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Tik Merauke: An epidemic like no other (John Richens, MUP)

Released March 2022

In the early 1900s the sexually transmitted infection donovanosis ravaged the Marind of New Guinea. Through the lens of this disease, known as tik Merauke to the native people, doctor... Read more

Only a Monster (Vanessa Len, A&U)

Released February 2022

Joan is enjoying her summer in London with her eccentric family and dream job at the historic Holland House. After unexpectedly losing several hours out of her day after a... Read more

A Great Hope (Jessica Stanley, Picador)

Released March 2022

When ACTU boss John Clare falls to his death from the roof of the family home, a note found on him makes it seem like suicide. But is that the... Read more

The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness (Matt Ottley, Dirt Lane)

Released February 2022

An author, visual artist and composer, Matt Ottley has combined his talents in his latest work to create a multi-modal sensory feast that merges words, art and music. Bold and... Read more

The Islands (Emily Brugman, A&U)

Released February 2022

It’s the 1950s and the Finnish migrants who have made their home on the ruthless terrain of Little Rat Island are accustomed to surviving harsh landscapes, both emotional and physical.... Read more

The Power of Podcasting: Telling stories through sound (Siobhán McHugh, UNSW Press)

Released February 2022

It’s strange to think that ‘less than a decade ago, most people had never heard of podcasting’, as Siobhán McHugh points out in The Power of Podcasting. In this part... Read more

Big World, Tiny World: Forest (Jess Racklyeft, Affirm) 

Released February 2022

Jess Racklyeft will already be a familiar name to readers of picture books, and Big World, Tiny World: Forest is just as lovely as her earlier works. The book begins with a... Read more

The Grass Hotel (Craig Sherborne, Text)

Released February 2022

A woman suffering from dementia speaks to her son in her own idiosyncratic, damaged voice—her ‘wiring’ is gone. The mother-narrator's son is introverted and perhaps on the autism spectrum: he... Read more

The Furies (Mandy Beaumont, Hachette)

Released February 2022

A woman in a small Australian town is haunted. Death is all around her: she is still grieving her murdered sister, Mallory, while the spectre of her mother’s arrest and... Read more

South Flows the Pearl (Mavis Gock Yen, ed by Siaoman Yen & Richard Horsburgh, SUP)

Released February 2022

Over the 80s and 90s, Mavis Gock Yen (1916–2008) collected the stories of her contemporaries—Australian Chinese people whose memories and experiences spanned the late 1800s through to almost the end... Read more

The Cane (Maryrose Cuskelly, A&U)

Released February 2022

Award-winning nonfiction writer Maryrose Cuskelly’s first leap into fiction is set in a small Australian town where an unsolved crime turns the community upside down. It’s the 1970s and it... Read more

Xavier in the Meantime (Kate Gordon, Riveted Press) 

Released February 2022

Xavier in the Meantime is the new companion novel to Kate Gordon’s CBCA award-winning Aster’s Good, Right Things. Focusing this time on Xavier, Aster’s best friend, the story takes a sensitive but... Read more

The Very Last List of Vivian Walker (Megan Albany, Hachette)

Released February 2022

This quiet but compelling novel follows the very ordinary path of an ordinary woman completing the ordinary business of dying. However, it is in this ordinariness that the heart of... Read more

A Witness of Fact (Drew Rooke, Scribe)

Released February 2022

A Witness of Fact examines the controversial public life of South Australia's former chief forensic pathologist Dr Colin Manock, and his problematic role in the state's criminal justice system. Manock might... Read more

Leo and Mina Fink: For the greater good (Margaret Taft, Monash Publishing)

Released February 2022

In this biography of the working lives of an impressive 20th-century power couple, the competing forces of hope and catastrophe are clearly at work. Historian Margaret Taft has expertly detailed... Read more

In an Artist’s Garden (Claire Orrell, Thames & Hudson)

Released February 2022

Like all good seek-and-find books, In an Artist’s Garden is a bit addictive regardless of the reader’s age, though is perhaps best suited to a middle/upper primary audience; the objects are simple... Read more

Ouch! Tales of Gravity (Kate Simpson, illus by Andy Hardiman, A&U)

Released February 2022

How do you explain something as complicated as gravity to a young audience (five-year-olds and above)? Well, humour certainly helps. The narrator in Ouch! Tales of Gravity is knowledgeable and... Read more

Cold Enough for Snow (Jessica Au, Giramondo)

Released February 2022

Cold Enough for Snow is Jessica Au’s second novel and the winner of Giramondo Publishing, Fitzcarraldo Editions and New Directions’ inaugural Novel Prize. The book’s narrator travels with her Hong... Read more

This is Me! (Sally Morgan, Magabala)

Released February 2022

Written and illustrated by well-loved author Sally Morgan, This is Me is a simple and colourful board book for very young children. Morgan’s illustration style features simple shapes and patterns... Read more

Found, Wanting (Natasha Sholl, Ultimo Press) 

Released February 2022

Beginning with a sudden death, Natasha Sholl’s memoir sets us up to expect a traditional grief narrative, ending with the author having processed the loss, found new meaning in their... Read more