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Pearly and Pig and the Great Hairy Beast (Sue Whiting, Walker Books)
Released March 2022
Pearly Woe is not your average 10-year-old. She can speak 27 languages, talk to and understand most animals and, in this tale, travels to Antarctica. However, this is no holiday.... Read more
The Sorrow Stone (Kári Gíslason, UQP)
Released March 2022
In the wintery and unforgiving wilds of pre-medieval Iceland, a widow named Disa and her young son are running in fear of their lives. Disa has committed a bloody act... Read more
Sadvertising (Ennis Ćehić, Vintage)
Released March 2022
In this debut collection of short stories, Ennis Ćehić uses deeply flawed characters to cleverly reflect the absurdity of late-stage capitalism. Sadvertising identifies obsession, narcissism and neuroses as reasonable responses... Read more
When You’re Older (Sofie Laguna, illus by Judy Watson, A&U Children)
Released March 2022
There are many picture books that look at life with a new sibling from the perspective of a young child, probably because these books are regularly requested in bookshops and... Read more
Moth in a Fancy Cardigan (Charlotte Lance, illus by David Booth, Berbay)
Released March 2022
This illustrated middle-grade novel is a cute and quirky story about self-expression and the courage to be seen, told from the perspectives of a shy moth and a popular butterfly.... Read more
This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch (Tabitha Carvan, HarperCollins)
Released March 2022
When Tabitha Carvan suddenly falls in love with the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who she has never met, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Her growing obsession simultaneously puzzles,... Read more
Tik Merauke: An epidemic like no other (John Richens, MUP)
Released March 2022
In the early 1900s the sexually transmitted infection donovanosis ravaged the Marind of New Guinea. Through the lens of this disease, known as tik Merauke to the native people, doctor... Read more
Only a Monster (Vanessa Len, A&U)
Released February 2022
Joan is enjoying her summer in London with her eccentric family and dream job at the historic Holland House. After unexpectedly losing several hours out of her day after a... Read more
A Great Hope (Jessica Stanley, Picador)
Released March 2022
When ACTU boss John Clare falls to his death from the roof of the family home, a note found on him makes it seem like suicide. But is that the... Read more
The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness (Matt Ottley, Dirt Lane)
Released February 2022
An author, visual artist and composer, Matt Ottley has combined his talents in his latest work to create a multi-modal sensory feast that merges words, art and music. Bold and... Read more
The Islands (Emily Brugman, A&U)
Released February 2022
It’s the 1950s and the Finnish migrants who have made their home on the ruthless terrain of Little Rat Island are accustomed to surviving harsh landscapes, both emotional and physical.... Read more
The Power of Podcasting: Telling stories through sound (Siobhán McHugh, UNSW Press)
Released February 2022
It’s strange to think that ‘less than a decade ago, most people had never heard of podcasting’, as Siobhán McHugh points out in The Power of Podcasting. In this part... Read more
Big World, Tiny World: Forest (Jess Racklyeft, Affirm)
Released February 2022
Jess Racklyeft will already be a familiar name to readers of picture books, and Big World, Tiny World: Forest is just as lovely as her earlier works. The book begins with a... Read more
The Grass Hotel (Craig Sherborne, Text)
Released February 2022
A woman suffering from dementia speaks to her son in her own idiosyncratic, damaged voice—her ‘wiring’ is gone. The mother-narrator's son is introverted and perhaps on the autism spectrum: he... Read more
The Furies (Mandy Beaumont, Hachette)
Released February 2022
A woman in a small Australian town is haunted. Death is all around her: she is still grieving her murdered sister, Mallory, while the spectre of her mother’s arrest and... Read more
South Flows the Pearl (Mavis Gock Yen, ed by Siaoman Yen & Richard Horsburgh, SUP)
Released February 2022
Over the 80s and 90s, Mavis Gock Yen (1916–2008) collected the stories of her contemporaries—Australian Chinese people whose memories and experiences spanned the late 1800s through to almost the end... Read more
The Cane (Maryrose Cuskelly, A&U)
Released February 2022
Award-winning nonfiction writer Maryrose Cuskelly’s first leap into fiction is set in a small Australian town where an unsolved crime turns the community upside down. It’s the 1970s and it... Read more
Xavier in the Meantime (Kate Gordon, Riveted Press)
Released February 2022
Xavier in the Meantime is the new companion novel to Kate Gordon’s CBCA award-winning Aster’s Good, Right Things. Focusing this time on Xavier, Aster’s best friend, the story takes a sensitive but... Read more
The Very Last List of Vivian Walker (Megan Albany, Hachette)
Released February 2022
This quiet but compelling novel follows the very ordinary path of an ordinary woman completing the ordinary business of dying. However, it is in this ordinariness that the heart of... Read more
A Witness of Fact (Drew Rooke, Scribe)
Released February 2022
A Witness of Fact examines the controversial public life of South Australia's former chief forensic pathologist Dr Colin Manock, and his problematic role in the state's criminal justice system. Manock might... Read more
