Take the Reading(s) challenge!
Ten books. Ten months. Ten prompts to challenge your reading in 2026.
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☘️ It's Saint Patrick's Day! A global celebration of Irish culture, marking the traditional death date of St. Patrick, Ireland's patron saint. So of course our March prompt is 'a green cover'! There are so many incredible books featuring green on their covers, so you're sure to find a book or five that you'll love.
An Irish author
Open Heaven
Seán Hewitt
It was only right that to start a book by an Irish author for this month's prompt! And is there a cover out there more green than this one? Seán Hewitt is a multi-award winning poet and Open, Heaven is his debut novel about the freedom of youth, the sacrifices of friendship, and the possibilities of love in all its forms.
On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior.
Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, yet underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own. As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever.
A debut author
Melaleuca
Angie Faye Martin
I'm going to let our reviewer, Aurelia Orr win you over to this book with one line: 'Melaleuca is a masterful debut that calls for justice and change within Australian politics, the judicial system and cultural mindset' .
Aboriginal policewoman Renee Taylor is planning to stay the minimum amount of time in her remote hometown – only as long as her mum needs her, then she is fleeing back to her real life in Brisbane. Seconded to the town's sleepy police station, Renee is pretty sure work will hold nothing more exciting than delivering speeding tickets. Then a murdered woman is found down by the creek on the outskirts of town. Leading the investigation, Renee uncovers a perplexing connection to the disappearance of two young women thirty years earlier. As she delves deeper and the mystery unfurls, intergenerational cruelties, endemic racism, and deep corruption show themselves, even as dark and bitter truths about the town and its inhabitants' pasts rise up and threaten to overwhelm the present.
A Readings Prize winner
Cold Enough for Snow
Jessica Au
Cold Enough for Snow was the inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, a biennial award established by Giramondo; it then took home The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize in 2022. Plus, it made it onto three longlists, six shortlists including the Miles Franklin, and won three other awards. To say this is a must-read is an understatement.
A young woman accompanies her mother on a holiday in Japan. The daughter has arranged their itinerary. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafés and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken?
A nonfiction book
Average at Best
Astrid Jorgensen
Music, what a joy it brings to the world! Sometimes all you need is to put on a song and sing the lyrics at the top of your voice! Yet so many are too embarrassed to sing through fear they'll be judged for singing out of tune. That's where Astrid Jorgensen and her delightful memoir comes in!
Astrid Jorgensen is on a mission to teach the world to sing. But she’s not promising to make anybody better at singing – she simply wants people to feel less ashamed of whatever voice they have.
Average At Best is a powerful, funny, and deeply honest memoir about embracing mediocrity if you want to get anything done. As the creator of Pub Choir® – a global phenomenon that unites complete strangers to connect, laugh, and make beautiful music – Astrid takes you behind the curtain as she unflinchingly stares down her dizzying highs, her crushing lows, and everything in between.
A First Nations author
Plains of Promise
Alexis Wright
Alexis Wright – the only writer to win both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize! Plains of Promise is now included in UQP's First Nations Classics series and showcases Wright’s distinctive and far-reaching talents.
In the 1950s Gulf Country of Queensland’s far North, black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic’s Mission. When Ivy Koopundi and her mother arrive at the Mission, they are immediately separated and Ivy’s life changes irrevocably.
Years later, Mary, a young woman who is working for a city-based Aboriginal Coalition, visits the old Mission and learns of her mother’s and grandmother’s suffering there. Mary’s return reignites community anxieties, leading the Council of Elders to again turn to their spirit world.
A romance
Green Dot
Madeleine Gray
I've taken this book straight from my own 'I need to read this' pile. I adored Madeleine Gray's second novel, Chosen Family, so I know Green Dot is going to be wonderful! And I am loving the cover!
Hera is in her mid-twenties, which seems young to everyone except people in their mid-twenties. Since leaving school, she has been trying to kick and scream into existence a life she cares about, but with little success so far. Until she meets Arthur.
He works with her, he is older than her, he is also married. But in her soulless office – the large, cold room she feels destined to spend her life in – he is a source of much-needed sustenance. And though Hera has previously dated women, she soon falls headlong into a workplace romance that will quickly consume her life.
A crime novel
Mad Mabel
Sally Hepworth
If you haven't read any of the ten novels by the award-winning Sally Hepworth, then let this be your sign. Or, if you still need some convincing, this is a quote from the Liane Moriarty: 'Sally Hepworth writes compelling, compassionate novels with characters you come to know and love. She is one of my favourite Australian writers.'
In 1959, at just fifteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder. In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play. Until they discover Elsie's past. In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel.
She is known around the world as Mad Mabel. But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty? When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight. In a world first, at the age of 81, Mabel Waller is speaking.
A true crime
The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial
Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein
I couldn't think of a greener cover than The Mushroom Tapes. We had 1,000 copies here at Readings HQ and I was blinded by the fluoro green! And if you love crime but haven't read this one yet, what have you been waiting for?!
For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and 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.
A funny book
In Spite of You
Patrick Lenton
Our reviewer, Nicole Vasilev said Patrick Lenton's debut is 'effortlessly funny ... highly recommended for rom-com fans who like their love stories messy, queer, and driven by revenge.' I'm adding it to my own 'to read' list!
When Jeremy is invited to the 10-year reunion of his prestigious writing program, his life is a horrible mess. He's a pop-culture journalist with no money, he's permanently single and he now has to face his cheating ex-boyfriend – the reunion's guest of honour.
Like any well-adjusted individual, Jeremy develops a revenge plan: fix his life by becoming super hot and successful and, most importantly, find a handsome and successful boyfriend to bring to the reunion.
Enter Sam – irritatingly perfect, disgustingly hot and generous to a fault – who agrees to help with Jeremy's scheme. When Sam suggests they start fake-dating each other, the simmering tension between them threatens to boil over. Now Jeremy must choose between nursing his grudges and giving himself another chance at love.
A cover buy
Portalmania
Debbie Urbanski
Pick this one up for the stunning cover, stay for the exciting premise! Portalmania is a concoction of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and realism! Debbie Urbanski uses her writing to hold up dark mirror to the ordinary world.
Within the sharply imagined landscape of this collection, portals appear in linen closets, planetary gateways materialize in boarding schools, monsters wait in bathroom vents, and transformations of women’s bodies are an everyday occurrence. Political division causes physical rifts that break apart the Earth’s crust. A son on another planet sends dispatches home to the mother who failed him, and a wife turns to the supernatural to escape her abusive marriage. Portals are not only doorways found in children’s classics, but separations, escapes, dead ends, desertions, and choices that will change these characters’ lives forever.
