The winners of the 2026 ABA Book of the Year Awards were announced over the weekend, as part of the Australian Bookseller Association's annual celebration of Australian writers, publishers and booksellers.
The ABA Book of the Year Awards celebrate the books that have captured the hearts of Australian booksellers – the stories that they've been excited to champion and share with readers. The winners are chosen by ABA members to recognise these outstanding Australian books.
Adult Fiction Book of the Year
Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can't stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. But Rowan isn't telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater …
A novel of heartstopping twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is a story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.
Adult Non-Fiction Book of the Year
Always Home, Always Homesick
Hannah Kent
In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavik Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter.
That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, unaware that, years later, she will return to the same building to write Burial Rites, the haunting story of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman executed in Iceland. The novel will go on to launch the author's stellar literary career and capture the hearts of readers across the globe.
Always Home, Always Homesick is Hannah Kent's exquisite love letter to a land that has forged a nation of storytellers, her ode to the transcendent power of creativity, and her invitation to us all to join her in the realms of mystery, spirit and wonder.
Read our Q&A with Hannah Kent about Always Home, Always Homesick.
Children's Book of the Year
Here Come the Cousins
Maggie Hutchings, illustrated by Sarah Zweck
I count down the days all year until …
Seven smiling cousins bounce through Pop's door!
Finally the cousins have arrived! Get ready for races to the beach, duck-dives in the waves and snoozy afternoons in the hammock. Last one home for lunch gets the wobbly chair!
A nostalgic story celebrating cousins, summertime and special family moments together at your favourite place.
Find out more about the ABA Book of the Year Awards and see the 2026 shortlist for each category here.
