I was struck by how fantastic this month’s Readings Monthly is. It is brimming with thoughtful reviews from our talented staff. Every time our dear editor sends me the reviews for the month, I’m affected by the passion and knowledge of our staff, whose daily job is to make sure you get a great book to read. Many career booksellers will speak of a deep attachment to books and writers, and sometimes even refer to our work as a ‘calling’ of sorts. I don’t think that’s hyperbole, because you can see these truths written in the Monthly’s pages.

Our Fiction Book of the Month is The Anniversary, the brilliant new work from one of Australia’s best literary writers, Stephanie Bishop. As you can tell from my unapologetically gushing review on page 5, I adored this book. I’ll point out here that it holds an extra special pleasure for readers of The Other Side of the World (which is a lot of readers indeed: it’s the book that won the Readings Prize in 2015). Stephanie recently took up a professorship at the University of East Anglia in the UK, but has signed us a bunch of bookplates from afar (thank you!), so we’ll have signed copies for early purchases.

Indeed, it would be hard to find a more ‘Readings’ list of fiction authors who have new books out in April: Alexis Wright, Max Porter, Han Kang, Curtis Sittenfeld, Benjamin Myers, Katherine Heiny, Toni Jordan, Pip Williams, as well as some authors who are (or have just become) staff favourites whose names might not be quite as familiar (or are completely new) to you. Read on to find your way to Madelaine Lucas, Nguyen Phan Que Mai, Jente Posthuma, Dizz Tate, Rachel Heng. Genevieve Novak’s second novel, Crushing, is the Melbourne City Reads pick for the month, and our reviewer likens the book to a ‘best friend whose shoulder you cry on’, a description I just love. We also have some strong crime reviews this month, including for Don Winslow (with the very highly recommended Book of the Month, City of Dreams) and the late Peter Robinson, as well as Amulya Malladi with the first book in a new series, and debut authors Carolyn Swindell and Amanda Hampson.

Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time by Sheila Liming is our Nonfiction Book of the Month, in which the author makes the case for the importance of unstructured time. Hanging out can be both a personal and a political act, and perhaps it’s even when our truest selves might exist. You yourself will need to (pardon me) hang out for a short time before you can get your hands on this book: it’s due in stores on 12 April. Our staff also recommends Peter Wohlleben’s new book, The Power of Trees; Sam Neill’s memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?; and Maja Göpel’s eye-opening Rethinking Our World: An Invitation to Rescue Our Future. Detail from artist Gregory Hodge’s 2021 painting ‘In the Woods’, provides the cover of Amber Creswell Bell’s survey of Australian abstract art, as well as the front of the Readings Monthly: you can read a recommendation of Australian Abstract here.

And finally, dear Reader, our special promotion for this month has been in the planning for some time, and is one that we’re all very excited about: it’s a 3-for-2 offer on the wonderful Penguin Modern Classics range. There are now hundreds of titles in this series, and our store buyers will all work very hard to keep a big range in stock for the duration of the month, so keep visiting throughout April: the offering might be different each time! If you buy a group of three books, you’ll also be able to pick up a very special and very Readings journal (while stocks last, of course), thanks to our friends at Penguin Random House. Please note, this special is exclusive to our physical shops and not available online.