Sunbathing by Isobel Beech

‘Sunbathing is the stunning debut novel from Melbourne writer Isobel Beech. It follows the story of a young woman who is invited to stay with her friends Giulia and Fab at Fab’s family home in Abruzzo, in the month prior to their wedding. The village is an oasis, untouched by tourism. The narrator spends lazy days with Giulia and Fab, cooking, gardening, and caring for a stray cat that wanders onto the property, in a gorgeous evocation of Italian summer.’ – Read Joe Rubbo’s full review

Losing Face by George Haddad

Joey is young, indifferent. He’s drifting around Western Sydney unaware that his passivity is leading him astray. And then one day he is involved in a violent crime, one that threatens to upend his life entirely. Elaine, his grandmother, is a proud Lebanese woman with problems of her own. When Joey is arrested, she is desperate to save face and hold herself together. In her family, history repeats itself, vices come and go, and uncovering long-buried secrets isn’t always cathartic.

‘With Losing Face Haddad asks whether we can open ourselves up to those who want to make our lives better and what it takes to let go of the past.’ – Read Suzanne Steinbruckner’s full review

The Burnished Sun by Mirandi Riwoe

We follow a migrant mother who yearns to feel welcomed at a kids’ party in a local park; a young skateboarder caught between showing loyalty and being accepted; and an Indonesian maid working far from home who longs for the son she’s left behind. Bookending this collection are two stunning novellas: Annah the Javanese re-imagines the world of one of Paul Gauguin’s models in nineteenth-century Paris, while the highly acclaimed The Fish Girl reworks a classic W. Somerset Maugham story from the perspective of a young Indonesian woman.

‘… two novellas flank an extraordinary collection that beautifully showcases a selection of Riwoe’s writing from various publications over the last few years. In each story we hear from a character who finds themselves an outsider looking in.’ – Read Kara Nicholson’s review

This All Come Back Now edited by Mykaela Saunders

The first-ever anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction - written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, ‘this all come back’: all those things that have been taken from us, that we collectively mourn the loss of, or attempt to recover and revive, as well as those that we thought we’d gotten rid of, that are always returning to haunt and hound us.

A Solitary Walk On the Moon by Hilde Hinton

Evelyn knows what is going on in her community because she pays attention. She sees the weariness of the frazzled shop owners, the woman with the nasty boyfriend, the nice man with the curly-topped dog, the car parking war and the forgetful man. The community might not notice Evelyn, because it is easy to overlook the seemingly ordinary. But Evelyn is far from ordinary. She isn’t afraid to put things right, and is always ready to find lost property or lost people - even if that means breaking the rules.

‘A Solitary Walk on the Moon is one of those rare and lovely books that instantly transports you into its pages, where what seems a deceptively simple premise for a story unfurls into a rich and complex tapestry filled with life and emotion.’ – Read Tye Cattanach’s review here

Abomination by Ashley Goldberg

Melbourne 1999: Ezra and Yonatan are best friends whose lives are forever changed when their school, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Yahel Academy, is rocked by a scandal and they are thrown onto divergent paths. Twenty years later, the lives of the two men are very different: Ezra identifies as secular and atheist, while Yonatan has been ordained as a rabbi and teaches at the academy. By chance they are reunited, and the events of their past and present collide with devastating consequences.

‘This novel speaks deeply to the search for identity and is a reminder of the importance of compassion. It is heartbreaking to read at times, and the dynamic between the characters moves you to truly care about their journeys. Goldberg is a wonderfully talented writer with sharp insight into the confronting themes he explores, and I found myself needing to know how this story would come to a close. Make this your next read.’ – Read Grace Gooda’s full review

Daisy and Woolf by Michelle Cahill

Mina, a writer, is navigating her place in the world, balancing creativity, academia, her sexuality and the expectation that a wife and mother abandons herself for others. For her, like so many women of mixed ancestry, it is too easy to be erased. But her fire and intellect refuse to bow.

‘Cahill is a poet and her sentences seduce with flashes of life. Objects, sensations, emotions, even the lumbering behemoth of history, all act and move in Cahill’s prose, twisting around you with an insurgent will of their own. Her ability to imbue Daisy with a pitch- perfect voice of the period is impressive. As with many novels that employ multiple narratives, some threads are knitted together with more even tension than others, but this is a fascinating work and it’s rare to see something of its kind in the Australian literary landscape.’ – Read Jackie Tang’s full review