Every year our staff vote for their favourite books of the past 12 months. Here are the best Australian fiction books of the year, as voted by Readings' staff, and displayed in alphabetical order by author.

Women & Children by Tony Birch

In Women & Children, beloved local writer Tony Birch takes us to 1965 and, in his inimitable style, introduces us to Joe Cluny and his sister Ruby, who are growing up in a working-class suburb with their…

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Every year our staff vote for their favourite books of the past 12 months. Here are the best picture books of the year, as voted by Readings' staff, and displayed in alphabetical order by author.

Pasta! by Felice Arena & Beatrice Cerocchi (illus.)

Who doesn’t love Pasta? Not only does it taste delicious, but pasta names are also fun to say. Felice Arena has created a rhyming feast with his new picture book, Pasta! Paired with bold and beautiful illustrations…

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This year was another fantastic one for music books. Below you'll find a selection of our favourites that include memoir, essay, nonfiction and even the fashion of an icon.

Half Deaf, Completely Mad by Tony Cohen & John Olson

Maverick music producer-engineer Tony Cohen defined Australia’s punk and rock sounds in the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. His long and celebrated career took him from the studios of Melbourne and Sydney to West Berlin and London’s Abbey Road, working with…

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Congratulations to Paul Lynch who has been named the winner of this year's Booker Prize for his fifth novel, Prophet Song. The Booker Prize is a £50,000 literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language, and published in the UK. Paul Lynch is the fifth Irish author to win the prize.

Prophet Song is an exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a country – and an ordinary family – on the brink…

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Each week our amazing staff bring you a sample of the books or music they're immersed in.

Bernard Caleo is reading Ultrawild by Steve Mushin

Steve Mushin’s Ultrawild is a book full of visionary, revolutionary plans and schematics for rewilding the world, one city at a time (or actually, if Steve has his way, all of the cities in the world simultaneously). In meticulous, large-format, comic-book-style pages, he steps us through his designs for flinging compost balls down city streets…

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The festive season is upon us, and with it comes celebrations and gifts and forced socialisation with people you definitely don't see eye to eye with. Grit your teeth and bear it ... or even better, gift them one of our carefully chosen passive aggressive gifts and enjoy watching them read between the lines.

For the person who's always posting their fast fashion hauls » Wear Next by Clare Press

The current fashion system is wasteful, environmentally harmful and exploitative…

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Women & Children by Tony Birch

It's 1965 and Joe Cluny is living in a working-class suburb with his mum, Marion, and sister, Ruby, spending his days trying to avoid trouble with the nuns at the local Catholic primary school. One evening his Aunty Oona appears on the doorstep, distressed and needing somewhere to stay. As his mum and aunty work out what to do, Joe comes to understand the secrets that the women in his family carry, including on…

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There's nothing better than gathering with friends and family for a festive feast during the summer months. Below, we've rounded up some of the best Christmas-centric cookbooks to help you celebrate this year!

Christmas Table by The Australian Women's Weekly

A modern approach to the season's fare in a beautiful book containing all the recipes you'd expect for ham, turkey, sides, desserts and puddings

Christmas is a special time of year for indulging in food and fun with your loved…

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Eat Lao by Sam Sempill

Sam Sempill is a Lao-born Australian textile artist and architect with a certain magical cooking skill developed through years spent in the kitchen with her grandmother. Like all good cookbooks, this collection of Lao-cuisine based recipes is more than a list of ingredients and instructions. It is a window into the past. Beautifully illustrated, you will find recipes for trout soup, custard pumpkin dessert and an enormous range of deliciously flavoured meals that, once seen…

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As I write this, I’m about to head off to Bali for the 20th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. It’s a testament to its founders, Melbourne-born Janet DeNeefe and her Indonesian husband Ketut Suardana, that it has become a sought-after gig for writers and book lovers from around the world.

This trip comes on the back of a jaunt around Italy and Greece with my sister, with side trips to New York and Montreal. She’s a researcher at the Columbia…

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