The first Readings Monthly of 2026 is here! Here's our head book buyer Alison Huber's column, where she kicks off the year with a look at some of the most exciting Australian books coming this year.
You can read the March Readings Monthly online now, or pick up a copy in shops.
It’s March, and so I’m sure you’ve already read lots of pieces like the one I’m sitting down to try to write, our annual ‘books to look forward to’ exercise. My mind often wanders to existential places as I think about the year ahead, especially when returning to the desk after a very long break (very long for me, anyway) over this recent summer, and that feeling of starting all over again settles. It’s a moment to reflect on the hits and misses of 2025, and wonder about what their equivalents will be in 2026, as well as broader questions that surround the work that we do in the cultural industries.
I think one of the things that keeps the real book people I know coming back for more, in spite of everything, is a desperate need to learn about all the books we haven’t met (let alone read) yet. We don’t know what we don’t know, but we are always and forever in a state of desperation to find out. Which books am I going to fall for this year? Some are obvious; others are yet to reveal themselves, hence the feeling that this exercise is important (though these pieces frequently don’t stand the test of time; hindsight has a powerful revisionist urge).
As I’m writing, the results of Guardian Australia’s poll of the nation’s best Australian picture book (as voted by its readers) have just been revealed, with Alison Lester’s 1990 glorious classic Magic Beach earning first place. I’ve loved reading all the articles that have accompanied Guardian Australia’s coverage of their poll, from Alexis Wright’s great piece about Dick Roughsey’s The Rainbow Serpent, to Kate Temple’s argument for the importance of supporting contemporary books and new writers in the face of nostalgia’s pull, to Graeme Base’s reflection on the publishing journey of Animalia, and the outgoing 2024–2025 Australian Children’s Laureate Sally Rippin’s reminder of the importance of reading aloud to children (even when they can read for themselves).
It was exciting to see so many words dedicated to books in a short time frame, and kids’ books especially. The Guardian is the exception, but you will have noticed over the years that there are fewer and fewer spaces in our traditional media publications for serious engagement with literary culture, both here and abroad; our weekend newspapers used to be heaving with book reviews and features, but not so these days, and even just this morning I read in international news that the famed books section of the Washington Post has been ‘retired’ amid a significant round of redundancies at the Bezos-owned publication.
Of course, there is no direct connection between this mediascape reality and declining rates of reading and literacy, however when the culture at large engages less with the literary, books and the reading of them seem less essential. When (or as) that happens, it’s hard not to imagine a slow-moving but ultimately devastating ripple effect across the cultural industries. I think all of us book people are working as much to stop that ripple effect as anything else, because we believe in how essential books and reading are to our wellbeing, both personal and cultural.
In related positive news, the Australia Reads initiative, a book-industry-wide partnership that began in 2017 as ‘Australian Reading Hour’, has recently become a not-for-profit organisation, continuing its aim of promoting, supporting, and advocating for reading and Australian books and all the people and industries that coalesce around the act of reading. Bookshops are an essential part of this ecosystem, and the incoming new CEO of the independent Australian Booksellers Association, Susannah Bowen, is on the newly formed Board.
But I feel like I’ve delayed the inevitable for long enough with this chit-chat (I hear you, dear Ed.), so, what are the books that we can/will/should look forward to this year? I think the top pick for me and many readers will be Chloe Hooper’s return to fiction with Lady Spy (November). While I hope to be able to exercise one of the greatest perks of this job and be an early reader of this book (hint, hint, HINT, Chloe), there are only bits of tantalising detail to relay at this point; the publisher tells us that Hooper, ‘reinvents the Cold War espionage thriller, putting a spycatcher’s aristocratic wife centre stage’. That is enough, thank you, I’m all in! Steve Toltz’s first book in many years is A Rising of the Lights (April) and I’m already hearing great things from people who got their reading in ahead of me.
I adored Fiona Kelly McGregor’s Iris (2022), so am really looking forward to The Trap (also April) which again takes us deep into the seedy underbelly of Sydney, this time during the Second World War. Edwina Preston, the author of Bad Art Mother, a sleeper hit here at Readings, also has a new book out in April, Sororicidal (great title!), which I can confidently say will be the best ‘punk-gothic historical novel’ you will read in 2026.
Fiona Wright is known for her poetry, reviews, and essays, and also in April she has a debut novel out called Kill Your Boomers, the gist of which you might imagine when I tell you it’s her literary response to the housing affordability crisis. Inga Simpson is synonymous with writing about nature, and her new collection of stories, Once We Were Wildlife, appears too, promising more of her trademark sensitivity and vision. April is also the month for Frogsong by Melissa Manning, who won the VPLA for Fiction for her story collection Smokehouse in 2022 (I’m reading Frogsong right now and it’s very good, a heartbreaker). Michael Winkler surely wrote his own fairytale story back in 2022 when his debut book, Grimmish, made its very independent path all the way to the Miles Franklin shortlist, the first self-published book ever to achieve this feat. His second book is published by Text, and is called Griefdogg (April, again).
Speaking of the Miles Franklin, last year’s winner, Siang Lu (for Ghost Cities) has a new book in September called Useless Tse, promising to be his own unique take on the Odyssey, while 2021’s winner Amanda Lohrey (for The Labyrinth) has a new book in May called Capture. Romy Ash came to attention with Floundering back in 2012, which was shortlisted for the Miles that year, and Ash’s second novel is Mantle (May), a strong contribution to writing about climate, grief, and climate grief, set in Tasmania as a new pandemic involving humans and fungi unfolds. Yumna Kassab was also a shortlistee and has become a prolific writer, publishing five acclaimed works since 2019. Her sixth is Goodbye, My Love (May).
There must be something about May this year, it seems, because it’s the month we’ll also see Phantom Days, the third book from one of our most inventive writers, Angela O’Keeffe (you may remember The Sitter from a few years ago, a firm staff favourite). This time, the narrative is told by a book, left on the back seat of a taxi. Also joining Club May is Ellena Savage, author of the acclaimed nonfiction work Blueberries, bringing us debut fiction with The Ruiners, as well as the debut novel from Wayne Marshall called Henry Goes Bush (you may remember him from his short story collection Shirl), Max Easton’s third in a series of novels (Now, Autonomy which follows The Magpie Wing and Paradise Estate), and Chloe Wilson’s debut novel, The Thornbacks.
Back during Covid, our then-managing director (and now chairman) Mark Rubbo had a great idea to draw attention to Melbourne-based authors during that difficult time with the Melbourne City Reads initiative, a collaboration between bookshops in the city. The first book we collectively chose to champion was Allee Richards’ debut Small Joys of Real Life, which Mark compared favourably to Monkey Grip. Allee’s third book is another coming-of-age story called Tight Lines (July). The same month, Laura McPhee-Browne (Cherry Beach, Little Plum) publishes Worry Doll. Maria Takolander is another poet publishing her debut novel this year, and I’m really drawn to the title The End of Romance (July), set in a future some considerable way down the path our climate crisis is beating.
Jordan Prosser impressed with his near-future spec-fic debut, Big Time, which was shortlisted for several awards; his second novel, Blue Giant, will be published in August and is set in the present day, calling itself an ‘unruly eulogy for millennial optimism’. Intriguing! Mirandi Riwoe is a past winner of the AHA’s Historical Novel Award and her next book is a sprawling multi-generational novel called A Short History of Longans, also an August book. I don’t think I’ll ever forget reading the chilling last few chapters of Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s Beautiful Revolutionary while I was on a plane (if you haven’t read it, it’s about Jonestown, and as we know, that story doesn’t end well); she has a new book out in September called Hell Days. Our former colleague and Readings Friend for Life (there’s no getting out of it now), Nina Kenwood, has a new adult novel called People Skills due in October.
I’m sort of running out of words to cover the nonfiction offerings in any meaningful way (and I’m well aware I’m lacking details of whole genres of writing in this roundup), but please believe me when I say you’ll see books from Stan Grant, Bruce Pascoe, Catharine Lumby, Judith Lucy, Rosalie Ham, Alex Miller, Larissa Behrendt, Kate Holden, Kaz Cooke, Tom Griffiths, James Boyce, Margaret Simons, Kate Grenville, Amy McQuire – the list goes on! Chris Macheras harnessed our collective nostalgic interest in our city to great effect with Old Vintage Melbourne, and he has a third collection coming out in October, this time highlighting our city’s food culture. There are some great cookbooks on the horizon too, including from baking queens Natalie ‘Beatrix Bakes’ Paull and Emilia ‘Always Cream the Butter and Sugar’ Jackson, plus a very nice 30th anniversary edition of Stephanie Alexander’s cookery bible, The Cook’s Companion.
There are far too many international books to mention alongside this incredible array of local publishing, including but not limited to new books from Elizabeth Strout, Douglas Stuart, Mieko Kawakami, Colson Whitehead, Maggie O’Farrell, Han Kang, Ottessa Moshfegh, Marlon James, Emma Cline, Ann Patchett, Ben Lerner, Polly Barton (a debut novel!), Dave Eggers, Gwendoline Riley, Sebastian Barry, Solvej Balle (with books four and five of her seven-part opus), Patrick Gale, Elif Shafak, Sigrid Nunez, Willy Vlautin, Deborah Levy, Siri Hustvedt, David Sedaris, China Mieville, Lena Dunham, and a follow-up to one of the biggest selling cookbooks in Readings’ history, Simple Too by Yotam Ottolenghi.
But if you think that’s all, you’d be wrong of course, because there are also all the new books that require zero minutes of anticipation because they are out this very month and are featured throughout this issue of Readings Monthly. Our reviewers have done such a stellar job telling you all about them, I won’t try to test your patience and summarise their work (phew, I hear you all say!). That said, it would be remiss of me not to take a moment to congratulate our dear colleague Fiona Hardy, whose second book for adults featuring her most excellent PI protagonists Alice and Teddy, Old Games, is out this month. Fiona’s first book, Unbury the Dead came out last year, so Fiona is now officially a ‘book a year’ author!
And finally, dear Reader, we’re so proud of The Readings Prizes that we award to emerging writers each year: the Children’s Prize, the Young Adult and Gab Williams Prizes (named for our much-missed late colleague and voted on by our next-gen tastemakers on the Teen Advisory Board), and the New Australian Fiction Prize. Every year since 2014, we’ve asked a small number of staff to read a large number of books, some years as many or more than 80 titles. Speaking from experience, it’s a lot of reading in amongst the other reading you might be doing, but the commitment our judges show is astonishing, and the dedication to assembling the shortlists and the ultimate winner is always undertaken with the utmost sincerity by everyone involved. Judges have been known to be something approaching evangelical about the books they champion, with debates amongst judges becoming pretty serious at the pointy end of proceedings (though to my knowledge, no fallings-out have ever occurred: it’s always in good humour!).
With that in mind, and with many more people expressing interest in judging than there are places on the judging panels, we’ve been wondering how we can involve even more people in the process, how that evangelism might be harnessed amongst an even larger cohort of our staff. We all know the power of a recommendation (something booksellers refer to as handselling): what would happen if even more of our staff read, engaged deeply with, and (most importantly) handsold the novels that make our shortlists? Every single sale of an emerging novelist’s book is hugely important, and at the risk of being too blunt about it: our new authors need more than moral support, they need you to buy the result of their life’s literary work. The act of buying a book supports our literary culture; it nurtures our authors and enables them to write their next work; it gives us faith in a sustainable project of national storytelling, something that I wrote about in the 2025 version of this column, which I’m struggling to believe was a year ago now.
So, we’ve decided to shake up our prizes, and in 2026 our revamped approach will be tested with our New Australian Fiction Prize. We’ll be assembling a longlist of eligible titles (first or second novels), and then asking our staff to vote for a shortlist of six titles from this list, and then vote on the ultimate winner. Crucially, any of our staff can be involved in judging this year, and we are setting no limit on how many judges there can be. So four might become 40 or 140 ... imagine that! The shortlist will be announced in September, followed by the winner in October. Then the Children’s and Young Adult Prizes will follow in early 2027, and we’ll also rename the Young Adult Prize the Gab Williams Prize: this is extra special because our staff will assemble the shortlist and the Teen Advisory Board will decide on the winner.
Keep an eye on all the exciting new books coming soon with our Pre-order collection, and don't miss our blogs on highly anticipated kids' and young adult books coming out this year.
