Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.

Ann Le Lievre is reading The Windy Season by Sam Carmody

This debut novel had an electrifying affect on me, though at first, it didn’t seem like it would…

Paul is 17, lives with his family in Perth and his older brother, Elliot, has gone missing. Over the recent months, Elliot had working up north on a cray boat but his contact with the family has suddenly (and uncharacteristically) ceased. Paul has always had a close bond with his brother and can’t rest easy without acting. He decides to head up north himself and visit the fishing community where Elliot had been working.

The first half of the story is told in a relentlessly blunt writing style which reflects the stark landscape and the foreboding that Paul is feeling for his missing brother. He has no ‘back up’ to speak of, and as he’s searching for his brother, he’s also mixing with the inhabitants of a community who are eking out a bleak existence for themselves: most spend their nights getting drunk in the local pub, and sometimes looking for a fight. Half-way through the book I was just about ready to give up – feeling desperate for a rest from this brooding, relentless imagery.

Then a girl walks into Paul’s orbit and I relaxed with the knowledge that someone has got his back at last. Now that the focus had shifted slightly, I realised I could breathe a little easier and looking back at the first half of the story, I found myself connecting with the weight and depth of the plot in a much stronger way. I felt an intense alignment with the characters.

The Windy Season has turned out to be an unforgettable Aussie debut, and for me, a memorable lesson of not giving up!

Nina Kenwood is reading Before The Fall by Noah Hawley

There’s a sequence quite early on in this novel where two characters are struggling to stay alive in the middle of the ocean after a plane crash, and I think it’s one of the most gripping chapters of any book I’ve read this year. I was all in from that point.

Before The Fall isn’t quite the story I was expecting it to be from the blurb. It’s sets itself up as a mystery about why a plane crashed, but it’s actually less interested in that mystery than it is in delving into the lives of the many characters circling around the plot – from the people on the plane to the law enforcement officials investigating the crash. Hawley is a very good writer (he’s the writer and producer of the TV show Fargo), and he is especially skilled at jumping from one character’s perspective to another. This novel is also a fascinating study of what happens in the aftermath of a disaster, and how the media can report on – and manipulate – a story to their own needs. Highly recommended.

Bronte Coates is reading Words In Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

I read two fantastic Australian young adult books last week – one an older release that I’ve been meaning to get to for ages, and the other an early copy of a much-anticipated novel.

The older one was Claire Zorn’s The Protected which won multiple awards a few years ago. Now I know why. Set in the Blue Mountains, this story is one of the most powerful depictions of bullying I’ve ever read – from the simply-told interactions between Hannah and her classmates, to the way Zorn presents Hannah’s internal reactions and the lingering trauma. The Protected made me cry more than once and reminded me just how difficult things can get when you’re a teen.

The almost-here highly-anticipated YA novel I read was Cath Crowley’s Words In Deep Blue. I straight-up LOVED this book – it was funny, sad, heartwarming, fun, fast-paced, ridiculously romantic – in short, all of my favourite things about YA fiction. It’s our young adult book of the month for September and you can read my colleague’s rave review here.

Eleanor Jenkins is reading The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke

I’ve just finished Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Hate Race. The way she evokes her 1980s Sydney childhood is wonderfully vivid; her descriptions of tacky elasticised dance costumes and hot swimming pool kiosks made me feel strangely nostalgic for my own NSW schooldays. But these stories are punctuated by heartbreaking accounts of everyday racism – the casual unthinking kind as well as the more deliberate, cruel and devastating kind.

It’s an eye-opening book to read as a white Australian. The setting is so familiar while the descriptions of racial hatred are so jarring. This book has shaken me and made me re-examine my own childhood: What was I blind to? Who did I hurt? What might I have done or said differently to the people around me? Clarke’s particular genius lies in conveying how a racist encounter feels to the victim – how much it hurts in the moment, and how the accumulation of many such moments can damage and reshape a person incrementally.

She describes her gradual shift from incomprehension, to weary resignation, to rebellious defiance. It’s this defiance that proves inspiring and often hilarious. Clarke’s powerful storytelling had me laughing, wincing, gasping in horror and then cheering her on – often in the space of a single page. You should read this book because it is socially and politically important, but you should also read it because it’s thoroughly entertaining and you won’t be able to put it aside.

Holly Harper is reading Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit is one of those books I wouldn’t be reading if it wasn’t a bookclub pick. Given that it’s been dubbed ‘military sci-fi for people who love maths’, it’s so far out of my realm of interest that I almost gave up after the first chapter.

I’m really glad I didn’t.

Kel Cheris is a soldier who suddenly finds herself elevated to the status of general to help wrest control of a galactic fortress away from a group of heretics. To do so, she has been implanted with the ‘ghost’ of the long-dead Shuos Jedao, a strategic genius who also happens to be a madman who killed his own troops. Cheris must navigate the troubling intricacies of her new role, while attempting not to fall under Jedao’s dangerous sway.

This is a difficult book. It’s so heavy with concepts like ‘calendrical heresy’ and ‘threshold winnowers’ that at times it feels it’s in another language. Lee obviously doesn’t believe in holding his readers’ hands, because you’re immediately immersed in this strange and alien world with very little attempt to ease you in (I’ll freely admit to reading a few reviews that helped clarify a lot of these concepts for me).

But for all that this is a hard-going book, it’s also an absolutely thrilling one. The pace of the battles is breathless, and the urge to keep reading to understand this brilliant world is incredibly addictive. It’s like a puzzle to be deciphered, and the reward is an incredibly rich tapestry of plot and world-building that is guaranteed to find a place on all of this year’s best SF lists.