You may have already seen our list of some of the fiction releases coming later this year that we're particularly excited for; now here are nonfiction books that we can't wait to get our hands on! Across cookbooks, memoir and insightful nonfiction, there's lots to look forward to in the coming months (and lots worth taking note of for gifting season…).
📖 Biography & Memoir
Defiance
Bob Brown
For half a century, Bob Brown has been standing up to the powerful interests who would put profit before planet.
In Defiance, he draws on this experience to inspire a new generation of individual and collective action. He reflects on the people and places that have shaped him, celebrates the irreplaceable beauty and value of nature and shares what motivates him to keep fighting. He considers the challenges facing nature's defenders – hostile corporate lobbyists, vilification in the press, the powerful pull of consumerism – and shows how courage, persistence and community can defeat them all.
Told with Brown's trademark warmth and humour, these stories will galvanise, uplift and inspire.
All the books in this list can be pre-ordered now, but it's particularly worth securing your copy of this one sooner-rather-than-later, because Readings will be donating $2.50 to the Bob Brown Foundation for every copy of sold before 31 October 2025!
Ankami
Debra Dank
'Be careful what you wish for,' wrote Aesop, 'lest it come true.' Debra Dank had long been desperate to visit the National Archives, to paint a fuller picture of her family, to add flesh to the name-bones and the few precious stories she possessed. What she discovered would shatter everything she thought she knew about her family and her past.
She had been aware of her father's five siblings, some of whom had died before she could come to know them, but there were always whispers and gaps and silences. Certainly, her parents had experiences that affected how Debra grew up, but hers seemed to be one of the very few Aboriginal families who had escaped having children stolen, who had viewed this horror from a seemingly safer distance. But the information she uncovered revealed that her paternal grandmother had given birth to ten children. Four had been taken from her.
Ankami is written from the perspective of those left behind, those who search always for the faces of stolen and lost Aboriginal children, now known only through a few cruel, thoughtless words written by a violent pastoral manager and a paternalistic colonial administrator, a footnote in a yellowed letter.
How to End a Story
Helen Garner
Helen Garner's acclaimed three volumes of diaries are collected here in one sumptuous book.
Spanning two decades-from the publication of her lightning-rod debut novel in the late 70s, to the throes of a consuming affair in the late 80s, and the messiness and pain of a disintegrating marriage in the late 90s – the diaries reveal the life of one of the world's greatest writers.
Devastatingly honest and disarmingly funny, How to End a Story is a portrait of loss, betrayal, and the sheer force of a woman's anger – but also of hard work and resilience, moments of hope and joy, the immutable ties of motherhood, and the regenerative power of a room of one's own.
Destination Moon
Kate Reid
Destination Moon is an open-hearted memoir about passion and finding purpose from the woman whose mid-career one-eighty led her from Formula 1 to opening the world-famous Lune Croissanterie.
At thirteen, Kate Reid already knew exactly where she was headed: a career in Formula 1, a life lived at full throttle. Like a master cartographer she had drawn the map of her future – all she had to do was follow the course she’d charted. But after earning a degree in aerospace engineering and taking up a coveted position at one of the top F1 teams in the UK, Kate discovered that the reality didn’t exactly live up to the dream. The pursuit of perfection that had once made her reach for the moon now sent her spiralling into a life-threatening battle against depression and anorexia.
From the grey skies of England and Monaco’s glittering, million-dollar harbour, to Melbourne’s trendy café scene and the spellbinding counters of Parisian patisseries, Kate searched for something that would bring meaning and passion back into her life: a destination worth driving towards at full speed.
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Born out of the onrush of memories and feelings provoked by her mother Mary’s death, this is the astonishing, often disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, this book is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
Bread of Angels
Patti Smith
The most intimate of Smith's memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years where the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role models as Patti starts to write poetry, then lyrics, merging both into the iconic songs and recordings such as Horses and Easter, 'Dancing Barefoot' and 'Because the Night'.
She leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, with whom she creates a life of devotion and adventure on a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan with ancient willows and fulsome pear trees. She builds a room of her own, furnished with a pillow of Moroccan silk, a Persian cup, inkwell and fountain pen. The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical maps and charting new adventures as they start their family.
As Smith suffers profound losses, grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life and, finally, writing again – the one constant in a life driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the mundane into the beautiful, the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Patti on the road again, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.
Also look forward to books by and about: Margaret Atwood, Anthony Bourdain, Jung Chang, Tim Curry, Evan Dando, Ben Elton, Yvon Chouinard, Elizabeth Gilbert, Astrid Jorgensen, Melissa Leong, Susan Orlean, Elizabeth Harrower, Yanis Varoufakis and more!
📖 Nonfiction
The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial
Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein
For this extraordinary book, three renowned writers of true crime became a team. Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.
The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other, an unputdownable record of the writers’ private conversations about their impressions from inside the courtroom. They explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains unknowable about Erin Patterson.
If you read one book about how Erin Patterson was convicted of triple murder, make it The Mushroom Tapes.
Not Quite White in the Head
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is one of our most admired and awarded novelists. She is renowned for writing about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead.
This timely collection of essays and journalism – published together for the first time – spans two turbulent decades. With her trademark wit and wisdom, Lucashenko reflects on being caught in a siege, on the marginalised lives of prisoners and the urban poor, on Blak identity, Australian literature and on meeting her writing idol. Her nonfiction, like her novels, is deeply engaged with politics, activism, culture and social (in)justice.
Not Quite White in the Head offers unprecedented access to one of the nation's greatest writers as she invites us into the conversations that truly matter.
Shortest History of Australia
Mark McKenna
The history of Australia has been written before – but not like this.
In The Shortest History of Australia, Mark McKenna offers a compelling new version of our national story. This is a modern Australia permeated by First Nations history; a multicultural society with an island mindset; a continent of epic beauty and extreme natural events; a country obsessed by war abroad but blind to its founding war at home; and a thriving nation-state still to realise its political independence.
McKenna's wise and humane history reveals the surprising in the familiar, and reframes the past so we can see the present more clearly.
Earthquake
Niki Savva
When the Coalition government was overthrown in 2022, it was tempting to portray the loss as merely a personal repudiation of Scott Morrison. Then, after Antony Albanese's initial honeymoon period, the Labor government became increasingly unpopular while having to negotiate a period of high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis while not provoking the Reserve Bank to either increase interest rates further or delay lowering them. And when opposition leader Peter Dutton torpedoed the referendum on establishing an Indigenous Voice to parliament, his credibility as a political leader improved at the expense of the prime minister's.
That was when, according to Niki Savva, the conservative Coalition thought it had the forthcoming election in the bag. What followed was a sequence of events that resulted in an improbable triumph for Labor and a historic drubbing for the Liberal Party.
Earthquake is the best of Niki Savva's highly popular columns from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, along with riveting book-length new chapters, about an epoch-making period in Australian politics. In addition Savva provides a considered, comprehensive analysis of what went on behind the scenes, accompanied by her trademark access to important players and eyewitnesses, before an election that transformed Australian politics.
Dead and Alive
Zadie Smith
In this keenly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects which have captured her attention in recent years.
She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tar, and to Glastonbury to witness the ascendance of Stormzy. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North West London and invites us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of 'the commons' in all our lives.
Throughout this thrilling collection, Zadie Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
The Shortest History of the United States of America
Don Watson
From revolution to civil rights, Hollywood and the Gilded Age. This is the extraordinary story of the United States, a nation that contains multitudes.
When Britain's thirteen American colonies declared their independence on 4 July 1776, the United States of America was born. But it was hardly united. In this superbly written book, Don Watson traces how the central conflicts of the US – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out through its history – from a country at war with itself in the 1860s, to the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.
This is a book full of character and humour, told with great learning and insight – a perfect introduction to America, past and present.
Also look forward to: Robyn Annear, Sam Dalrymple, Anne Enright, Mariana Enriquez, Sebastian Faulks, Hwang Bo-reum, Darryl Jones, the 100th Quarterly Essay, Walter Marsh, Drusilla Modjeska, Thomas Piketty, Henry Reynolds, Jeanette Winterson, Tyson Yunkaporta & Megan Kelleher, Meanjin First Nations Writing Anthology, Best Australian Science Writing 2025 and more!
📖 Cookbooks
The Japanese Pantry
Emiko Davies
The Japanese Pantry is a follow up to Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking, Emiko's tribute to her mother's family and her soul food – Japanese home cooking.
In The Japanese Pantry, Emiko explores the pantry items essential to Japanese home cooking. Simple, easy-to-find ingredients that can be combined with fresh produce and a few other basics like tofu, rice and noodles to create delicious and authentic Japanese food no matter where you are. Each chapter explores one of these essential ingredients – soy sauce, miso, rice vinegar, seaweed, sake, sesame and tea – including information about the history and production of these in Japan, as well as Emiko's thoughtful and approachable recipes.
In helping readers get to know these pantry essentials, Emiko hopes to give home cooks the confidence to make authentic Japanese dishes that are inherently simple and full of flavour.
Baking and the Meaning of Life
Helen Goh
No one knows the 'why' or 'how' of baking better than Helen Goh, recipe developer with Yotam Ottolenghi for more than a decade, co-author of bestselling books Sweet and Comfort, food columnist for the Good Weekend, The Guardian and Observer, and practising psychologist. In this, her first solo cookbook, Helen draws on her upbringing in Malaysia and Australia, her acclaimed work with Ottolenghi and her psychology training to share her distinctive approach to baking with 100 delicious sweet and savoury bakes.
With recipes like Chocolate Tahini Cake with Sesame Brittle, Plum and Pistachio Bars, Pandan and Coconut Chiffon Cake, and many other shareable treats that offer both tried-and-true and creative flavours, this book is a celebration of community, connection and pleasure through baking. With inventive flavour combinations that showcase Helen's creativity, a wealth of thoroughly road-tested bakes and her reflections on living and baking well, Baking and the Meaning of Life is a one-of-a-kind companion bakers will return to again and again to spread joy, one cookie, cake, or cheese puff at a time.
Secret Sauce
Rosheen Kaul
Maybe you're an accomplished cook. Maybe you're pretty average. Maybe you barely cook at all, but you can just about fry an egg. This book is for you. Because easy-to-make sauces, dressings and flavour bomb butters can transform even the simplest dinner ingredients into a seriously delicious time, with the added bonus of making you look like a kitchen pro.
Secret Sauce by condiment queen Rosheen Kaul is your one way ticket to big flavour, whatever your skill level. Broken down by colour, these are the saucy secret to delicious eating, including Red (vibrant sambals, wild and wonderfully cross-cultural chilli oils), Green (herb-centric, fresh and zesty dressings), White & Beige (rich mayos and cream-based sauces with surprising Asian-ish additions), Black & Brown (flavourful soy-based wonders and reimagined favourites) and Yellow & Orange (flavour-packed butters and the masala butter of your dreams).
Over 50 recipes for killer condiments plus 50 ways to make the most of them. New and exciting flavours, right next to fresh and familiar – what's your secret sauce?
Linger
Hetty Lui McKinnon
The author of cult classic Community returns, with a cookbook about making friends and forging connection over salad.
From her salad-delivery days in Sydney to her current career as a food writer and bestselling cookbook author in New York, Hetty Lui McKinnon has long known the power of salads to connect and create community. Salads are meant to be shared; they are what you bring to a gathering of friends or family, the ultimate comfort food. With Linger, Hetty has come full circle. Rather than delivering salads to members of her community, this time, she has invited friends into her home, to share salads, sweets and stories around her dining room table.
Linger documents these intimate gatherings, with vegetable-laden, loosely seasonal menus enjoyed and photographed in real time. Through her inventive recipes for meal-worthy salads, smaller bites and simple sweets, Hetty invites you to become a part of an unforgettable shared experience of community, food and friendship.
Something from Nothing
Alison Roman
In Something from Nothing, bestselling author Alison Roman gives you a collection of simple, smart, timeless recipes that rely on a home cook's best kept secret: a well-stocked pantry. Making the most of your shelf-stable bottles, bags, jars and cans, Alison shows you how to cook as she does – loosely, intuitively, and with maximum flavour. With each recipe you’ll fall deeper in love with the magic of pantry cooking by using flavourful, hardworking ingredients, leaving you to ask, 'How did something so wonderful come from basically nothing?'. In this book, you’ll find warm, opinionated writing coupled with classic recipes, both with signature Alison flair in chapters such as: Snacks and Things to Start with, Soups and Stews, Vegetables and How to Make Them Taste Even Better, Pasta and Noodles, Beans and Grains, Meats and Some Fishes.
Whether you’re feeding yourself on a busy weeknight or hosting a last-minute dinner party, this book has just what you need. For easy, straightforward recipes that still impress, Something from Nothing has you covered, showing you how to turn every bag of beans, tin of anchovies and jar of olives into a meal worth celebrating.
Also look forward to books from: Ixta Belfrage, Ada Boni, O Tama Carey, Daniella Guevara Munoz, Vietnam the Cookbook, Helena & Vikki Moursellas, Yoko Nakazawa, Samin Nosrat, Nat Thaipun and more!
📚 Keep checking our Pre-order collection for updates as more exciting books are announced.
