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The Midnight Dress (Karen Foxlee, UQP)
Released February 2013
This suspense novel took me by surprise—not just the ending but how enjoyable it was! This is the second novel from Karen Foxlee, who won several awards for her debut... Read more
Mullumbimby (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)
Released March 2013
When Jo Breen buys a property in the Byron Bay hinterland her motives are clear—to be closer to her ancestral land and to distance herself from city life. She has... Read more
The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion, Text)
Released February 2013
This funny, feel-good take on Asperger’s Syndrome has been getting huge international and local buzz. It’s the story of Don Tillman, a 40-year-old professor of genetics at a Melbourne university... Read more
Birth with Confidence (Rhea Dempsey, Boathouse Press)
Released February 2013
Rhea Dempsey is a childbirth educator and one of Australia’s foremost thinkers on the topic of childbirth. In Birth with Confidence, Dempsey looks at what she calls the ‘labour-bypass era’,... Read more
Ghost Wife: A Memoir of Love and Defiance (Michelle Dicinoski, Black Inc.)
Released March 2013
In this moving memoir Australian writer Michelle Dicinoski charts her decision to marry her girlfriend Heather, and the complications that arise due to the fact that their union isn’t recognised... Read more
Love with a Chance of Drowning (Torre DeRoche, Viking)
Released March 2013
An urban 20-something Aussie girl gets on the booze in a San Francisco bar, chats up a soulful, handsome stranger, has more drinks and finds herself in his bed next... Read more
Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting) (Monica Dux, MUP)
Released March 2013
Things I Didn’t Expect combines Monica Dux’s own bravely honest, warts-and-all pregnancy and birth stories with anecdotes, statistics and expert opinion on issues surrounding childbearing. It is sometimes very funny... Read more
Alex as Well (Alyssa Brugman, Text)
Released February 2013
Alex has spent her whole life seeing someone else—the other Alex—looking back at her from the mirror. But now things have changed. A new school, new clothes—a new Alex. However,... Read more
All This Could End (Steph Bowe, Text)
Released March 2013
I am in awe of Steph Bowe. Her second novel, All This Could End, is so confident and perceptive that it is difficult to believe its author is only 18... Read more
Definitely No Ducks (Meg McKinlay, illus by Leila Rudge, Walker Books)
Released March 2013
Mrs Melvino’s class is doing Antarctica for their special end-of-term assembly. As well as talking about it, they have built a spectacular papier mâché display. Unfortunately, the whole performance is... Read more
How to Keep a Boy from Kissing You (Tara Eglington, HarperCollins)
Released February 2013
Despite claiming to be an expert on matters of the heart, Aurora has never actually been kissed. She is determined her first kiss won’t be with any old guy (or... Read more
Life in Outer Space (Melissa Keil, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Released February 2013
Sam Kinnison isn’t having the ideal high school experience. While he has good friends and gets good marks, he is also on the receiving end of many a practical joke.... Read more
New Guinea Moon (Kate Constable, A&U)
Released March 2013
Kate Constable’s latest novel has much in common with her CBCA award-winner Crow Country, but unfortunately fails to meet the same high standard. Set in 1974, the novel follows 16-year-old... Read more
When We Wake (Karen Healey, A&U)
Released February 2013
Award-winning New Zealand writer Karen Healey’s third YA novel, When We Wake, is a taut drama set in an unnervingly realistic future world of rising oceans, growing populations, and dwindling... Read more
Bay of Fires (Poppy Gee, Hachette)
Released February 2013
Murdered girls washed up on picture-postcard Tassie beaches. You could joke about not telling Tourism Tasmania, but sadly this novel takes some of its inspiration from real events, specifically, the... Read more
Be Careful What You Wish For (Gemma Crisp, A&U)
Released January 2013
Brought to you by the editor of Cleo, Be Careful What You Wish For is standard chick-lit with pretty much everything you’d expect between a magazine’s glossy pages reassembled in... Read more
Elsewhere in Success (Iris Lavell, Fremantle Press)
Released February 2012
This debut novel is set in a suburb called Success; here the protagonists Harry and Louisa are floundering. This middle-aged couple are—both separately and together—coming to terms with the failures... Read more
Inheritance (Balli Kaur Jaswal, Sleepers)
Released February 2013
Told through the eyes of a Punjabi Sikh family and set in Singapore between the 1970s and the 1990s, this bold debut tells the intersecting stories of a family and... Read more
Rough Diamond (Kathryn Ledson, Michael Joseph)
Released February 2013
We first meet the hero of Rough Diamond on a dark and wet Melbourne evening. Erica Jewell literally falls over Jack Jones as he lies dying from gunshot wounds in... Read more
Strikeforce Lightning (Mark Aitken, A&U)
Released January 2013
Strikeforce Lightning is exactly what you’d expect from the title—a military/espionage thriller in the vein of fellow Australians James Phelan and David Rollins. The setting (Jordan and surrounds) and plot... Read more
