There’s still time to discover your next read within the excellent range of titles that make up the ICYMI 50: Must-read new Australian books you might have missed collection.

To celebrate our brilliant local authors (and ensure that you don’t miss out on their wonderful books) we’re offering 20% off fifty recent releases that might have flown under your radar. From brilliant short story collections, we highly recommend trying Hold Your Fire, She is Haunted, or Born into This. In debut novels, perhaps dive into the punchy New Animal or ruminate on Small joys of Real Life. There’s also gorgeous poetry within the pages of Drop Bear and How to Make a Basket and compelling memoirs including Muddy People and Eating With My Mouth Open. The ICYMI 50 is full of voices we should be paying attention to right now.

Read some of our staff recommendations below or browse the collection in full here.

Hold Your Fire by Chloe Wilson

Chloe Wilson’s brilliant debut collection of short stories, Hold Your Fire, is an absolute delight to read. Contained within you’ll find a mix of witty and deadpan flash fiction and short stories of varying lengths, all of them connected by a shared sense of peculiarity and Wilson’s matter-of-fact delivery … This collection of well-crafted tales presents the reader with repeated opportunities to question the divide between how we present ourselves to others, and what we’re really, secretly thinking but perhaps dare not speak out loud.

– Suzanne Steinbruckner, bookseller at Readings Carlton

A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan

A joyous stream-of-consciousness ride. I was talking with a friend recently about how Convenience Store Woman left me saddened by its rather bleak outlook on the society’s treatment of neurodiverse people - so it’s a delightful contrast to read about a woman on the autism spectrum who is so exuberantly in love with the world even while she navigates her place in it. I’m completely swept up in her thoughts and observations!

– Eleanor Jenkins, bookseller at Readings Carlton

One Hundred Days by Alice Pung

There’s something about Alice Pung’s writing that feels tender and bracingly honest at once, like a friend who gives you the advice you need, even if you’d rather not hear it. I particularly linger over the character of the mother, who viciously lashes out even as she tries to protect. Pung has created a deeply complicated figure – one you rarely see in Australian fiction, who demands to be understood on her own terms.

– Jackie Tang, Editor of Readings Monthly

Born Into This by Adam Thompson

This is a powerful collection of stories set largely in and around Launceston. Most of the central characters are First Nations people and I found the tensions the characters experienced, reconciling living in the current moment with their sense of identity as First Nations people, really interesting. I’m looking forward to reading more of Thompson’s work – it’s powerful and engaging.

– Mark Rubbo, Managing Director

Coming of Age in the War on Terror by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Both devastating and affirming, this is a book which gains momentum, building in pitch and intensity as Abdel-Fattah’s prose leans in and she lays to waste the neoliberal state’s damaging attempts to counter terror. You feel Abdel-Fattah’s care and passion, it moves us and rewards us with a rare critical insight into the socio-political psyche of Australian youth during the folly of the War on Terror.

– Ender Başkan, bookseller at Readings online

Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau

If you’ve worked long days in an air-conditioned nine-to-five-thirty shopping centre, you understand how the most consequential action plays out almost imperceptibly. Each day a comfortable autopilot ensues and, with predictability’s warm embrace, your day begins. Gunk Baby begins here too, but don’t be fooled; this book is taking you places and has a lot to say. I find my thoughts returning to this uncanny narrative often – it’s a novel that demands your full attention – in the best way – and has an ending that doesn’t disappoint. A subversive story from a unique voice.

– Jessica Strong, Digital Content Coordinator