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
You Must Remember This
by Sean Wilson
You Must Remember This is an eloquent jumble of a family story, as experienced by Grace, an elderly woman with dementia trying to get her moorings in a worsening storm. It contemplates the perils of remembering and forgetting, making your own way in the world and how we seem bound to repeat the patterns of the past. Most profoundly it's about sensing what it's like to live on while your faculties dim, and about finding peace.
International fiction
Under the Eye of the Big Bird
by Hiromi Kawakami & Asa Yoneda (trans.)
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings – but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human.
Crime fiction
Three Boys Gone
by Mark Smith
'First rule of rescue: don't create another casualty.'
Grace Disher is about to face every teacher's worst nightmare. Three of her students are going to die. On a high school camping trip, three boys slip away for an ocean swim. By the time Grace catches up, the perilous surf conditions are overwhelming the teenagers. If she goes in, she will die trying to save them.
Should she have given her life? The question haunts Grace as investigations begin and her decision not to attempt a rescue comes under scrutiny. Hounded by conflicted staff, grieving parents and relentless media – all dissecting her actions, all looking for someone to blame – Grace's safety is compromised and she must be careful who she trusts. And she's not the only one with a secret.
Biography
Gutsy Girls: Love, Poetry and Sisterhood
by Josie McSkimming
Dorothy Porter was one of Australia's most charismatic and courageous literary figures. Achieving broader fame through her bestselling queer crime verse novel, The Monkey's Mask, and its film adaptation, she took poetry and performance to new heights.
Her younger sister, Josie McSkimming, watched Dot become an award-winning poet, but it was a family of complex dynamics. Born to renowned barrister Chester Porter, Dot, Josie and their sister, Mary, grew up in an unpredictable family home on Sydney's northern beaches. Each forged her own impressive career, but Josie and Dot sought very different escapes from their formidable father. Josie fell into (and out of) evangelical Christianity and psychotherapy while Dot found 'the Arts' and sex.
Romance fiction
Deep End
by Ali Hazelwood
Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A junior at Stanford and a student athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships.
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It's how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
Sci-fi, fantasy & speculative fiction
Hammajang Luck
by Makana Yamamoto
HAMMAJANG | adjective. Definition: In a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Chiefly in predicative use, esp. in all hammajang. Etymology: A borrowing from Hawaiian Pidgin. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person. And it's all Angel's fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station – of home – to spend the best part of a decade alone.
But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting – and she has an offer. One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There's just one thing Edie needs to do – trust Angel again – which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do.
Debut fiction
Fire Exit
by Morgan Talty
From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine's Penobscot Reservation. He caught brief moments of his neighbour Elizabeth's life. But there's something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It's the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
Now, it's been weeks since he's seen Elizabeth, and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, Charles contends with questions he's long been afraid to ask.
LGBTQIA+
Disappoint Me
by Nicola Dinan
Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. She's living her best life! Or is she? The debris of years of dysphoria and failed relationships rattle around in her head. When she tumbles down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party and wakes up in hospital alone, she decides to make some changes.
Enter Vincent, corporate lawyer and hobby baker. His trad friendship group may as well speak a different language to Max, and his Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. It's uncertain terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she'd long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage. On his gap year in Thailand a decade prior, he vies for the attention of a gorgeous traveller, Alex, with secrets of her own.
Young Adult fiction
I Am Not Jessica Chen
by Ann Liang
Jenna Chen has spent her life in the shadow of her flawless cousin. Jessica Chen is so smart she gets the top score on every test. Jessica Chen is so beautiful people stop in the hallway to stare at her. Jessica Chen is so perfect she got into Harvard. And Jenna Chen will only ever be a disappointment.
So when Jenna makes a desperate wish to become her cousin, the last thing she expects is for it to come true. All of a sudden she gets to live the life she’s always dreamed of, but being the model student at cutthroat Havenwood Private Academy isn’t quite what she’d imagined. Worse, people seem to be forgetting that someone named Jenna Chen ever existed. But isn’t it worth trading it all away to be Jessica Chen?
