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

Mark Rubbo is reading The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota

I've been reading the The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota. It's a political novel about race, class and identity but its also a novel about trauma and denial. Set in contemporary England, I found it absolutely riveting.

Nayan has risen through union ranks and with his emphasis on better conditions for the members he's immensely popular…

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

Joanna Di Mattia is enjoying various books by Tessa Hadley

I’ve decided to binge-read Tessa Hadley. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it’s just that I read one of her novels – The Master Bedroom – and loved it so much I had to keep going and before I knew it, I had inhaled both Late in the Day and her debut Accidents in the Home…

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

Tracy Hwang is reading It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken

I’m reading Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over, one of the joint winners of the second Novel Prize. Given that the inaugural Novel Prize gave us Jessica Au’s unforgettable Cold Enough for Snow, I was really looking forward to what the second round would give…

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

Yasmin Baker is reading Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew

I recently read Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew in one sitting – I could not put it down! It was spooky and the plot was intense, but for me it was the characters that kept me reading; I fell in love with all three, and was so curious on what was going to…

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

Rosalind McClintock is reading James by Percival Everett

I just swallowed up James by Percival Everett in less than a weekend, and I have a very chatty 7 year old, so that is saying something! A retelling of Huckleberry Finn, from Jim's view, it is such an elegant, compelling, harrowing and yet hopeful read. Everett's prose is perfect, the issues meaty, and his characters are…

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

Lian Hingee is reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

A lot of my favourite reading experiences have come about through recommendations from my wonderful and widely-read workmates (pro-tip: work at a bookshop, you'll never run out of books you desperately want to read). When our Emporium bookseller Megan posted on Instagram about how she was jealous of people who got to read…

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

Mark Rubbo is reading We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain

I have been reading the posthumous collection of short stories by Georgia Blain, We All Lived in Bondi Then. It's an exquisite collection, moving, at times funny and so readable. I was reminded of Alice Munro and Tessa Hadley.

I've also just read Nicholas Jose's novel The Idealist. Think le Carré…

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

Katey Bellew is reading Dear Son by Thomas Mayo

This incredibly moving collection features twelve letters by Indigenous men addressed to their sons and fathers. What results is a desperately brave and tender demonstration of decolonising masculinity. The Northern Territory Intervention, and the racist dialogue surrounding it, is raised by several of the men as having a particularly harmful impact on their relationships and sense of…

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Each week our wonderful staff share the books and music they've been enjoying

Jason Austin is reading The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The last couple of weeks I have been loving Tananarive Due's amazing ghost story, The Reformatory, which is loosely based on experiences endured by the author's great uncle who died at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida in the 1930s.  

With their mother deceased and their father having to flee town after being accused of raping…

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

Lian Hingee is reading Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

Our Kids Shop manager Dani has been raving about Travis Baldree's work of cosy fantasy, Legends and Lattes, ever since it came out in 2022. It took me a year, but over my holidays I finally read it, and I'm delighted to say that this unorthodox tale about a barbarian orc who hangs up her…

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