Do you associate fantasy with epic wizard battles, dragons breathing walls of fire, and hazardous quests through dangerous lands? Then you need to discover cosy fantasy – where the stakes are low, the worlds are whimsical and the stories are sweet.

Cosy fantasy is an increasingly popular genre, with more and more new books focusing on feel-good stories rather than grand (and sometimes torturous) epics. This collection of cosy favourites includes stories of self-discovery, romance, fresh starts and found family…

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Take an incredible and informative tour around the natural world with these illustrated non-fiction books. Whether you're shopping for a young reader obsessed with plants, bugs, or birds, this collection will have something to spark their interest and keep them engaged.

Learn about First Nations practices to care for Country in The Trees, discover weird and wonderful native Australian plants with Plantabulous! or go inside an insect's cocoon to learn about butterflies and moths – there are heaps of…

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June 16th to 22nd marks National Refugee Week in Australia, with World Refugee Day on June 20th. This is a time to promote greater social awareness of and support for refugees; a time to highlight the issues they face even after arriving safely in Australia, and the contributions refugees are making to the Australian community.

Below we've curated a range of titles to help provide insight into the refugee experience, with stirring nonfiction, picture books to help explain complex concepts…

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The winners of the 2024 BookPeople Book of the Year Awards were announced this week, celebrating exceptional books by Australian authors.

BookPeople, the Association of Australian Booksellers, award these prizes annually to recognise outstanding achievements in our literary community. Melissa Lucashenko won Fiction Book of the Year for Edenglassie, Anna Funder won Non-Fiction Book of the Year for Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, and Children's Book of the Year went to Sophie Blackall for If I Was…

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If you're looking for a reprieve from queer stories that end in tragedy, look no further. Here's a selection of titles with a diverse array of LGBTQIA+ characters, telling a wide array of stories, that will all leave you feeling a bit more hopeful than when you started.

The Performance by Claire Thomas

The house lights lower.

The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness.

As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.

Margot…

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This month we're reading fiction translated from: Dutch, French, Italian and Japanese!

The Hairdresser's Son by Gerbrand Bakker

translated from Dutch by David Colmer

Simon never knew his father, Cornelis. When his wife told him she was pregnant, Cornelis packed his bags, and a day later he was dead. Or everyone assumed he was dead; after all, he was on the passenger list of the KLM plane that crashed in Tenerife in 1977.

Simon is a hairdresser, just like his…

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Each week our wonderful staff share the books that they've been enjoying.

Emma Clarke is reading A Shining by Jon Fosse and The Passion According to G.H. By Clarice Lispector

I've been reading A Shining and The Passion According to G.H., both of which are fantastic! I've paired these books together as they are both books that get at that great Kafkian quote: 'I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound us…

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V. V. Ganeshananthan and Naomi Klein were announced last night as the 2024 winners of the Women's Prizes. Ganeshananthan won the Women's Prize for Fiction for her novel Brotherless Night, while Klein won the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction for Doppelganger.

The Women's Prize is awared annually and is open to all women writers, writing in English and published in the UK. The fiction winner receives £30,000, anonymously endowed, and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the…

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June is Audiobook Appreciation month, as well as Libro.fm's ten year anniversary, so it's the perfect time to pick up a new book on audio! Whether you're already a lover of audiobooks or you're new to the format, we've got recommendations to help you find a great read.

Did you know you can browse and buy audiobooks on Libro.fm, while supporting Readings? We have a Libro store, meaning you can buy audiobooks from Readings, see our curated recommendations…

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Australian fiction | Imperial Harvest by Bruce Pascoe

Yen Se has lost everything to the Khan's brutality.

Left with one eye and one leg, he is forced out of his home village to work in the city as a horse handler. Witness to the Khan's violent crusade, their raids sweeping across Eurasia, he travels with the theatre of war, but exists outside of it; stunned every morning to find himself alive.

Yen Se moves randomly across Europe with a loose…

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