Are you, like our reviewer, a lover of the art novel? If yes, then our book of the month, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith, is most definitely for you: it’s an involving story that spans time and place (with a heist thrown in for good measure). Dodge Rose is an audacious debut novel from Sydneysider Jack Cox, and is everything good writing should be: challenging, creative and truly original. I suggest you answer its readerly demands. Toni Jordan’s words never fail to entertain, and even the title of her new novel, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, makes me smile. Meanwhile, Brisbane’s Nick Earls begins a new five-instalment cycle of the novella form this month with Gotham (with one a month to follow).

Some big international names have big new novels out this month, including Don DeLillo, Curtis Sittenfeld, Lionel Shriver, Nicola Barker, Javier Marías, Chris Cleave, Marie Darrieussecq and Alain de Botton (writing his first fiction since the 1990s). Having read our reviewer’s words of praise, I really must clear some time to read Louise Erdrich; she has written over a dozen novels and I’ve read precisely none of them.

In nonfiction, two striking Australian memoirs appear this month: journalist Luke Williams’s powerful The Ice Age, an account of his research into crystal meth culture in Australia that quickly turned into a personal journey of addiction and recovery; Avalanche, Julia Leigh’s poignant reflection on her experience with IVF, opens up an important conversation about this industry, and about motherhood, desire, and loss.

The local success story that is Maton guitars is given the historical treatment in The Music that Maton Made. Don’t miss NewSouth’s important Offshore, an investigation into the realities of Australia’s policy of ‘processing’ asylum seekers and refugees in Nauru and Manus, or the MUP collection of leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices on the topic of constitutional reform, It’s Our Country. The Lonely City is Olivia Laing’s acclaimed meditation on the human experience of loneliness. Thomas Piketty, the renowned economist and critic of capitalism and inequality, publishes Chronicles: On Our Troubled Times this month. Comprising short pieces written for French newspaper, Libération, they are available here in English for the first time.

And finally, dear reader, it is well and truly awards season.

On top of the Stella Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners, shortlists for the Kibble, Dobbie and NSW Premier’s Awards have been revealed recently, along with a swathe of international shortlist announcements including those for the Baileys and Man Booker International prizes. Katherine Brabon was named the recipient of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award (for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under 35) for her novel The Memory Artist. On top of all that, the Miles Franklin longlist was also announced in April, and I’d like to congratulate our colleague in St Kilda, A.S. Patric, on the inclusion of his most recent novel, Black Rock White City, in that number. Good luck, Alec, for the shortlist (announced later in May) and beyond!

Alison Huber