Looking for something juicy to discuss in your book club? Try one of these new releases, chosen by our booksellers to appeal to a wide range of readers and provide plenty to talk about.
Australian fiction
Our New Gods
Thomas Vowles
Ash has recently arrived in Melbourne and fallen in love with his charismatic friend James. After witnessing a disturbing altercation at a party, Ash suspects that James's mysterious boyfriend is hiding a sinister side. Is he dangerous? Or is Ash's jealousy fuelling paranoid delusions?
A compulsive novel that offers no easy answers, Our New Gods marks the electrifying debut of a major talent. It has an assuredness that reflects Thomas Vowles's success as a screenwriter: the dialogue is sharp, the plot twists are dizzying, and the story will haunt readers long after the final page.
International fiction
Sleeping Children
Anthony Passeron, translated by Frank Wynne
It is 1981. As a wave of puzzling medical cases sweeps across the US, a Parisian doctor is presented with a rare case of a disease long thought to be eradicated. It marks the beginning of a race on both sides of the Atlantic to make sense of a deadly virus that will define a generation.
Miles away in rural France, Anthony Passeron’s family are dealing with a crisis of their own. Their small village is gripped by another epidemic – heroin addiction. Anthony’s uncle Désiré, once the pride of the family, has become one of its many ‘sleeping children’. Often found unconscious on street corners, he is a stranger to his family. As Désiré’s life descends into chaos, the thunder of the AIDS crisis grows closer. These two stories – one intimate, one global – are about to collide.
Read our staff review here.
Crime fiction
Murder at Mount Fuji
Shizuko Natsuki, translated by Robert B. Rohmer
When American student Jane Prescott is invited to spend the holidays with her classmate Chiyo, she jumps at the chance to see in the new year at a luxurious mansion at the foot of Mount Fuji. Chiyo belongs to one of Japan's wealthiest families, the heiress to a pharmaceutical empire headed up by Yohei 'Grandpa' Wada.
With the whole Wada family gathered and snow falling outside, the festivities are in full swing. That is, until Chiyo bursts into the room – covered in blood, holding a knife, and screaming that she has stabbed her grandfather to death.
Stunned, the family closes ranks to protect one of its own – but Jane alone has more questions than answers. Could her sweet, timid friend really be capable of such violence? Did any other member of the Wada clan stand to gain everything with the patriarch's death? And if so, could the real murderer still be in their midst?
Biography
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li
'There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.'
There is no good way to say this – because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, 'a single point in a timeline'. Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.
This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving. As Li writes, 'The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now.' Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li's indomitable spirit.
Romance fiction
Problematic Summer Romance
Ali Hazelwood
Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life. Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him. It's such a cliche, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother's best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor loves to remind her, the power dynamic is too imbalanced. Any relationship between them would be problematic in too many ways to count, and Maya should just get over him. After all, he has made it clear that he wants her gone from his life.
But not everything is as it seems – and clichés sometimes become plot twists. When Maya's brother decides to get married in Taormina, she and Conor end up stuck together in a romantic Sicilian villa for over a week. There, on the beautiful Ionian coast, between ancient ruins, delicious foods, and natural caves, Maya realizes that Conor might be hiding something from her. And as the destination wedding begins to erupt out of control, she decides that a summer fling might be just what she needs – even if it's a problematic one.
Sci-fi, fantasy & speculative fiction
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
V.E. Schwab
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.
London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.
Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high and one grows deep and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth.
Read our staff review here.
Debut fiction
New Skin
Miranda Nation
Alex and Leah meet at medical school and form an immediate and intense connection. Over the course of four years, they are caught in the push-pull of passion and betrayal, longing and reunion. Neither can quite give up the relationship, even as they question whether they are good for each other.
Years later, when Alex and Leah are drawn together once more, will they make the right choice?
New Skin evokes a coming of age in the 1990s and charts the course of first love and its power to shape who we become. Spare and compelling, this powerful debut introduces a dazzling new voice in Australian fiction.
Read our staff review here.
LGBTQIA+
Atmosphere
Taylor Jenkins Reid
In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates – Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin; mission specialist Lydia Danes; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
Read our staff review here.
Young Adult fiction
The Pull of the Moon
Pip Smith
Coralie is thirteen years old and lives on Christmas Island, where sea birds circle the sky and the seasons are marked by the migratory patterns of crabs. But life on the island isn't always paradise.
During a fierce tropical storm, a fishing boat carrying eighty-nine asylum seekers crashes into the island's cliffs. Coralie locks eyes with Ali, an eleven-year-old Iranian boy, as his mother pulls her life jacket over his head. But soon Ali disappears beneath the waves and when his body isn't recovered, Coralie resolves to do everything she can to find him.
Read our staff review here.
