As you’ll read in Joe Rubbo’s wonderful piece of writing, the person whose name is synonymous with Readings (and the Australian books and publishing industry at large), Mark Rubbo, has officially stepped back from his role as Managing Director. It’s not something I can entirely compute, so present is Mark in my daily working life. I predict things will feel for me and my colleagues both very different and almost the same, and that’s because Mark has fostered such a vibrant and unique self-sustaining Readings culture. He is and will remain everywhere and in everything we do!

You’ll see that Mark has reviewed The Visitors by Jane Harrison in these pages. It is Harrison’s debut adult novel, based on her play of the same name: it’s our Melbourne City Reads pick this month. You may recall that Melbourne City Reads (MCR) was an initiative dreamt up by Mark in 2020 to help support Melbourne-based authors and draw attention to the bookshops in the City of Melbourne as an aid to our collective covid recovery.

The Hill of Content, The Paperback Bookshop, Mary Martin, Dymocks Melbourne, and Readings continue to collaborate on this venture. The first book in the program was Allee Richards’ Small Joys of Real Life, so it’s fitting that Allee’s second novel, A Light in the Dark is out this month too. All our stock of this book and The Visitors is signed by the authors (while stocks last!).

Our Fiction Book of the Month is Ordinary Gods and Monsters by Chris Womersley. This writer has so many fans at Readings and beyond, and our reviewer calls him, ‘one of the most interesting and inventive writers in this country’. We also review a healthy cohort of debut novels, including those by Anna Kate Blair, Nadine J. Cohen, Elise Esther Hearst, and Jessie Stephens, as well as the new books from Lang Leav and Leah Kaminsky. Shelley Burr’s Wake was a breakout local crime fiction debut last year, and her follow up, Ripper, is our Crime Book of the Month.

International fiction is full of big names as the publishing schedule gears up for the trade at the end of the year: Richard Osman, Zadie Smith, Kate Atkinson, Anne Enright, Sebastian Faulks, Lauren Groff, Leïla Slimani, Yiyun Li, Benjamín Labatut, Daniel Mason.

The Booker Prize longlist for 2023 has been announced, and there are a few more titles from it that are now in store or not too far away, including Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, Siân Hughes’ Pearl, Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane, and Elaine Feeney’s How to Build a Boat. The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 21 September.

Historian Anna Clark’s The Catch: Australia’s Love Affair with Fishing is our Nonfiction Book of the Month, and it’s one of those stealthy books that can capture the imagination of a disparate readership: it speaks of fishing to history buffs and history to fishing buffs. I love our reviewer’s description of fishing as, ‘people patiently waiting for something interesting to happen’.

Our staff also recommend books by Chanel Contos, Yen-Rong Wong, and Sarah Ogilvie. Donna Leon, author of the wildly popular Commissario Brunetti novels (now up to book 32 and counting) has written her memoir, Wandering Through Life. Leigh Sales has collected the wisdom of a range of Australia’s most high-profile journalists in Storytellers. Deborah FitzGerald has researched a book about Dorothea Mackellar called, of course, Her Sunburnt Country.

Acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson (who has written about Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs among others) turns his gaze on Elon Musk, following two years of research and interviews. Lorin Clarke shares her experience growing up with her famous dad, satirist John Clarke.

And finally, dear Reader, it’s time for us to announce the 2023 shortlists for The Readings Prize. If you turn to page 6, you can read about the different awards (including a new prize close to all our hearts to be given for the first time this year), and learn about all the contenders chosen by our discerning and dedicated staff judges.