal underbelly and The Rocks.... Read more
This Book is a Time Machine (Tracey Dembo, illus Lucinda Gifford, Affirm)
Released October 2023
Children, and readers of all ages, delight in books where all is not as it seems: conventions of time and space may be disrupted; the narrator speaks to the reader... Read more
Kip of the Mountain (Emma Gourlay, HarperCollins)
Released October 2023
Emma Gourlay’s debut novel for readers aged 8–12 is the madcap adventure of Kip Boowitt, who lives on South Africa’s Table Mountain. Beleaguered by a distant dad and cruel schoolmates,... Read more
Giovanni (Crystal Corocher, illus Margeaux Davis, Wombat Books)
Released October 2023
Giovanni is the true story of a young Italian boy who migrates to Australia with his family in 1881 as one of the first Italian migrants. Promised paradise by a... Read more
We Know a Place (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Lothian)
Released September 2023
Award-winning and well-loved writer for all ages, Maxine Beneba Clarke, celebrates the magic of bookshops in her latest title for younger readers. We Know a Place is an illustrated tribute to those... Read more
Your Head’s Not The Place To Store Problems (Josh Pyke, illus Stephen Michael King, Scholastic)
Released September 2023
By replacing human characters with a diverse range of animals, such as bears, dragons, fish, and dogs, Your Head's Not the Place to Store Problems skilfully demonstrates to children the... Read more
Transgender Australia: A history since 1910 (Noah Riseman, MUP)
Released September 2023
Noah Riseman’s Transgender Australia: A History since 1910 is the first book that tracks Australian trans history and explores the lives and impacts of gender-diverse people. It’s important for LGBTQ+... Read more
Others Were Emeralds (Lang Leav, Viking)
Released September 2023
The year is 1997—the era of Jerry Maguire and Scream, dial-up modems, and rising anti-Asian sentiment in the heavily politicised Australian town of Whitlam. Poet Lang Leav’s debut novel revolves... Read more
Body Friend (Katherine Brabon, Ultimo)
Released September 2023
Katherine Brabon distinguished herself with her first novels, The Memory Artist and The Shut Ins, but she has surpassed these and reached an early career pinnacle with her enigmatically titled novel, Body Friend. If a... Read more
One Day We’re All Going to Die (Elise Esther Hearst, HarperCollins)
Released September 2023
Elise Esther Hearst’s impressive debut novel One Day We’re All Going To Die is introspective, evocative and imbued with poetic simplicity. With a playfully dark narrative, the book follows 27-year-old... Read more
