Elke Power
Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly
Blog post — 1 Mar 2018
This month's most exciting new releases
Every now and then a book comes along that causes reading queues among Readings staff, caffeine over-consumption (if there is such a thing) to compensate for compulsive late-night reading, and…
Review — 26 Mar 2018
Little Gods by Jenny Ackland
Olive Lovelock is curious, independent, and beguiling. She is growing up between her parents’ home in a small town in the Mallee and her cousins’ farm, a (long) bike ride…
Review — 29 Mar 2016
The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s debut novel is an entertaining tale that follows the unravelling of the Plumb family’s best-laid plans when the siblings’ long-awaited financial parachute, aka ‘the Nest’, is deployed…
Blog post — 30 Mar 2017
Exciting new releases in April
In international fiction, there was almost a bookseller stampede for John Darnielle’s much-anticipated second novel, Universal Harvester. Our marketing and events coordinator Stella Charls describes it as ‘a wonderfully…
Blog post — 28 Feb 2017
Exciting new releases in March
We were impressed and profoundly moved by our book of the month, They Cannot Take the Sky, a project from Behind the Wire. Our reviewer urges all Australians to…
Blog post — 2 Feb 2017
The most anticipated books of 2017
Another year, another bounty of books! To cover every book the Readings team is excited about would be impossible, but here is a sample of the books we are looking…
Review — 26 Feb 2017
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The Heart’s Invisible Furies opens with Catherine Goggin being publicly shamed and violently thrown out of her church and country town in Cork. As she is hurled out the door…
Review — 25 Jul 2016
Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O'Neill
In Their Brilliant Careers, Ryan O’Neill combines conventions of biography and short story in an exhaustively brazen blend of Australian literary history and plausible yet gloriously bonkers invention. Each…
Review — 23 Jun 2015
Relativity by Antonia Hayes
Panic, like pain, is hard to remember after it passes. Hayes pulls you into the moment like you’ve unexpectedly pin-dropped through Antarctic ice. Having seized your attention, she then introduces…
Review — 25 Apr 2016
Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Set in England, France and Malta during World War II, Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave is Forgiven introduces four likeable, amusing characters and puts them through hell.
Mary is a socialite…