Twenty twenty-for-the-plot
In 2024, we were doing it for the plot! So here is a collection of books released this year that have incredible plot lines – from dark humour to cosy reads, you're sure to find something to devour over your holidays as you get ready for 2025!
For the anti-facist, pop music fans ...
Big Time by Jordan Prosser
Big Time is set in a not-too-distant future Australia, where the eastern states have become the world's newest autocracy – a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy, nationalism trumps all, and moral indecency is punishable by indefinite detention.
The novel opens as Julian Ferryman, bass player for the Acceptables, returns to Melbourne after a year overseas. He reconnects with his band as they prepare to record and tour their highly anticipated second album, and is given his first taste of a new designer drug – F, a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that gives users a glimpse of their own future. Rumour says, the more you take, the further you see ... maybe even to the end of time.
Big Time is an anti-fascist ode to the power of pop music and a satire about art in the face of entropy, all wrapped up in a spec-fic road-trip saga.
For the boundary pushers ...
All Fours by Miranda July
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.
Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom.
Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
For the murder mystery lovers ...
What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie
‘I was immensely grateful that despite the gruesome way my husband died, he’d done it with his clothes on.’
Anthony Wistern is wealthy beyond imagination. Fragrant wife, gaggle of photogenic children, French chateau, Cotswold manor, plethora of mistresses, penchant for cutting moral corners – tick tick tick tick tick tick.
Unfortunately for him, he’s also dead. Suddenly poised to inherit his fortune, each member of the family falls under suspicion. And that’s when everything comes crashing down …
For the black comedy fans ...
The First Friend by Malcolm Knox
A chilling black comedy, The First Friend imagines a gangster mob in charge of a global superpower.
The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria slowly but surely descends into murderous paranoia.
By his side is Vasil Murtov, Beria's closest friend since childhood. But to be a witness is dangerous; Murtov must protect his family and play his own game of survival while remaining outwardly loyal to an increasingly unstable Beria. The tension ramps up as Stalin's visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches. Is Murtov playing Beria, or is he being played?
The First Friend is a novel in a time of autocrats, where reality is a fiction created by those who rule. Reflecting on Putin's Russia, Trump's America, Xi's China and Murdoch's planet Earth, it is at once a satire and a thriller, a survivor's tale in which a father has to walk a tightrope every day to save his family from a monster and a monstrous society.
For the artists and art lovers ...
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter
Sabine returned from the shops carrying a bag containing an effortless pair of Christian Wijnants fringed trousers and Ann Demeulemeeter Crinkle Nero boots. The sales assistant had agreed that the combination made Sabine look exactly like an artist. 'A conceptual artist?' Sabine asked, and the sales assistant said, 'Or an actual artist.'
Sabine is having a moment. Her new exhibition, Fuck You, Help Me, is opening soon and, as her gallerist says, 'Hell is an artist three days before their exhibition opens.' But it's not only this coming milestone that is causing Sabine to melt down.
She is being stalked. As exhibition day draws closer, so too does the man who has been watching her. As his approaches become more overt and threatening, Sabine's fear amplifies and transforms into something feral and primal. And then things start to get really strange.
For those wanting a look inside the mind of a psychopath ...
Mural by Stephen Downes
Mural is a haunting 'confession' by a psychopath known only as D. Held in a secure facility, he has been asked by his psychiatrist to write down his thoughts, admissions, anxieties and uncertainties. They are at first revealed through the stories of other people's lives and obsessions.
Specifically, D is pre-occupied with a British man who spent his early years as a schoolteacher in Australia before becoming a renowned sexologist. D is also consumed by Australia's most prolific public artist, a man whose highly erotic watercolours are at odds with his stained-glass church windows. D writes of his meeting with a boyhood friend. He recounts the true tale of a Frenchman who went mad because he believed prehistoric stones in Brittany were shifting.
Downes navigates the real and the imagined, traversing fact and fiction. Mural is daring, acknowledging the influences of European writers such as Thomas Bernhard and WG Sebald while moving into new and original territory. It is both provocative and tender, a highly explosive fable about sexuality, religion, art and obsession.
For the cosy book readers ...
A Pirate’s Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne
The heart-warming sequel to Rebecca Thorne's instant Sunday Times bestseller, Can't Spell Treason Without Tea. For fans of Bookshops & Bonedust and Our Flag Means Death.
Queer pirates will discover if enemies actually can become lovers ...
Kianthe and Reyna are hunting for dragon eggs to save their hometown. To secure their prize, they must strike a deal with the local lord – who in turn wants Serina, notorious river pirate, and scourge of his supply chains. Surely, they can handle one small abduction in the name of justice?
Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of the lord's constables. Bobbie is determined to capture Serina, but lawmaker and lawbreaker have a complicated history – and it might jeopardize everything. As Bobbie and Serina become reacquainted, Kianthe and Reyna watch this relationship-wreck from afar. Then from not quite as far. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna's favourite pastime. The dragon eggs may just have to wait.
Take a break with a good book and a (heart)warming tea – and prepare for adventure ...
