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
The Wolf Who Cried Boy
Mark Mupotsa-Russell
Six-year-old Henry believes his life is a fairytale. He’s a Star Prince, his mum is a Star Queen and they’re hiding from Henry’s father, the mysterious ‘Wolf King’.
When news arrives that his Grandma is gravely ill, Henry and his mum must take a road trip across the country and back into the Wolf King’s orbit. Henry isn’t afraid: he knows his magic powers will save them. But as the King draws ever closer, Henry’s world starts to fall apart. Who is the real baddie in his life? Who can he trust? And why don’t his powers seem to work?
In this astoundingly original story of heroes, villains and the messy reality between them, a world of violence and fear can be wildly funny and streaked with magic. Through its unforgettable narrator, The Wolf Who Cried Boy explores how cycles of violence, misogyny and corruption must be broken if we ever want our children to grow up free.
Read our staff review here.
International fiction
What We Can Know
Ian McEwan
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.
Read our staff review here.
Crime fiction
The Stolen
Vikki Petraitis
Senior Detective Antigone Pollard is fearless. Armed with a trained police dog, a black belt in judo and the will to speak her mind, she faces opposition head-on. After six months, Antigone is feeling more settled in Deception Bay. The summer holiday season is off to a slow start and crime rates are down. But when a distraught mother calls the station to report her baby missing, Antigone and Wozza begin a race against time to find the baby and the person who brazenly took him.
In the middle of the frantic investigation, Antigone's mother, Dr Jilly Pollard, arrives for an unexpected visit and shares a tragic family secret, which she needs Antigone's help to resolve. Antigone takes a DNA test that yields two surprising results. And just when things at the Deception Bay police station are running smoothly with a new commander, Senior Sergeant Amanda Filipovic, at the helm, circumstances change one stormy night. In the blink of an eye, Antigone's old boss, Bill Wheeler, is back, making the missing baby investigation harder every day.
Read our staff review here.
Nonfiction: Australian Studies
Snake Talk: How the World’s Ancient Serpent Stories Can Guide Us
Tyson Yunkaporta & Megan Kelleher
Tyson Yunkaporta's bestselling Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story cast an Indigenous lens on contemporary society. Snake Talk is the third book in this trilogy. Co-authored with Megan Kelleher, Snake Talk explores Indigenous thinking through the symbol of a serpent, a common foundational narrative. Snake myths echo from a time before truth, and retain the capacity, at this inflection point in history where truth is daily manipulated by bad actors, to unify, humble and inspire us.
The serpent in Australian Aboriginal stories is both a creator and destroyer, dwelling in the liminal spaces between physical and spiritual worlds, story and history. What if this ancient lore extended around the globe? What if the creation stories of the Basilisk, Wyvern, Naga, Quetzalcoatl and many others carried secrets that might help resolve global issues of existential crisis?
In this exhilarating book, the authors speak to elders from Kathmandu to Aotearoa to South America and Europe about a pluriverse of serpent stories, seeking answers to the age-old riddle of how to align the genius of our species with the regenerative patterns of creation. They speak to the makers – the artists and craftspeople who keep the sacred lore of these serpent entities in the ritual images and objects they create. They explore everything from artificial intelligence to immigration through the lens of global serpent lore – through the eye of the snake.
Read our staff review here.
Sci-fi, fantasy & speculative fiction
Katabasis
R.F. Kuang
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.
Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick. But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him.
But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together. That’s if they can agree on anything. Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?
Read our staff review here.
Debut fiction
Very Impressive for Your Age
Eleanor Kirk
Twenty-six-year-old Evelyn is well on her way to becoming an international opera star, until one night, mid-performance, when she inexplicably loses her voice. With no cure in sight, she's forced to put her dreams on pause, flying back to her hometown to wait out her recovery.
Stuck in limbo, Evelyn balances her time attending overpriced doctors' appointments and accidentally-on-purpose running into her ex on the street outside his apartment. Then she discovers that her old high school is hiring a debating coach (no experience needed!) and realises this might just be her ticket back to relevance.
While re-entering the gates of her alma mater is a welcome reminder of the glory days, being faced with a bunch of starry-eyed teenagers, who haven't had their dreams blown to pieces yet, makes clear just how thin the line can be between drive and delusion – forcing Evelyn to consider whether she could ever be truly satisfied living a life away from the spotlight.
Read our staff review here.
LGBTQIA+
A Family Matter
Claire Lynch
It's 2022, and Heron, an old man of quiet habits, has just had the sort of visit to the doctor that turns a life upside down. Sharing the diagnosis with Maggie, his only daughter, seems impossible. Heron just can't find the words to tell her about it, or any of the other things he's been protecting her from for so long.
It's 1982, and Dawn is a young wife and mother penned in by the expectations of her time and place. Then Hazel comes into her life like a torch in the dark. It's the kind of connection that's impossible to resist, and suddenly Dawn's world is more joyful, and more complicated, than she ever expected. But Dawn has responsibilities, she has commitments: Dawn has Maggie.
Romance fiction
How to Break My Heart
Kat T. Masen
Eva Woods is perfectly content with her quiet life in the picturesque town of Cinnamon Springs, where she owns a café famous for its mouth-watering donuts. But when her best friend, Maddy, requests Eva’s help with wedding planning, her quaint life is upended. Eva has to join forces with Maddy’s brother, Aston, one of the country’s hottest billionaires – and the man who broke her heart back in high school.
Aston and Eva are desperate to outdo each other, but as their annoyance grows, so does their attraction. When they share a kiss, everything changes. Suddenly, Eva isn’t so sure about where she stands with Aston, and with Maddy’s wedding fast approaching, their time together is dwindling.
Will Eva survive this wedding with her heart intact, or is she setting herself up for another heartbreak?
Young adult fiction
A Guide to Falling Off the Map
Zanni L. Arnot
Vinnie Smith has her future mapped. She and her best friend, Lilah, have been busy manifesting post-graduation lives in NYC. Making plans helps Vinnie avoid thinking about losing her mum to multiple sclerosis, and other problems weighing on her mind. Meanwhile, Roo Carpenter, Vinnie's longtime childhood friend, is struggling day-to-day, never mind plans for tomorrow. He's dropped out of high school under the guise of studying photography, when the truth is he's working a dodgy job to help his mum make ends meet.
When Vinnie's carefully laid plans begin to unravel, she decides to fix Roo's problems instead of her own, care of a road trip across inland Australia in her mum's old Kombi. But what Vinnie and Roo don't count on is how close to the surface Vinnie's grief over her mum is, or how her worsening headaches have a worrying familiarity. Plus, they're having these embarrassing, absolutely-not-friend-appropriate feelings for one another ... ones that could completely ruin their friendship if the other finds out.
Read our staff review here.
