Australiana by Yumna Kassab

This is Yumna Kassab’s second novel and, as the name suggests, it is a collection of stories and ideas from an assembly of characters that together represent a narrative of rural Australia. Like a kaleidoscope scanning the drought-stricken landscape of a small town, the stories come in interconnected fragments. Kassab uses both prose and poetry and often gives the reader different reflections on the same scene.

Read Kara Nicholson’s full review

Loveland by Robert Lukins

Loveland is a gentle and compassionate read written by an author who understands how to hold the secrets of the story close. Here, in his second novel, Robert Lukins explores women’s lives and the impact of intergenerational violence. Slowly and carefully, he constructs this beautiful novel into a story that celebrates strength, acknowledges fear and violence, and illustrates the great sovereignty of friendship.

Read Chris Gordon’s full review

Sadvertising by Ennis Cehic

In the pages of Ennis Ćehić’s debut, Sadvertising, you’ll find a kaleidoscope of stories and perspectives, each an intriguing reflection of our own perplexing modern reality, rendered in a combination of wry detachment, sharp social satire and corporate ennui. From brief fable-like glimpses into the amusing contradictions of workplace culture to more ambitious tales of technological futures or magic realist unrealities, each story reflects the author’s relentless creativity, leaping from idea to idea, never lingering anywhere longer than necessary.

Read Joe Murray’s full review

Hovering by Rhett Davis

This is a hugely imaginative and brilliantly executed literary debut, written in a register that is perhaps best described as surreal, but also very readable. Throughout the book, Davis toys with form, leading the reader through a variety of excursions in narrative mode, including text messages, chat rooms, HTML code, interview transcripts, hashtags, and other formats I’m not sure how to describe. Every single one of these experiments is a success; they are not a writerly conceit, but part of Davis’ careful querying of the ways in which we make our realities.

Read Alison Huber’s full review

The Sorrow Stone by Kári Gíslason

Inspired by events preserved in the medieval Icelandic sagas Gísla Saga (The Saga of Gisli) and Eyrbyggja Saga (The Saga of the People of Eyri), The Sorrow Stone’s focus is the character of Disa. Based on a woman named Thordis Sursdottir – a sidelined figure of the Viking tales until now – Disa is full of steely determination to save her son, Sindri, and her own honour … Like the epic Icelandic sagas that inspired this sparse, gritty, captivating novel, I have no doubt The Sorrow Stone will be read by generations to come.

Read Tye Cattanach’s full review

Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight by Steven Carroll

This is the final novel in Steven Carroll’s series based on T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets [and] this fourth volume can easily be read as a standalone. It was written during the Covid lockdown and you can feel it in the book, a sense of being enclosed and then set free. The central character is Eliot’s first wife, the highly strung eccentric, Vivienne Haigh- Wood, whose tumultuous relationship with the dour Eliot is abruptly ended when she is committed to a London asylum. For years she languishes in the asylum, obsessed by Eliot and his abandonment of her. Eliot never visits, but one of her few visitors, pharmacist Louise Purdon, becomes convinced of Vivienne’s sanity. This is where Carroll departs from real life to create an achingly beautiful work of fiction.

Read Mark Rubbo’s full review

Son of Sin by Omar Sakr

Son of Sin follows a young gay man navigating his way through his emerging sexuality and his tight-knit Australian Lebanese family and community … We read fiction for many reasons but one of the great pleasures for me is gaining an insight to worlds and feelings that are unknown to me. This is a marvellous book that will speak to many people from different marginalised communities directly, but in showing us a common humanity, Sakr’s impressive novel also gives many other readers an insight into experiences unfamiliar to them.

Read Mark Rubbo’s full review

A Great Hope by Jessica Stanley

Every so often a novel comes along with a magic, broad appeal; an inevitable conversation starter. Jessica Stanley’s A Great Hope is that kind of magic novel; a literary, multi-generational family saga that’s ambitious, smart and wholly engaging. Here is a book that wields a page-turning plot and gripping, complicated characters. You’ll gulp down all 400 pages, then push it fervently into the hands of everyone you know.

Read Stella Charls’ full review