Our latest blog posts
Meet Holly Harper, our new Online Children’s and YA Specialist
Meet Holly Harper, our new online children’s and YA specialist! She sells books at our Carlton shop and writes them too, under the name H.J. Harper. She loves zombies and hauntings, quests and explosions, and would be totally okay if we all started wearing capes.
Describe your taste in books.
Lots of people have told me I read like a thirteen-year-old boy. I like books with zombies and hauntings, and quests and explosions – books that’ll have me perched on…
Our children's and YA top ten bestsellers of the week
The 65-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton
The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek and Christine Roussey
The Cat with the Coloured Tail by Gillian Mears and Dinalie Dabarera
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness (Exclusive edition)
Rivertime by Trace Balla
Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories by R.J. Palacio
Cloudwish by Fiona Wood
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz (translated by George Goulding)
Bleed by Bill Williams
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
ST Gill & His Audiences by Sasha Grishin
Prick with a Fork: The World’s Worst Waitress Spills the Beans by Larissa Dubecki
Best new crime in September
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH:
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic
While I love a solely plot-driven book as much as I love a blustery action movie (i.e. a LOT), a book that has characters of real depth and diversity, like Resurrection Bay, is quite simply a pleasure to read. And having diversity in a book’s characters is, quite honestly, a relief: it shows awareness of the world around us, one that is not full of much-loved cookie-cutter crime staples…
A look at the winners of Seizure’s Viva La Novella Prize 2015
It’s often difficult for emerging writers, particularly of longer works, to find spaces to showcase their craft – and the same is true for emerging editors, who can find it difficult to make a name for themselves in a role which is meant to be largely invisible. Seizure’s Viva La Novella Prize, now in its third iteration, combines the two in a yearly competition, teaming up emerging editors with emerging writers, who work together over several months bringing a novella…
What we're reading: Miles Allinson, Anna Jones and Laini Taylor
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.
This week, we not only share what our own staff are reading, but also what the team behind Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings is reading too (see here).
Nina Kenwood is reading Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson
Everyone at Readings is talking about this debut Australian novel (our head book…
What the team at Kill Your Darlings is reading in September
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.
This week, we not only share what our own staff are reading (see here), but also what the team behind Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings is reading too.
Hannah Kent, Publishing Director:
I recently read the slender, beautiful A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler, translated from the German by Charlotte Collins…
Reflecting on the final Discworld novel
Longtime Terry Pratchett fan Dani Solomon writes about the bittersweet experience of reading the final Discworld novel. (Please note, there are some spoilers in here.)
A few weeks ago I held an unread Discworld novel in my hands for what would be the last time. I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to never have a new Discworld book to look forward to. Terry Pratchett’s family and friends had a wake and…
Read an excerpt from The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland
by Rosie WaterlandThe Anti-Cool Girl is a blackly comic Australian memoir for our times and a clarion call for all anti-cool girls everywhere. This is an edited extract from the book. (For a limited time, we have signed copies of the book available for purchase online.)
Oh Rosie. Not even born yet, and already on the run. How exhausting. At a time when you should be concentrating on not growing an extra thumb, you’re being tossed around in your mum’s belly while…
New graphic novels for teens
Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq
Raised in a refugee camp called Baddawi in northern Lebanon, Ahmad is just one of the many thousands of refugee children born to Palestinians who fled their homeland after the war in 1948 established the state of Israel.
Leila Abdelrazaq’s graphic novel is a loosely-drawn account of her father’s childhood in Baddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, and it’s a surprisingly gentle telling given the subject matter. In short chapters, Abdelrazaq depicts Ahmad’s daily life…
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