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I Am Out with Lanterns (Emily Gale, Random House)
Released August 2018
I Am Out with Lanterns is nuanced, complex and thoroughly readable. Told from multiple perspectives, it follows a kaleidoscope of characters as it explores community, connections, and the desire to... Read more
After the Lights Go Out (Lili Wilkinson, A&U)
Released August 2018
Emergency drills, bug-out bags, a secret underground bunker with a year’s supply of food—life’s a little different when your dad’s a doomsday prepper. Seventeen-year-old Pru Palmer and her two younger... Read more
Zeroes and Ones (Cristy Burne, Xoum)
Released August 2018
Zeroes and Ones is a history of the most exciting milestones in computing, with a focus on individual inventors and innovators. It spans from Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine and Ada... Read more
A Song Only I Can Hear (Barry Jonsberg, A&U)
Released July 2018
Rob Fitzgerald is 13 years old, painfully shy, prone to panic attacks, and desperately, disgustingly in love for the very first time. Rob begins receiving texts from an unknown phone... Read more
Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds (Jeremy Lachlan, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Released August 2018
Immediately exciting and inventive, this is a thrilling story set in a universe made up of multiple worlds. Twelve years ago, Jane and her father arrived at the island of... Read more
Wisp: A Story of Hope (Zana Fraillon, illus by Grahame Baker Smith, Lothian)
Released August 2018
There have been some beautiful, compassionate picture books that feature the plight of refugees and their search for a peaceful life away from war and poverty. Joining these is this... Read more
Sonam and the Silence (Eddie Ayres, illus by Ronak Taher, A&U)
Released August 2018
A fable about a young girl in Kabul during the Taliban occupation hardly sounds like the stuff of picture books so Sonam and the Silence was warily approached. However, fear... Read more
Maya and Cat (Caroline Magerl, Walker Books)
Released August 2018
Caroline Magerl has a very distinctive style of illustration and this book does not disappoint. It’s full of cats. ‘On a roof, as wet as a seal, as grey as... Read more
How Did I Get Here? (Philip Bunting, Scholastic)
Released August 2018
At some point the little kid in your life will venture to ask the question feared by most adults: ‘How did I get here?’ The history of life is a... Read more
Backyard (Ananda Braxton-Smith, illus by Lizzy Newcomb, Black Dog Books)
Released August 2018
Backyard is a gentle reminder that to experience nature, you don’t need to venture much further than out the back door. Set in a city ‘that is like other cities’,... Read more
Trace (Rachael Brown, Scribe)
Released August 2018
Journalist Rachael Brown’s ABC podcast Trace, which earned comparisons to the global sensation Serial, investigated the cold-case murder of Melbourne bookshop owner Maria James. The 38-year-old single mother was stabbed... Read more
Teacher (Gabbie Stroud, A&U)
Released July 2018
Gabbie Stroud always wanted to be a teacher. Her childhood teachers changed her life, and she wanted to do the same for others. This memoir weaves together a broader look... Read more
Happy Never After (Jill Stark, Scribe)
Released August 2018
Picking up where her debut bestseller High Sobriety left off, journalist and author Jill Stark’s Happy Never After charts the period from her breakdown in October 2014 to her ensuing... Read more
Always Another Country (Sisonke Msimang, Text)
Released August 2018
A coming-of-age memoir brimming with no-holds-barred honesty, Always Another Country is a story about love, survival, politics and home. Sisonke Msimang charts various stages of her life, observing her surroundings... Read more
Too Much Lip (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)
Released August 2018
The title of Melissa Lucashenko’s latest book—both an accusation and a lament—speaks of hunger, greed, desperation, destruction and redemption. Central to the novel are themes of rage, incarceration, and generational... Read more
A Superior Spectre (Angela Meyer, Peter Bishop)
Released August 2018
Angela Meyer’s A Superior Spectre is an eerie, gothic work that is both a richly detailed historical novel and a chilling prediction of the near future. The book follows Jeff,... Read more
Scrublands (Chris Hammer, A&U)
Released August 2018
In a dying Riverina town that’s suffering a merciless drought, ‘good people fight to retain honour and dignity against unfair odds’. Shockingly, one Sunday morning, the town’s priest opens fire... Read more
Prize Fighter (Future D Fidel, Hachette)
Released July 2018
Isa Alaki is 10 years old, a budding engineer with a loving family in the Congolese city of Bukavu, when a rebel militia descends on his city, slaughtering his family and... Read more
The Fireflies of Autumn (Moreno Giovannoni, Black Inc.)
Released July 2018
The stories in this impressive fictional debut by Moreno Giovannoni cover all aspects of noisy, nosey, gossipy Italian village life. Ninety-year-old Ugo introduces a series of stories from his Tuscan... Read more
The Biographer’s Lover (Ruby J Murray, Black Inc.)
Released August 2018
Ruby J Murray returns with her second novel, The Biographer’s Lover, a book that is as much about the art of biography as it is a fictional story about a... Read more
