Top picks for book clubs this month
Looking for something juicy to discuss in your book club? Try one of these new releases, chosen by our booksellers to appeal to a wide range of readers and provide plenty to talk about.
Australian fiction
The Temperature by Katerina Gibson
What brings six very different people together? Fiona is a millennial media writer; Sidney a failed poet; Tomas a thirty-something factory worker and father; Lexi a fading activist icon; Govita a non-binary visual artist; Henry a Vietnam veteran ageing out in rural isolation. On the face of it, they have nothing in common – but when a tweet goes viral, it sends their lives ricocheting off each other and upending their assumptions about each other, the world they live in, their pasts and their futures.
Compelling and discursive, ironic and serious, compassionate and ethically rigorous, The Temperature describes our fragmented society as it tries to absorb the significance of climate change, social media, shifting boundaries in gender and sexuality, and deepening gaps between generations.
Read our staff review here.
International ficton
Entitlement by Rumaan Alam
Brooke is thirty-three, resolutely single and slightly adrift. She wants her work and life to have meaning and she finds it at the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation, where she's tasked with assisting an octogenarian billionaire in the noble quest to give away his hard-earned fortune.
When Asher Jaffee takes a special interest in Brooke, it's hard for her not to fall under his spell. He's attracted to her intelligence, her willingness to spar with him, her refusal to be deferential. She's intoxicated by the proximity to his money and power and his apparent willingness to share both with her. Asher offers Brooke a first-hand look at how the one percent truly live and work. But before long, being under Asher's wing is not enough, and Brooke finds herself in deep water as she blurs the lines between what belongs to Asher, and what should belong to her.
Available from 17 September
Read our staff review here.
Crime fiction
The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt by Mark Mupotsa-Russell
Olivia Hodges used to do horrible things – back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate – but she fled that life and moved home to Australia, building a family in the hippie, hipster community of the Dandenong Ranges. When a small-time criminal gang brings tragedy to her family, superstitious Olivia believes it's the universe demanding payment for her crimes. She wants revenge, but has to get it without adding to her karmic debt. So she creates situations where these bad men get themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed – all while trying to mislead the cops long enough to finish what she started.
Read our staff review here.
Biography
Three Wild Dogs and the Truth by Markus Zusak
What happens when the Zusaks open their family home to three big, wild, pound-hardened dogs – Reuben, a wolf at your door with a hacksaw; Archer, blond, beautiful, deadly; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm? The answer can only be chaos: there are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property trashing, bodily injuries, stomach pumping, purest comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that needs to be seen to be believed . . . not to mention the odd police visit at some ungodly hour of the morning. There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love – and the joy and recognition of family.
Read our staff review here.
Romance fiction
The Wedding Forecast by Nina Kenwood
Anna was never going to have an easy time at her best friend's wedding. She's the bridesmaid; her ex, Joel, is a groomsman. But she's determined to get through the festivities with a smile on her face. Despite the fact that Joel is bringing his new partner, Bianca. Despite the fact she's stuck sharing a house with the newly in-love couple. And despite the fact Anna has just turned thirty and her life is not exactly where she thought it would be by now. Anna has all her feelings completely under control-right up until the moment Joel drops a bombshell that rocks her to her core.
She needs a distraction, and Patrick, the wedding photographer, just might be the solution. Everyone has decided he is perfect for her. But the arrival of Mac, an actor who has flown in from New York, complicates everything.
Read our staff review here.
Sci-fi, fantasy & speculative fiction
Toward Eternity by Anton Hur
Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun – a recipient of a radical new nanotherapy – mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he’s returned, is he really himself anymore?
When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive – and begin to replicate – their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.
Read our staff review here.
Debut fiction
Diving, Falling by Kylie Mirmohamadi
For years, Leila Whittaker has been the mediator in her family. She smoothes ruffled feathers between her sons; endures the volatile moods of their father, the acclaimed Australian artist Ken Black; and even swallows the bitter pill of Ken's endless affairs. All this, for the quiet hum of creative freedom her marriage provides. Or so she tells herself.
When Ken dies, leaving his artist's estate to their two sons, and the pointed amount of sixty-nine thousand dollars to his muse, Anita, Leila decides she's had enough. It's time to seek some peace (and pleasure) of her own . . .
Read our staff review here.
LGBTQIA+
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi
As Kalu drops Aima at the airport, it marks the end of their four-year relationship. Shattered and broken open, he thinks that's the last he will see of his ex-girlfriend. But, reeling from the breakup, both Aima and Kalu find themselves drawn back to Lagos: to separate nights of decadence. When Kalu visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos.
On the other side of town, Ola and Souraya, fresh off their first-class flight from Kuala Lumpur, are getting ready for their own nights of pleasure, unaware that everything is about to go awry. Pulled into a whirlwind descent through the city's corrupt and glittering underworld, they're all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the threat that looms over them.
Available from 17 September
Read our staff review here.
Young Adult fiction
Immortal Dark (Immortal Dark Trilogy, Book 1) by Tigest Girma
A lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister in this dangerously romantic dark academia debut.
Orphan Kidan Adane is the heiress to a fallen House of humans bound to vampiric creatures known as draniacs. As a human, it is her responsibility to study and nurture the relationships between draniacs and humans at Uxlay University. But when her sister is kidnapped and Kidan suspects that her own house draniac, the enigmatic Susenyos, is to blame, she heads down a violent path towards vengeance, willing to hurt anyone who stands in her way.
Read our staff review here.
