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
Time Together
Luke Horton
Once they were just them. Now they're forty-something and there's kids. Whose time is this?
Phil is trying to feel closer to his recently passed mother by spending time alone at his parent's house on the coast. But he is lonely, and stupidly he's invited a bunch of old friends to visit. It's bound to be a mistake. All those children! But it's too late now, and tomorrow Bella and Tim will arrive with their two kids, one on the brink of puberty, and the next day Jo and Lucas will come too, with their little one. Then there's Annie, who will be by herself.
The story of a beach holiday told by four different people, Time Together is a novel about different kinds of love, different kinds of loneliness, and the way spending time together can bring out the best and worst in each other.
Read our staff review here.
International fiction
Theft
Abdulrazak Gurnah
It is the 1990s. Growing up in Zanzibar, three very different young people – Karim, Fauzia and Badar – are coming of age, and dreaming of great possibilities in their young nation. But for Badar, an uneducated servant boy who has never known his parents, it seems as if all doors are closed.
Brought into a lowly position in a great house in Dar es Salaam, Badar finds the first true home of his life – and the friendship of Karim, the young man of the house. Even when a shattering false accusation sees Badar sent away, Karim and Fauzia refuse to turn away from their friend.
But as the three of them take their first steps in love, infatuation, work and parenthood, their bond is tested – and Karim is tempted into a betrayal that will change all of their lives forever.
Available from 18 March. Read our staff review here.
Crime fiction
Unbury the Dead
Fiona Hardy
Best mates Teddy and Alice are hired hands with flexible moral boundaries. Whatever the mess, they can be relied upon to fix it with no questions asked. But sometimes it's not as simple as cleaning up.
Teddy is searching the suburbs for a missing teenager with her occasional sidekick Art, while Alice's mission is to drive one of Australia's richest men along Victoria's east coast to his final resting place before anybody finds out he's dead. But when a surprise revelation sees their cases collide, Teddy and Alice turn the tables on their wealthy employers to shake out the truth.
Unbury the Dead is a superbly fresh and pacey high-stakes drama with two irresistible heroines.
Read our staff review here.
Biography
Chameleon
Robert Dessaix
Robert Dessaix's Chameleon is about everything that matters, a book of memories that flow so freely they seem to happen as we read.
Cartwheeling from story to story, Dessaix describes an identity in flux- his beginnings as an adopted child named Thomas Robert Jones, his youthful interest in religious thinking, his obsession with all things Russian, his marriage to Lisa and divorce, his discovery of travel. In North Africa he finds different ways of feeling and being, and in Australia he begins his abiding relationship with his partner Peter Timms. At every point he muses on pleasure, art, sex, literature, infatuation, happiness, music, life, death and all the rest.
Chameleon is a virtuoso performance of self-revelation, as Dessaix explores how the restless mind takes constant detours to search for what makes life good, a place of wisdom and love.
Read our staff review here.
Romance fiction
Eat Your Heart Out
Victoria Brownlee
Chloe Bridgers, Australian food blogger in Paris, has landed an interview to write the tell-all memoir of controversial celebrity chef Carla Duris. The only catch? To nab the role, she has to compete against a group of cut-throat, world-class food writers during a weekend-long job interview at the Duris family villa on the glistening Cote d'Azur.
Already feeling like a fish out of water, Chloe starts to worry that old-school French journalist Henri de la Fontaine has been sabotaging her from the get-go. But is winning the only thing he has in mind?
As the weekend unfolds, interviewees are seemingly sent packing at random and tensions among those remaining boil over. Does Chloe have what it takes to land the job, or will she become the next casualty in the fight to write for Madame Duris?
Read our staff review here.
Sci-fi, fantasy & speculative fiction
The River Has Roots
Amal El-Mohtar
'Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.'
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family's latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters' bond but also their lives will be at risk...
Read our staff review here.
Debut fiction
By Her Hand
Marion Taffe
Peak District, Mercia, AD 910: a young girl, Freda works hard to avoid her father's temper, while longing for his approval. She loves foraging in the woods and hearthside stories of heroes. Secretly she thinks in poetry and dreams of one day being able to write; her quills are grass stalks and sticks, her parchment the sky, the earth, her skin. But Freda's world is at war, and when her village is decimated in a savage raid and her father goes missing, Freda must find the strength to survive.
Taken in by the church, her only options are a life of servitude or prayer. But the cunning bishop sees an opportunity. As well as teaching Freda to write, he uses her survival as evidence of a miracle so as to attract pilgrims who bring wealth. As Freda chafes against the bishop's increasing control, she develops a friendship with the Mercian leader Ethelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who shows her what it is to lead as a woman in a world that worships warrior kings.
Soon Freda must choose. Does she remain the powerless, subservient quill whose fate lies in the hands of another, or does she fight for the right to create – and write – her own story?
Read our staff review here.
LGBTQIA+
First Name Second Name
Steve MinOn
Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland. When they ignore his request, Stephen's corpse makes the nocturnal pilgrimage alone. But what is compelling him and what will he find there?
His journey, as a kind of jiangshi, takes him back through his turbulent family history – from his Chinese great-grandfather's life on the goldfields in 1860s Queensland, to his Scottish grandparents' migration to Australia as ten-pound Poms, and to his own coming of age and coming out in Brisbane and London.
Original and satirical, First Name Second Name follows four generations of one family through a reckoning with racial, familial and sexual identity.
Read our staff review here.
Young Adult fiction
How to Be Normal
Ange Crawford
Astrid is about to start her last year at high school. And her first.
When her dad loses his job, Astrid’s homeschooling comes to an end. Until now, she has lived within the confines of a tightly controlled, contracted world where there's no room for anything … except following her father’s rules and pretending that everything is normal.
As Astrid, and her mum, tentatively expand their world, they struggle to break free of their ingrained wariness and self-doubt. But with hope, new friends, and the strength of a promise, Astrid has a chance to find out what she wants, who she loves, and who she really is.
Read our staff review here.
