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The Vexatious Haunting of Lily Griffin (Paula Hayes, illus by Katy Jiang, Fremantle Press)
Released July 2022
Eleven-year-old Lily Griffin is precocious but lonely—bullied by her brother and benignly neglected by the rest of her unusual family. Lily’s life changes dramatically when she discovers a girl trapped... Read more
Jack’s Jumper (Sara Acton, Walker)
Released July 2022
Jack’s jumper is far too big for him (it once belonged to his beloved big brother Paul, who has grown up and is rarely home anymore) but that’s half the... Read more
The Chronic Pain Couple (Karra Eloff, Exisle)
Released July 2022
Karra Eloff met her forever partner while she was struck with chronic pain. Since that time Eloff, a health professional, founded the Chronic Pain Couple, an organisation that delivers practical... Read more
Blue Hour (Sarah Schmidt, Hachette)
Released July 2022
Sarah Schmidt’s second novel, following her award-winning debut See What I Have Done, is an intensely absorbing emotional journey through motherhood and trauma set against the turbulent 20th century. In... Read more
The Angry Women’s Choir (Meg Bignell, Michael Joseph)
Released July 2022
When going through tough times in life you often turn to any solace you can find, sometimes discovering it in the unlikeliest of places. For Freycinet Barnes that solace just... Read more
Holy Woman (Louise Omer, Scribe)
Released July 2022
For Louise Omer, leaving a problematic marriage became leaving a faith. For her, the two went hand-in-hand, one a symbol of the other: the wife is subject to the husband,... Read more
Tarni’s Chance (Paul Collins, illus by Jules Ober, Ford St)
Released July 2022
In Tarni’s Chance, the world of Paul Collins and Jules Ober’s young protagonist is grey with sadness as her parents argue, and her inner mood is reflected in the monochromatic... Read more
The Snow Laundry (Mette Jakobsen, HarperCollins)
Released July 2022
Ally, her boyfriend Bon, and hundreds of other homeless young people live together in a former hotel converted into a state-run laundry and kitchen. The new home is courtesy of... Read more
Old Fellow (Christopher Cheng, illus by Liz Anelli, Walker)
Released June 2022
Old Fellow, written by Christopher Cheng and illustrated by Liz Anelli, is a warm, simple and engaging story of an old man and his old dog. Which one of the... Read more
My Spare Heart (Jared Thomas, A&U)
Released June 2022
There’s a lot to unpack in this YA novel, which covers issues including alcoholism, climate change, divorce and racism. At the centre of it all is 17-year-old Phoebe. She is... Read more
Forty Nights (Pirooz Jafari, Ultimo)
Released July 2022
Forty Nights is the literary debut of photographer turned lawyer and writer Pirooz Jafari. The novel weaves together three separate timelines, moving between 1360s Sweden, 1980s Iran and present-day Australia—with... Read more
Swimming Home (Judy Cotton, Black Inc.)
Released June 2022
Judy Cotton is an internationally celebrated visual artist who has work in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Australia. Her father, Sir Robert... Read more
WAKE (Shelley Burr, Hachette)
Released May 2022
The question of what really happened to Evie McCreery has occupied amateur sleuths in online chat forums for years. But for Mina McCreery, ever since her twin sister was taken... Read more
The Eulogy (Jackie Bailey, Hardie Grant)
Released June 2022
The Eulogy by Jackie Bailey is at once sprawling and intimate: it’s a novel of race, disability, trauma, poverty, abuse and maternal rage that takes place over the course of... Read more
Hip Hop & Hymns (Mawunyo Gbogbo, Penguin)
Released June 2022
Hip Hop & Hymns is a beautiful and heart-wrenching memoir by Mawunyo Gbogbo, music and pop culture reporter for the ABC. Gbogbo begins her story in Ghana, where her parents... Read more
The Museum of Broken Things (Lauren Draper, Text)
Released June 2022
The concise opening of Lauren Draper’s debut YA novel immediately had me hooked: a new town, a mysterious statue and a curse all make for intriguing storylines. In The Museum... Read more
An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life (Paul Dalla Rosa, A&U)
Released June 2022
The fiction of Melbourne-based Paul Dalla Rosa has been published in the Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's and Meanjin. His debut book, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, contains 10 short... Read more
What We All Saw (Mike Lucas, Puffin)
Released June 2022
In a small English country town in the 1970s, four friends make their way to the local quarry, a place where stories of witches and curses are born. Hag’s Drop,... Read more
Our Members Be Unlimited (Sam Wallman, Scribe)
Released June 2022
Unionism is about more than your rights at work. It is something greater even than a form of politics at the point of production: union struggle is composed of those... Read more
Daughters of Durga: Dowries, gender violence and family in Australia (Manjula Datta O’Connor, MUP)
Released June 2022
With Daughters of Durga, author, psychiatrist and campaigner Manjula Datta O'Connor has written an impassioned and empathetic treatise on the abuses of a patriarchal system. It may surprise readers to... Read more
