Our latest blog posts

The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2024 shortlist

The inaugural shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction has been announced! This new prize celebrates exceptional narrative non-fiction by women, and promotes excellence in writing, robust research, original narrative voices and accessibility. The Prize is valued at £30,000 and is open to all women writers from across the globe who are published in the UK and writing in English.

The winner will be announced on 13 June 2024.

Thunderclap by Laura Cumming

Thunderclap is a kaleidoscopic memoir connecting Laura…

Read more ›

Books to inspire your autumn baking

We're at the beginning of Autumn, and Easter and the end of daylight saving are looming. This seems like the perfect time to have a baking project to look forward to. Here are a few new and old favourites we think will inspire and get you excited.

Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice by Natalie Paull

Sweet-toothed superstar and bestselling baker Natalie Paull returns with Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice, an all-new compilation of colourful, creative recipes to delight fans and newcomers…

Read more ›

Thrilling and fantastical YA

The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le

Science meets fantasy, with steampunk stylings and Vietnamese cultural in this incredible debut.

When Nhika is caught using her bloodcarving abilities during a sham medical appointment, she's captured by underground thugs and sold to an aristocratic family to heal the last witness of their father's murder.

When Nhika meets an alluring yet entitled physician's aide, Ven Kochin, she's forced to question the true intent behind this murder. When Nhika discovers that Kochin is not…

Read more ›

Top picks for book clubs this month

Australian fiction | Compassion by Julie Janson

From the acclaimed author of the Miles Franklin longlisted Madukka: The River Serpent and the Barbara Jefferis Award shortlisted Benevolence, Compassion continues Julie Janson’s emotional and intense literary exploration of the complex and dangerous lives of Aboriginal women during the 1800s in colonial New South Wales, which she began in Benevolence as a counter narrative to colonial history in Australian literature.

Compassion is the dramatised life story of one of Julie Janson’s…

Read more ›

The 2024 ABIA shortlists

The shortlists for the 2024 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) have been announced! The ABIAs celebrate the best books of the year, as judged by Australian book industry members.

Below are the shortlisted titles from each category.

General fiction book of the year

The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams

Dark Mode by Ashley Kalagian-Blunt

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

Homecoming by Kate Morton

Mr Einstein’s Secretary by Matthew Reilly

Read more ›

CBCA Shortlisted Books 2024

The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has announced its Shortlisted Books for 2024. Congratulations to all the authors, illustrators and publishers! The CBCA presents annual awards to books of literary merit, for outstanding contribution to Australian children’s literature. The CBCA Awards were first presented in 1946 and are the longest-running book awards in Australia.

Below are links to the shortlist titles for each category.

Older Readers

Books in this category may be fiction, drama or poetry and are appropriate…

Read more ›

The March crime review

These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month – all in one place!

What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan

Reviewed by Lian Hingee, digital marketing manager

Australia is blessed with some of the very best crime writers in the world right now, and Dervla McTiernan is without a doubt one of the finest. Her debut, The Rúin, was a global bestseller that won a host of awards when…

Read more ›

Australian fiction to pick up this month

Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh

Mary Anne is painfully aware that she's not a good wife and not a good mother, and is slowly realising that she no longer wants to play either of those roles. One morning, she walks out of the family home in Wollongong, leaving her husband and teenage daughters behind. Wounded by her mother's abandonment, adolescent Vivian searches for meaning everywhere: true crime, boys' bedrooms, Dolly magazine, a six-pack of beer. But when Vivian…

Read more ›

A spotlight on translated fiction this month

This month we're reading fiction translated from Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Dutch!

Until August by Gabriel García Márquez (translated from Spanish by Anne McLean)

Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and for…

Read more ›

The 2024 International Booker Longlist

The International Booker Prize has revealed the ‘Booker Dozen’ of 13 novels in contention for the 2024 prize, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world.

The prize is awarded every year for a single book that is translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. It aims to encourage more publishing and reading of quality works of imagination from all over the world, and to give greater recognition to the role of translators…

Read more ›