Each month we choose a newly released book that we feel is perfect for a book club. Then we roadtest it. We read the book (and encourage you to read along with us), and at the end of the month, we’ll share our thoughts about its potential for book clubbers.

Our pick for March is Abigail Ulman’s Hot Little Hands.

What’s the opening line? I had never bumped into a teacher before on the weekend. But there he was, sitting at the counter in the window, and I slowed down to take it all in: the face that looked more relaxed than it usually did, the late breakfast in front of him, the hardcover book in his hand with the library tag on its spine.

What is the book about? This collection of stories is about young women of different ages, from their early teens to their late twenties, coming to terms with what it means to desire, and be desired, with funny, surprising and sometimes confronting results.

Who wrote it? Abigail Ulman was born and raised in Melbourne. She has a Bachelor of Creative Arts from the University of Melbourne/VCA and was a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University. Hot Little Hands is her first book.

Why we picked it? We love reading debut Australian authors. The stories in this collection are fresh and provocative, and have already provoked discussion and debate among our staff members who received early copies.