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New Australian biography & memoir

Rebel Rising

Rebel Wilson

From the scene-stealing star of Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids comes a refreshingly candid, hilarious, and inspiring book about her unconventional journey to Hollywood success and loving herself.

In stock at 7 shops, ships in 3-4 days In stock at 7 shops

How to Avoid a Happy Life

Julia Lawrinson

From domestic dysfunction to extraordinary bad luck, Julia Lawrinson reflects on her intriguing and eventful life with disarming honesty and wit.

Some people are born into bad situations, some people…

In stock at 8 shops, ships in 3-4 days In stock at 8 shops

If Everyone Cared Enough: Her Voice Reclaimed

Margaret Tucker

Margaret Lilardia Tucker MBE (affectionately known as Aunty Marge) was a significant Aboriginal activist and one of the first Aboriginal women to publish for mainstream audiences. If Everyone Cared (1977)…

Because I Love Him

Ashlee Donohue

A memoir of privileged insight into strong family ties, the intricacies of relationships and the unspoken expectations within urban Aboriginal communities.

Hana: The Audacity to be Free

Hana Assafiri

Hana Assafiri is a much loved and revered social activist and radical entrepreneur. Through the medium of food and dining in her now-renowned Moroccan Soup Bar, Hana has worked tirelessly…

Detachable Penis

In Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga , Elkin relates his bumpy journey from lesbian to transgender lawyer in the aftermath of the 2017 marriage equality postal survey.

Suddenly Single at Sixty

An uplifting, witty and hilarious memoir about the road from the shock and despair of a sudden marriage break-up to a fabulous new life

Love, Death & Other Scenes

Nova Weetman

How do we become more after losing? Beloved Australian author Nova Weetman shares her heartfelt experiences with grief and loss while also celebrating the profound beauty of love and life.

Excitable Boy

Dominic Gordon

A wild ride through a disaffected youth by a gifted writer. Dominic Gordon explores his memories in tight prose bursting with insight, audacious ideas and dark humour.

Mothering Heights

Rachael Mogan McIntosh

A comedy, tragedy and farcical romp all rolled into one, Mothering Heights is a year-in-the-life love story about becoming a mother from the hilarious author of Pardon My French …

Rosie Batty, Sue Smethurst

After tragedy, how do we find hope? A memoir about what it takes to get through the very worst of times from Rosie Batty

Your Time Starts Now

Julie Goodwin

The extraordinary life story of Australia's beloved Julie Goodwin, first winner of MasterChef and bestselling cookbook author

Artful Lives

Penny Olsen

From Melbourne to the Islands: The Artful Lives of the Cohen Sisters

This Is Where You Have to Go

Lynda Holden

150,000 adoptions took place in Australia between 1950 and 1975. It is estimated that one in 15 was forced. Proud Dhunghutti woman, laywer, human rights advocate and former midwife Lynda…

Bullet Paper Rock: A Memoir of Words and Wars

Abbas El-Zein

A story of survival, and a meditation on desire and loss, language and violence

How to Knit a Human

Anna Jacobson

How do you write a memoir when your memories have been taken? She awakens in hospital, greeted by nurses and patients she doesn’t recognise, but who address her with familiarity…

Datsun Angel

Anna Broinowski

Datson Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the savage heart of 1980s Australia: a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today.

Power of Balance

Dr Kerryn Phelps AM

A memoir and manifesto from the remarkable Kerryn Phelps

The Cancer Finishing School

Peter Goldsworthy

From poet and bestselling novelist Peter Goldsworthy, this darkly funny, bittersweet memoir offers lessons in how to live life in the shadow of an incurable illness.

The Silver River

Jim Moginie

A moving and inspiring memoir of families lost and rediscovered, by a founding member of legendary band Midnight Oil.

Some People Want to Shoot Me

Madelaine Dickie, Wayne Bergmann

Discover the remarkable story of Wayne Bergmann, a Nyikina man and Kimberley leader who has dedicated his life to his community, in this moving memoir of living between two cultures.

Loving My Lying, Dying, Cheating Husband

Kerstin Pilz

A wise and witty memoir about having to care for the very person who has hurt you the most. Perfect for fans of Kathy Lette and Elizabeth Gilbert.

Carly-Jay Metcalfe

A triumphant story of hope and survival

Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift

David Goodwin

An odyssey of drive-offs, spiked slurpees, stale sausage rolls and sleep-deprived madness.

The Pulling

Adele Dumont

Reminiscent of the writing of Leslie Jamison and Fiona Wright, The Pulling is a fascinating exploration of the inner workings of a mind.

The Girl Who Touched The Stars

Bonnie Hancock

It took an ocean to learn it's not how fast you paddle but how deep inside you dig.

Girl Friday: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working Life

Kristine Philipp

A funny and provocative memoir about a woman working to live, not the other way around.

The Nature of Honour

David McBride

Son, father, soldier, lawyer, adventurer, crusader - the colourful and fascinating life story of David McBride.

In stock at 5 shops, ships in 3-4 days In stock at 5 shops

Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths

Matthew Lamb

A cultural history of the times that shaped Frank Moorhouse and which Moorhouse himself helped to shape.

A Kind of Confession

Alex Miller

A deeply personal, behind-the-scenes exploration of Alex Miller's six-decade writing life.

An Unlikely Prisoner

Sean Turnell

In his darkest hour hope became his closest companion.

Rhys Nicholson

This is a semi-stream-of-consciousness written tapestry, squeezed out by a profoundly apprehensive overthinker who’s doing their best to unapologetically stop apologising. (It’s funnier than it sounds.)

A Brilliant Life

Rachelle Unreich

A story of love, loss, wonder and the deepest kind of faith

I’m Liz Hayes

Liz Hayes has graced our television screens for more than four decades. Millions of Australians kicked off their weeks with Liz co-hosting Channel 9's Today show, and now for over…

No Country for Idealists

Boris Frankel

This book is a dramatic account of the making of a family of 'subversives' in Australia and the USSR during the Cold War

In stock at 4 shops, ships in 3-4 days In stock at 4 shops

Kate Ceberano

A beautiful illustrated memoir from beloved Australian musician Kate Ceberano, featuring her inspirational song lyrics, stories, paintings and embroidery, and celebrating four decades of songwriting and recording on the release…

Quaint Deeds

A.J. Mackinnon

From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow, a hilarious and heart-warming memoir of teaching, treasure hunts and finding your own way in life.

Lies My Mirror Told Me

Wendy Harmer

Entertainer and national treasure Wendy Harmer tells all in her frank, fearless and funny memoir, Lies My Mirror Told Me.

In stock at 6 shops, ships in 3-4 days In stock at 6 shops

Saving Bunji

Brinkley Davies

A stunningly photographed memoir for anyone with even a passing interest in the fate of our wildlife and environment. Written by eco-warrior Brinkley Davies, Founder of the Balu Blue Foundation…

Big Mouth

Matt Preston

A rock 'n' roll memoir of life, death and growing up with the occasional scandal.

Unfinished Woman

Robyn Davidson

An unforgettable memoir from the author of the sensational international bestseller, Tracks, the story of a mother and daughter, of love, loss and the pursuit of freedom

Roz Bellamy

Mood is a story about love, family and self-fulfilment, while living with mental illness. It's also a candid, absorbing inquiry into the self, and the rewards of embracing who you…

Eventually Everything Connects

Sarah Firth

A delicious mix of daily life, science, philosophy, pop culture, daydreams and irreverent humour, Eventually Everything Connects is a work of graphic non-fiction that is comforting, confronting and mind-expanding in…

John Greechan

Revolution charts the dramatic story of Postecoglou's instant impact on Celtic and charts his life and times in football, through the eyes of those who know him best.

My Mother’s Eyes

Shanelle Dawson

The disappearance of Lyn Dawson captured the world's attention. But she was far more than just the teacher's wife. Now, in this brave, emotionally powerful memoir, Lyn's daughter reclaims their…

My Story: From Bush Kid to AFL Legend

Nicky Winmar

Thirty years after creating one of the most memorable moments in sporting history, Indigenous AFL legend Nicky Winmar tells his story in a moving and compelling memoir.

Book of Life

Deborah Conway

A no-holds-barred memoir that charts the rise and fall - and rise - of one of Australia's most iconic music performers.

Weatherman Goes Bush

Graham Creed

A memoir about the unexpected joys and challenges of a tree-change from a television studio to a farm, from a beloved former ABC weather presenter.

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The 25 best Australian books of 2022: Chloe Hooper, Alex Miller, Jessica Au and more

Just in time for your Christmas shopping: Guardian Australia’s critics and staff pick out the best of the best

Which Australian books did you love this year? Join us in the comments

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Bedtime Story, by Chloe Hooper

Simon & Schuster

Chloe Hooper’s talent for piercing the beating heart of a story is turned inwards in this beautifully rendered and very personal book about how to talk about death with her young children, after discovering their father had an aggressive form of cancer.

Hooper’s tone is pitch-perfect with subject matter that could easily slide into sentimentality as she turns to the canon of children’s literature for wisdom – and assistance. With moody illustrations by Anna Walker, it’s a searching and magical work. – Lucy Clark

Read more : Bedtime Story by Chloe Hooper review – an extraordinary treasure of hope and grief

Homesickness, by Janine Mikosza

Ultimo Press

Janine Mikosza presents her stunning memoir as a long conversation between two warring halves of herself: the memoirist Janine, who wants to understand the violence that happened to her as a child; and the subject Jin, by turns antagonistic, tight-lipped, acerbic and unsure.

The traumatised brain can blur the relationship between reality and memory, and here Mikosza tries to unpick it: revisiting – and literally mapping out – the 14 houses she lived in before she turned 18, some of which have rooms she is thankful to have forgotten. – Steph Harmon

Read more: ‘I didn’t want to make public my suffering’: Janine Mikosza on reinventing the trauma memoir

People Who Lunch, by Sally Olds

People Who Lunch comprises intelligent, emotionally honest and chic essays about capital, community and pleasure, and how we broker our relationships to all those. Sally Olds reminds us art is political; leisure time is political; romantic arrangements are political.

She roots her explorations firmly in place – in Flagstaff Gardens; or on Elizabeth Street, once a tributary of Birrarung , where “you can still hear the water gurgling beneath you” – with a laconic curiosity about investment in our social world. This bold debut recently sold in the US: watch this space. – Imogen Dewey

A Brief Affair, by Alex Miller

Allen & Unwin

When academic Frances Egan has a one-night stand in China, I thought Alex Miller was setting up A Brief Affair as a conventional story of middle-aged adultery. But the “Mongolian warrior” cracks open her life in more complex, philosophical ways.

Miller writes confidently about women’s inner lives and examines Frances’s growth against her marriage to a good man, her stultifying career, and her fascination with residents of a former asylum. A wise, atmospheric novel from a master. – Susan Wyndham

Read more: A Brief Affair by Alex Miller review – a moving study of female passion

This Devastating Fever, by Sophie Cunningham

Alice is writing a book about Leonard Woolf. Alice has been writing a book about Leonard Woolf for 20 years. This Devastating Fever (which took Sophie Cunningham a similar amount of time to write) is a book about an impossible book, a metafiction of sorts – but it’s also a meditation on how to live in a world that is ending, on the complexities of care and love, and survival, continuing on.

And it’s great fun – bold, cheeky, playfully energetic and utterly distinctive. – Fiona Wright

Read more: Sophie Cunningham on the ‘crazy challenge’ of bringing Leonard and Virginia Woolf to life

Faith, Hope and Carnage, by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan

Text Publishing

In the stasis of lockdown, longtime friends Nick Cave (of the Bad Seeds and Grinderman) and Seán O’Hagan began to record their conversations. From those hours of wild and generous talk, O’Hagan has extracted an extraordinary dialogue.

It’s hard to improve upon Rachel Clark’s description of this book: “a lament, a celebration, a howl, a secular prayer”. Faith, Hope and Carnage demands to be heard. Get the audiobook and surrender to Cave’s ferocious eloquence, his creative velocity. – Beejay Silcox

Read more: ‘Songs are little dangerous bombs of truth’: Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan – an exclusive book extract

Harold Holt, by Ross Walker

I found myself consistently delighted with the nuggets of information Ross Walker unearthed about our 17th prime minister, who I knew shamefully little about before beyond the exceptional circumstances of his death. The good-natured extrovert who loved parties but sought solitude in the sea; who loved ballet and ballroom dancing; the lifelong swimmer who would practice holding his breath while bored in parliament; the kind-hearted man who “argued with a smile”. Walker’s book – “a midway point between biography and narrative nonfiction – history told as a story,” as he puts it – is eminently readable, never getting distracted with breathlessly reciting names and dates in the way some political biographies can. A real treat. – Sian Cain

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, by Paul Dalla Rosa

Allen and Unwin

Comme, Paul Dalla Rosa’s breakout work – nominated for the world’s richest short story prize in 2019 – is a tale of despairing desire and suffocating anxiety set in Melbourne’s scariest store. It appears in his first collection alongside nine other stories of claustrophobia: terrible people subjected to the churn of work while blinkered by their own obsessions – fame, wealth, a life-altering rebrand.

With caustic wit, Dalla Rosa performs a kind of surgery on his characters, splitting them wide open to reveal something exciting and vivid, ugly and depraved. – Michael Sun

Read more: An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa review – deftly executed and cringingly funny

Losing Face, by George Haddad

Losing Face should be a hard read, traversing the big themes of grief, toxic masculinity, identity and sexual assault. But instead it’s gripping, and absolutely full of heart.

Joey and Elaine balance each other perfectly – both are gloriously flawed and full of life. At sentence level, Losing Face is full of evocative imagery, but it’s the characters that really make it a stand out, and the thrill of being invited to snoop on the intimate realities of a family falling apart. – Bec Kavanagh

Read more: Losing Face by George Haddad review – a rich, complex story of consent and coming of age

Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, by Heather Rose

It would’ve been so easy for Heather Rose to take the events of her life and write a straightforward “trauma memoir” – a genre publishers can’t get enough of . In her hands it would have still been a great book – but instead she has written something truly original.

This is journey through her physical life, yes – true tragedy, ghosts, heroin! – but in tandem is the journey through her spiritual life. You finish feeling so much more open to the world, even braver, after spending such intimate time with Rose. – Bridie Jabour

Read more: Heather Rose on overcoming tragedy and choosing to live a happy life

Seeing Other People, by Diana Reid

As witty and compelling as her first novel, Love and Virtue, Diana Reid’s Seeing Other People focuses on two Sydney sisters in their 20s: the older Eleanor, sharp and together, who fiercely values her own intelligence and integrity; and the younger Charlie, beautiful and sensitive, an actor on the rise.

The novel is fascinated by questions of morality, truth and self-perception (or, rather, deception). Vivid with hot beach days and tangled romantic relationships, it’s a great summer read. – Donna Lu

Read more: Diana Reid on Sally Rooney, Love & Virtue and her fast follow-up: ‘Lockdown gave me freedom to fail’

Our Members Be Unlimited, by Sam Wallman

The history of unionism is laid out in eye-popping colour in the first longform work by comics journalist and labour activist Sam Wallman – who also details his time working at an Amazon warehouse in Melbourne. It’s confronting seeing just how much the global giant exploits vulnerable people.

Communicating Wallman’s clear-eyed vision for a better world, this is a great starting point to unionism, and a reminder for those more seasoned of why we continue to fight. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Read more: ‘Pissing while walking is tricky’: inside an Amazon warehouse, a cartoonist tries to unionise

Animals With Human Voices, by Damen O’Brien

Recent Work Press

Brisbane poet Damen O’Brien is an obscenely talented fellow; in the last decade, he’s scooped up nearly every poetry prize in the country. But his debut collection is so much more than the sum of its well-acclaimed parts – it’s a missive from the post-Anthropocene dark.

Our narrators are world-weary jellyfish, apocalyptic goats, God-fearing earthworms and fossil prophets: a creaturely chorus. Is O’Brien’s volume an elegy or a verdict? Both. It’s also a marvel. – Beejay Silcox

We Come With This Place, by Debra Dank

Echo publishing

This book is difficult to pin down. It’s memoir, certainly, retelling Debra Dank’s life – but it goes further back, to her Gudanji/Wakaja parents and ancestors; and then back still to creation stories she generously shares. Dank describes it as “a strange kind of letter, written to my place”; Tara June Winch called it “a jewel of a book” , filled with heaviness and warmth.

To inhabit this vivid place is to be invited into a new understanding of country, culture, family and time. It stuck with me. – Steph Harmon

Read more: We Come With This Place by Debra Dank review – a jewel to rival Australia’s great desert memoirs

Moon Sugar, by Angela Meyer

Transit Lounge

I loved this surreal psychological trip. Angela Meyer is consistently pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in genre fiction and it’s genuinely exciting to read.

On the surface, Moon Sugar is a book about the possibility of magic, but underneath it’s about truth. Mila and Josh feel so genuinely stuck, and after the last few years, who isn’t looking deep for the things that make you feel alive? Meyer’s latest is life in full, vibrant hyper-colour. – Bec Kavanagh

Read more: Moon Sugar by Angela Meyer review – blending the wonder of fantasy with the thrill of crime fiction

Train Lord, by Oliver Mol

Penguin Random House

Like his alt-lit forebears, Oliver Mol’s writing can often feel like alchemy, constructing brief, glimmering moments of catharsis from the meandering absurdities of life. Train Lord is less a memoir than a collection of these absurdities – chief among them his chronic, year-long migraine, which robbed him of writing, reading, existing in the world.

Surveying the detritus of his life, he becomes a guard for Sydney Trains, surrendering to stasis – and finding within it a tale of brutal self-awareness and surprising joy. – Michael Sun

Read more: Oliver Mol on surviving a 10-month migraine: ‘If I didn’t tell this story it would rot inside me’

Jesustown, by Paul Daley

It’s always a relief when a friend and colleague’s book isn’t terrible, but it is true joy when it is genuinely fantastic. I was gripped by Daley’s colonial novel which follows Patrick Renmark, a white pop historian, as he returns to the mission his grandfather lived on.

The men at the centre of the novel are deeply flawed, and there is no neat redemption. But the excavation of their inner lives along with Australia’s history is compelling, and at times very moving. – Bridie Jabour

Read more: Black-white history: the shared responsibility of writing about colonisation’s bitter legacy

The Sun Walks Down, by Fiona Macfarlane

What I love most about this book is its unabashed passion: how each of its characters is overtaken, at times, by an imagination and longing grand enough to transform everything around them.

Its narrative centres on a child, lost in the landscape – but Fiona Macfarlane uses this old trope to explore the always-hidden but deeply felt inner lives of her townsfolk, and builds a world sensitive, luminous and tinged with magic. – Fiona Wright

Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life, by Brigitta Olubas

Australian-born Shirley Hazzard wrote only four novels – The Transit of Venus her literary triumph – as well as short stories and nonfiction. But her output was expansive in ambition, vision and style.

She deserves every page of this insightful biography by Australian scholar Brigitta Olubas, who elegantly reweaves the facts and fictions of Hazzard’s emotional and intellectual life, tracing her determined rise from the doldrums of postwar Sydney to the cultural heights of New York and Italy. – Susan Wyndham

Read more: Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas review – doyenne of love and devastation

Cold Enough for Snow, by Jessica Au

This slim book about a mother and daughter’s overseas trip feels like a cool tonic. At first glance it doesn’t do much, plot-wise. But these quiet scenes from a journey through Japan weave around subtle and often troubling questions about family, memory, self-expression – and power, both interpersonal and artistic.

The narrator’s relatable anxieties about meaning and the possibility (or not) of mutual understanding are alloyed by the limpid beauty of Jessica Au’s writing. A novella of weather, texture and light – delicate and enigmatic. – Imogen Dewey

Read more: Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au review – a graceful novella about how we pay attention

All That’s Left Unsaid, by Tracey Lien

HarperCollins

Sydney-born, New York-based Tracey Lien uses 1990s Cabramatta as the setting for her compelling, complex debut novel, which follows a cadet journalist as she investigates her teenage brother’s murder in a busy restaurant.

The impacts of the model minority myth and the ripple effects of intergenerational trauma are central, and Lien inhabits multiple character perspectives with empathy and intelligence. This masterful storytelling cuts to the heart of the Vietnamese diaspora community, still in mourning half a century later. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Collective Movements

Monash University

Collective Movements is a First Nations anthology, a dialogue and a history of creative practices in south-east Australia. Collecting together different threads, from ILBIJERRI and Kaiela Arts to this mob , it weaves tactile, political transmissions with physical, geographical and historical movements.

Like much Black publishing, Collective Movements is not intended to be easily categorisable ; the book’s several contributors are working in ways that go beyond categories of European history and classification. Beautifully designed, it is a significant record – one everybody should read. – Declan Fry

The Settlement, by Jock Serong

Australian history has been overly generous to George Augustus Robinson, who in the 1830s enticed some of the supposedly last “wild” Tasmanians to vacate their traditional lands for a windswept island settlement.

Robinson, named in Jock Serong’s The Settlement only as “the Man”, is at the vanguard of a failed and cruel colonial experiment as this celebrated novelist eloquently portrays it. To the settlement’s confined, Serong invests appropriate human dignity denied by their oppressors and their history. – Paul Daley

The Most Important Job in the World, by Gina Rushton

Pan Macmillan

In The Most Important Job in the World, journalist Gina Rushton grapples with the climate crisis and what “we owe to the planet when it comes to adding another human to it”. Rushton interrogates whether or not she wants to have children – a question informed by extensive and compassionate reporting.

The book is a limpid and compelling consideration of reproductive rights and justice, the physical and emotional labour of parenting, and both individual choice and collective responsibility. – Donna Lu

Read more: As a science journalist I’m reconsidering having kids. I’m not the only one

Denizen, by James McKenzie Watson

The word “thriller” seems inadequate – and perhaps a bit reductionist – for this unsettling psychological minefield. Tense, savage, compelling and deeply disturbing, Watson’s debut weaves between the childhood and young adulthood of its protagonist, Parker, who from a young age understands there is something very wrong with his brain.

Mental health issues, tortured family relationships and high stakes friendships against the brutal backdrop of modern rural Australia – with a frighteningly unreliable narrator – means you’ll have a tight grip on this one right until the horrifying end. – Lucy Clark

Read more: His dark materials: the bush noir that grapples with mental health

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The best new books released in 2023, as selected by avid readers and critics

It may feel like a long time ago, now that we've reached the halcyon days of the festive season, but August was a big month for books.

Four of the books deemed the best of the year were released in that chilly month — perhaps it's a coincidence, perhaps it was a balm for our seasonal depression. Either way, our critics were here for it.

Among them are this year's Booker Prize winner but also a debut short story collection, which is a perfect demonstration of the breadth of books that took the fancy of Kate Evans, Claire Nichols, Sarah L'Estrange, Declan Fry and Cher Tan this year.

The books that captured them most over the past year take us everywhere from Trinidad in the 40s to the politics of the heavy metal scene, a futuristic (but disturbingly familiar) reality TV show and into the mind of a kind-of ghost from 19th century France.

So, as you sit back and contemplate the year that was (almost), these are the books we recommend you take with you.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

In 40s Trinidad, a rich farmer has disappeared. His glamorous wife, Marlee Changoor, has received a ransom note. But she has no intention of paying. She is finally free.

In Hungry Ghosts, Kevin Jarad Hosein introduces us to an unforgettable cast of complex people. There's Marlee and her employee Hansraj, who she pays to work as a night watchman in her husband's absence. There's Hansraj's disconnected wife Shweta and their angry son, Krishna, living in poverty in the nearby "barrack", crammed into a single room and dreaming of a better life.

With several other families packed into the crumbling barrack house, privacy is non-existent. They hear each other's arguments; they smell each other's vomit. And, as readers, we are also asked to pay attention. Grief, sex and violence are described in unflinching detail.

Hungry Ghosts is a rich and rewarding read, packed with characters you'll love one minute, and be appalled by the next. It's an incredible debut.

— Claire Nichols

Hungry Ghosts appeared in our Best Books of February , check out the full review and other great books from that month here . 

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood takes its name from a forest in Shakespeare's Macbeth, and most readers know that if a story is connected to this tragedy about a Scottish king's downfall, it's not going to be all lollipops and rainbows.

Indeed, Eleanor Catton's follow up to her Booker-winning novel The Luminaries is a fast-paced thriller, and is part of a growing literary trope that we on The Book Show call "bunker and billionaire" fiction.

In the novel, Birnam Wood is the name of a New Zealand guerilla gardening collective, led by the idealistic and driven Mira Bunting. She leads the group to a tract of seemingly abandoned farmland to rehabilitate the property. There she encounters the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who has his own plans for the property (cue the bunker trope).

Read on to find out who will be the victor in this murky battle of ideals versus capitalism.

— Sarah L'Estrange

Birnam Wood appeared in our Best Books of March , read the full review and see other great books from that month here .

Tomás Nevinson by Javier Marías

Hamish Hamilton

The final novel from Spanish novelist Javier Marías, who passed away late last year, offers a catnip-ready premise for spy/thriller fans: coaxed out of retirement to complete one last job, Tomás Nevinson — a half-English, half-Spanish spy — searches for the woman involved in a series of real-life terrorist attacks launched by Basque separatists in Spain.

The novel begins with Nevinson reflecting on the idea of killing Hitler before his rise to power — citing two examples, one fictional, one real — as a way of examining moral philosophy's trolley problem: can death ever be justified if it means preventing greater destruction? (Around the time the novel is set, Bill Clinton was finalising the Good Friday Agreement and losing opportunities to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, fearing collateral damage. Of course, no one knew 9/11 was around the corner.)

Tomás Nevinson offers a reflection on the historical antipathies and the relationship between peoples and nations. From the sorrows of Sarajevo and Rwanda, to Hamas and Israel currently caught in a war of incalculable carnage, Marías asks a perennial question: Where does enmity end?

Nevinson — described by his handlers as an "interpreter of lives" — gives Marías an opportunity to reflect on language, identity and the intractable limitations upon how much we can ever really know of ourselves or the world.

As in much of Marías' work, the writing moves with hypnotic grace. (And recommends itself to being read aloud: check out Ben Cura's wonderful audio recording.) The result is an ample display of Marías' many and various gifts, including a deft sense of humour and his agile ability to turn an aphorism ("You only have to introduce a little truth into a lie for the lie to seem not just credible, but irrefutable.")

Tomás Nevinson also represents a final chapter for one of the great translating partnerships of our time. Thanks to Margaret Jull Costa, anglophone readers may continue to read and reread nearly everything Marías has published since the 80s.

— Declan Fry

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

Grove Atlantic

The setting of Enter Ghost is one of colonial occupation and constant unease. Yet things are still required to continue.

It is in these circumstances that Sonia, Isabella Hammad's Palestinian British thespian protagonist, goes to visit her sister in Haifa. There, amid some devastating discoveries, she ends up reconnecting with Mariam, an old family friend, and is reluctantly roped into an Arabic stage adaptation of Hamlet in the West Bank.

Hammad's prose is precise. The world she writes has a dialectical feeling to it — an oozing disquiet is present throughout, even if there are small moments of joy. The Palestinian Hamlet actors turn up late for rehearsals when they encounter Israeli checkpoints that needlessly detain them on account of their identity. In one particularly acute scene, Mariam asks the actor playing Hamlet, Wael, to simulate an altercation with an Israeli soldier to bring out the character's aggression. We're left to interpret how that feels.

Enter Ghost is the rare kind of novel that seeks to reconcile aesthetic and political aims. It is a metafictional narrative of Palestinian resistance and love.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Harvill Secker

There's a new show in town, and it's as bloody as hell. Swinging machetes, chains, axes, knives … and tight, tight close-ups — because this is reality TV on steroids.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah creates an America in which prisoners might be pardoned — if they agree to fight to the death in techno-filled arenas, while every aspect of their lives is broadcast with the roar and swirl of publicity, music and fanfare.

It's WWE wrestling with real red stuff and extra politics; it's adrenaline to the max; it's heart-pounding commentary.

This is a future fantasy world that is also now. Overwhelmingly, the prisoners fighting for their lives and freedom are black or people of colour. They work together in a group — chains — that reference the history of slavery and racialised incarceration. Speaking out, silencing, resistance, rebellion: it's all there, too.

This is a novel with a thumping pace and plenty of complicated narratives that build and intertwine and come together in a breathless crescendo.

The two women at the heart of it, warriors both, are allies and lovers — but we know they'll end up in the arena together. And the man whose mind has been shattered by surveillance and enforced silence will have a part to play too, won't he?

And what about the viewers/the readers, where do we stand? Adjei-Brenyah makes sure that our position is interrogated, too.

— Kate Evans

Chain-Gang All-Stars appeared in our Best Books of June , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

Tonight It's a World We Bury by Bill Peel 

Repeater Books

It's almost cursory to associate the black metal genre with the far right. Although it first began as a clarion call against Christianity, the scene became co-opted by figures such as Varg Vikernes and Faust, from whom proliferated right-wing views alongside bands who categorise themselves under the "NSBM" (national socialist black metal) umbrella.

But, as Bill Peel argues in Tonight It's a World We Bury, the genre is ripe for rehabilitation, particularly in this fractious era, to create a scene that holds Marxism as a value system as well as one of its political aims.

Peel's knowledge of the genre is vast. In this way — alongside close readings of philosophers like Mark Fisher and Byung-Chul Han — he manages to tell a compelling story of its past missteps, while also pointing out the bands who are bucking the status quo, preferring instead to visibly align themselves with the left.

What makes this book especially appealing is that, unlike many punters and thinkers of subcultural worlds, Peel doesn't revel in nostalgia.

Instead, he looks forward to possibilities yet unrealised, what could be further imagined. That in itself is part of a communist-minded paradigm — as Marx himself has written: "Reason cannot blossom without hope; hope cannot speak without reason".

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

Irish writer Claire Kilroy's novel blazes and shines with exhaustion, fury, love and resentment. In it, a woman (Soldier) addresses her baby son (Sailor) with all the weariness and heightened sensibility of someone at the end of their tether. And her tether is more like a frayed, gnawed rope.

Amid resentment of her husband, the humiliation of pram and doorway and buckles and supermarket tears, she is funny and ferocious and battling on and on.

Her writing takes us into the joy and the drag of her body: "My old enemy, the stairs."

Kilroy doesn't overplay the military language of her Soldier and Sailor — it's lighter, more flexible, vernacular.

There's an industrial hum throughout the book as well. Something's coming down the line, on tracks that thrum with power — and her language sparks and is polished with all the energy of life's machinery.

This is a novel where the plot is apparently about the commonplace — just getting through the first few years of a child's life — but she soaks it with tension and beauty and rage and movement and humour, so it's impossible to look away, and impossible to forget.

Soldier Sailor appeared in our Best Books of August , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

When I first read Prophet Song as one of the six 2023 Booker Prize shortlisted novels, I immediately knew it would win — and indeed it did .

The fifth novel by Irish writer Paul Lynch, it's set in a dystopian Ireland where a populist government has taken control and civil liberties are diminishing by the day. It is lyrical and electrifying, but this novel struck me because of its focus on the domestic rather than the militaristic or political.

Zeroing in on Eilish Stack — a microbiologist with four children and a husband who's been disappeared by the new regime — Prophet Song chronicles her efforts to hold her family together in the face of forces beyond her control. She's implored to escape the encroaching violence but, for Eilish, this prospect is akin to "tearing off your feet".

Paul Lynch told ABC RN's The Book Show that his purpose as a writer was to "get as close to myth" as possible, and in this novel he might just have achieved this coveted goal.

— Sarah L'Estrange

Prophet Song appeared in our Best Books of August , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

Firelight by John Morrissey

This debut collection of short fiction from John Morrissey offers a sly, teasing narrative voice, elegantly staged dialogue and an eye for the absurdities and indignities of contemporary life.

At times recalling Will Self — both authors share a droll narrative voice, interest in office space and alternative timelines, fabulist narrative and colonisation — there are a number of highlights throughout the collection.

Autoc, a tale of future "alien" contact, invites the reader into all manner of sinister magic: the atmosphere of the 19th-century macabre, the question of imperialism, and an unnerving dreamlike atmosphere reminiscent of the lecture hall scene in Dario Argento's Inferno. Five Minutes is a beautifully executed metafiction examining familial angst, bureaucracy and the probable outcomes of a giant centipede attack. Ivy mixes urban ennui with slacker wit, gradually transforming into a meditation on rapture.

Much of the wonder of these stories lies in their suggestiveness. Morrissey is capable of relating the bizarre with lucidity and a calmly sardonic touch. The narratives are elusive yet vividly realised, leaving their endings and implications to the reader's imagination.

They could be described as speculative fiction but, in truth, they are more firmly anchored to that genre's underlying fabric: ourselves, and our inescapable strangeness.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

My copy of Tom Lake is looking increasingly worse-for-wear. Ann Patchett's ninth novel, with its green-blue floral cover, has been borrowed by my ABC colleagues over and over again since its July release.

The popularity makes sense. This is a book about summer love, cherry orchards and family ties, beautifully written by one of America's best-loved writers. It's a big warm hug of a book, with just enough bite to stop it drowning in sweetness.

Tom Lake is the name of a summer stock theatre, where our narrator Lara spent a season as a 20-something actress. It was there that she fell in love with Peter Duke — a magnetic, passionate actor who would go on to become a Hollywood star.

It's no spoiler to say that the romance was short-lived. Lara tells the story years later, as she and her three adult daughters pick cherries on the family farm. Lara didn't make it as an actress, and she married someone else. Her life is quiet, and quietly miraculous.

It's in this quiet contentment that Patchett does something revelatory. Tom Lake celebrates the joy that can be found in an ordinary, imperfect life. And isn't that something we can all aspire to?

Tom Lake appeared in our Best Books of August , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

The Sitter by Angela O'Keeffe

The Sitter is the second novel by Australian author Angela O'Keeffe that takes the art world as its subject to dazzling effect. The first, Night Blue, anthropomorphised Jackson Pollock's famous painting Blue Poles, so don't expect a straight narrative in this new book.

The Sitter is an inventive conjuring of the post-Impressionist French artist Paul Cezanne's wife and model, Hortense Cezanne.

It's not, however, a straightforward re-writing of her life; instead, long dead Hortense appears as a presence in the French hotel room of an Australian writer who's researching her life for a novel. Hortense is not a ghost. In fact, the best way to think of this presence is as the manifestation of the writer's obsession.

This book is so exciting because Hortense becomes the observer of the writer rather than the perennially observed artist's subject. It's a slender, satisfying read that will send you to the paintings featuring Hortense and lead you to wonder what she's thinking as she looks out from the canvas.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Allen & Unwin

Grief can linger in your bones or pare you right back to them. Bare, skeletal, stony. Rattling around inside the noise of a busy life.

Accomplished and assured writer Charlotte Wood (The Natural Way of Things, The Weekend, many more) has taken that lonely sound and placed it inside her unnamed narrator — a woman who is searching for respite and heads to a nunnery and retreat in regional New South Wales.

She is not herself religious, and while she's longing for some sort of reflective space, she's scratchy with irritation at the rituals and bad food and seemingly pointless gliding about of the other women. Her irritation is itself a pleasure — funny, eye-rolling, cutting through any earnest piousness as we sink into her inner world.

There's plenty of outer world to be going on with, too: a murder; a celebrity nun; ferocious and difficult memories; sharply worded encounters with this community of nuns — and a mouse plague.

This mouse plague takes those bones of grief and plunges our hero — and us, as readers — back into the body. You can feel the curve of a foot as it encounters a small furry body in a shoe (gah!), or the horrifying wiggle in the small of her back as she gets into a car and then launches out of it again, an entire enmeshed cushion of small bodies writhing against our imagination.

Fine, intelligent writing.

— Kate Evans

Stone Yard Devotional appeared in our Best Books of October , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun by Jackie Wang 

Semiotext(e)

Many may know Jackie Wang as the author of Carceral Capitalism (2018), an incisive examination into contemporary incarceration techniques. Few may know of her beginnings as a punky zine writer — her 2009 personal zine On Being Hard Femme provided a fun and expansive provocation on gender that I still stand by today. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that zine, as well as other early writings, have been collected into something Wang refers to as "an almanac of extreme girlhood".

In the introduction Wang laments her assimilation into so-called respectable institutions: "I no longer know how to live as though the impossible were possible. I only know what I'm supposed to do to lead a successful life. I have a PhD from Harvard now. I put money away into a retirement account while I write from the comfort of a tenure-track job."

Within this volume of collected writing — nudged on by her friend, the poet Bhanu Kapil — is a kind of double-edgedness: while it grieves the loss of a more carefree, reckless and ultimately naïve time (it can also be said that this loss is engendered by how capital has completely permeated our lives), it's similarly a guidebook to possible existences. It's Proust's "retrospective illumination" put into practice.

Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun appeared in our Best Books of November , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

Women and Children by Tony Birch

It might sound strange to describe a novel centred on violence as "tender". But that's certainly the case with Tony Birch's stunning fifth novel.

The book is set in 1965. Eleven-year-old Joe Cluny lives with his mum, Marion, and his sister, Ruby, in a safe and loving home. He's getting into trouble at his Catholic school and spending long days with his beloved grandfather, Charlie.

Then one night, violence arrives on the family's doorstep. Joe's aunt, Oona, is bruised and bleeding, after being beaten by her partner. And while the wider community has learned to look away from domestic violence — Ruby, while leading her beaten aunt through the street, observes that Oona has become an "invisible woman" — the Cluny family will confront it.

The tenderness is found in a series of small, perfect moments: Joe and Charlie sharing a buttery bacon sandwich; Ruby cleaning her aunt's bruised body. Birch's prose is clear-eyed and unpretentious, taking readers right to the heart of the story. And what a heart it is.

Women and Children appeared in our Best Books of November , check out the full review and other great books from that month here .

What I Saw, Heard, Learned by Giorgio Agamben

Italy's foremost philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, was a friend and collaborator of everyone from Pier Paolo Pasolini and Italo Calvino to Ingeborg Bachmann and Jacques Derrida.

This year, Seagull Books (publishers of great work like Hélène Cixous' Well-Kept Ruins, and Hussein Barghouthi's Among the Almond Trees) offered their latest title from the 81-year-old.

What I Saw, Heard, Learned is a series of startling, wise and often beautiful aphorisms and reflections. One chapter reads: "What water taught me: delight, when our foot no longer finds its hold and our body almost unwillingly gives in and swims." Or how about this? "Writing, I learned that happiness lies not in poetizing, but in being poetized by something or someone we cannot know."

The book is an intellectual and spiritual summa from a thinker who has meant much to many. Remarkable and thrillingly evocative, it closes with a moving account of Agamben being given a page of writing he made at the age of eight or nine by his mother, a piece that foreshadowed "the secret core of my philosophy".

Like the parables of Walter Benjamin or Zhuangzi, the memory approaches a kind of Daoist enlightenment, accepting that every work is only a failed iteration of some more fully realised ambition.

As Agamben writes, if "I really tried to cross the threshold of silence that accompanies every thought, I wouldn't have written a thing."

Tune in to ABC RN at 10am Mondays for The Book Show and 10am Saturdays for The Bookshelf .

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Biography Books

Learn about your favourite bands, famous politicians, everyday heroes and iconic figures with BIG W's selection of biography books.

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Read this week's magazine

Spring 2024 Adult Preview: Memoirs & Biographies

Among the season’s most anticipated biographies and memoirs are experimental works from familiar names, personal histories that reframe the American past, and debut memoirs from Christine Blasey Ford, Leslie Jamison, and RuPaul.

All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians

Phil Elwood. Holt, June 25 ($28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-32157-2)

Elwood, a former PR professional in Washington, D.C., pulls back the curtain on his work for the Qatari government, Muammar Gaddafi, and other clients.

Alphabetical Diaries

Sheila Heti. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Feb. 6 ($27, ISBN 978-0-374-61078-4)

Heti follows up Pure Colour with a formal experiment in which she rearranges sentences from 10 years’ worth of personal journal entries in alphabetical order.

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Kara Swisher. Simon & Schuster, Feb. 27 ($30, ISBN 978-1-982163-89-1)

Swisher recounts her career reporting on the tech industry, from covering the rise of Silicon Valley in the early 1990s to sit-downs with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and other titans who’ve shaped the 21st century, for better and worse.

The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir

RuPaul. Dey Street, Mar. 5 ($29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-326390-1)

The trailblazing drag performer and television host chronicles his turbulent San Diego, Calif., childhood, early days in the Atlanta and New York City punk scenes, and unlikely ascent to stardom.

Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People

Tiya Miles. Penguin Press, June 18 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-49116-4)

National Book Award winner Miles seeks to render the larger-than-life abolitionist on a human scale by focusing on Tubman’s relationships with the natural world and other enslaved women.

Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong

Katie Gee Salisbury. Dutton, Mar. 12 ($32, ISBN 978-0-593-18398-4)

Salisbury debuts with a biography of actor Wong, who in the 1920s became the first Asian American star of a major motion picture.

One Way Back: A Memoir

Christine Blasey Ford. St. Martin’s, Mar. 19 ($29, ISBN 978-1-250-28965-0)

Blasey Ford documents her life before, during, and after she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault at his 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life

Billy Dee Williams. Knopf, Feb. 13 ($32, ISBN 978-0-593-31860-7)

The Star Wars star chronicles his Harlem childhood, early theater career, and onscreen achievements.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

Leslie Jamison. Little, Brown, Feb. 20 ($29, ISBN 978-0-316-37488-0)

For her debut memoir, the author of The Empathy Exams takes a microscope to her fraying marriage, comparing it to her parents’ own bond and examining her feelings about motherhood in the process.

Whiskey Tender: A Memoir

Deborah Taffa. Harper, Feb. 27 ($32, ISBN 978-0-06-328851-5)

Taffa interweaves an account of growing up on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in the 1970s and ’80s with reflections on major events in the history of Native relations with America’s European settlers and their descendants.

Memoirs & Biographies longlist

Abrams Press

Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir by Zoë Bossiere (Apr. 17, $27, ISBN 978-1-4197-7318-1) recounts how the author began living as a boy after moving with their family to an Arizona trailer park as an 11-year-old, before arriving at a more complicated gender identity as they grew older.

Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer by Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson (Mar. 5, $28.95, ISBN 978-1-63614-116-9), collects Oates’s correspondence with writer Johnson, covering the details of her writing practice, private travels, and musings on art and culture.

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon (Feb. 20, $29, ISBN 978-1-64375-349-2) weaves more than 20 recipes into Nguon’s account of her family’s experiences during the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s.

The Moment: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn’t and How We All Can Move Forward Now by Bakari Sellers (Apr. 23, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-308502-2). The CNN commentator and former South Carolina state representative recounts his reaction to the 2020 police killing of George Floyd and reflects on subjects from voting rights to policing.

The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara B. Franklin (May 28, $30, ISBN 978-1- 982134-34-1). In the first biography of Jones, Franklin examines the Knopf editor’s work on such classics as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and The Art of French Cooking , pulling from interviews with her colleagues and previously unseen personal papers.

Dancing on the Edge: A Journey of Living, Loving, and Tumbling Through Hollywood by Russ Tamblyn and Sarah Tomlinson (Apr. 9, $28.99, ISBN 979-8-212-27331-2). Tamblyn discusses his life as a teen actor in the 1950s and ’60s, sharing anecdotes about his friendship with Neil Young, his 1958 Academy Award nomination, and the breakdown of his marriage.

I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv by Illia Ponomarenko (May 7, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-387-3) sees the Ukrainian war correspondent providing a firsthand account of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico by Noé Álvarez (May 28, $26, ISBN 978-1-64622-089-2). In his second memoir, Álvarez writes of traversing the U.S. with his accordion in an attempt to better understand his late Mexican grandfather, who was also an accordion player.

Counterpoint

Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwsˇəblu LaPointe (Mar. 5, $27, ISBN 978-1-64009-635-6) delves into the author’s Indigenous heritage, interweaving autobiography with anthropological research and reflections on art and music.

Outofshapeworthlessloser: A Memoir of Figure Skating, F*cking Up, and Figuring It Out by Gracie Gold (Feb. 6, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-44404-7). 2014 Olympic bronze medalist Gold reveals the private struggles with bulimia and suicidal ideation that accompanied her ascent in the public eye.

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers (May 14, $35, ISBN 978-0-06-246372-2). NPR music critic Powers delivers a wide-ranging volume on the singer-songwriter that combines the author’s reflections and interviews with Mitchell’s contemporaries.

The Yankee Way: The Untold Inside Story of the Brian Cashman Era by Andy Martino (May 21, $30, ISBN 978-0-385-54999-8) draws from two years’ worth of interviews with Yankees general manager Cashman to deliver an inside look at the team’s 1998 and 2000 World Series victories, ego clashes, and more.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna (May 14, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-282523-0). The Bikini Kill frontwoman reflects on her adolescence in Washington State, the formation of the band, and her friendships with famous musicians including Kurt Cobain and Joan Jett.

A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer’s Memoir by Keith Merith (Mar. 26, $21.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77041-679-6) chronicles the author’s years as a Black man working for Canada’s York Regional Police and shares strategies for police reform.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Mar. 19, $30, ISBN 978-1-250-06635-0). In the first full biography of Warhol superstar Darling, Carr documents the artist’s Long Island childhood, celebrity connections, and untimely death in 1974.

Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life by Joseph Epstein (Apr. 16, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-66800-963-5). The former American Scholar editor discusses his early life in Chicago, U.S. Army service, and exploits in New York City’s literary scene.

Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World by Rae Wynn-Grant (Apr. 2, $28, ISBN 978-1-63893-040-2) traces Grant’s trajectory from her childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area to becoming a prominent ecologist, cataloging the trials and triumphs of being a Black woman scientist.

Grand Central

Make It Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner by CeCé Telfer (June 18, $30, ISBN 978-1-5387-5624-9). Jamaica-born athlete Telfer discusses her coming-of-age, her coming out, and her path to becoming the first openly trans woman to win an NCAA championship.

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. by Manni Coe, illus. by Reuben Coe (May 7, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-77840-144-2), focuses on Manni’s removal of his brother, Reuben, who has Down syndrome, from a dreary English care home so the two could live together in a farm cottage.

My Mama, Cass: A Memoir by Owen Elliot-Kugell (May 7, $30, ISBN 978-0-306-83064-8) details the artistic and personal achievements of the author’s mother, musician Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas.

Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch (Mar. 5, $37.50, ISBN 978-0-06-269826-1). Biographer Gooch draws on new research from the late artist’s archives to delve into Haring’s life, work, and 1980s New York City milieu.

Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster (Apr. 17, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-328902-4). The star and subject of the documentary My Octopus Teacher discusses his return to the Cape of Good Hope, where he was born, to conduct oceanic research.

Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew by Patti Davis (Feb. 6, $21.99, ISBN 978-1-324-09348-0) mixes anecdotes from Davis’s personal life with reflections on the thorny legacies of her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

On a Move: Philadelphia’s Notorious Bombing and a Native Son’s Lifelong Battle for Justice by Mike Africa Jr. (July 9, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-06-331887-8). Africa, whose parents were members of the Black liberation group MOVE, writes of being born in jail and being raised by his grandmother, and recounts the 1985 bombing of his parents’ commune by Philadelphia police.

Gri ef Is for People by Sloane Crosley (Feb. 27, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-60984-9). The essayist portrays her grief and confusion after her best friend died by suicide.

Melville House

Death Row Welcomes You: Visiting Hours in the Shadow of the Execution Chamber by Steven Hale (Mar. 19, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-61219-928-3). Journalist Hale collects his reporting on Tennessee’s death row inmates after the state resumed executions in 2018, including his experiences befriending some of the prisoners.

Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food by Michelle T. King (May 14, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-324-02128-5) braids together a biography of Taiwanese chef Fu, who helped popularize Chinese cooking with her television appearances in the mid-20th century, and stories from King’s own childhood in a food-centric Chinese American household.

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell (Apr. 9, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-66800-797-6) follows up Montell’s Cultish with a blend of memoir and cultural criticism that takes aim at the information age’s assistance of distorted thinking.

Beckett’s Children: A Literary Memoir by Michael Coffey (July 30, $17.95, ISBN 978-1-68219-608-3). The former co-editorial director of PW draws on his experiences as an adoptee and a father to examine the works of Samuel Beckett and poet Susan Howe, in light of unsubstantiated rumors that Beckett was her father.

Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories by Diarmuid Hester (Feb. 6, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-63936-555-5) delves into lesser-known periods in the lives of notable queer artists, including James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, E.M. Forster, and Derek Jarman.

Penn State Univ.

With Darkness Came Stars by Audrey Flack (Feb. 27, $37.50, ISBN 978-0-271-09674-2) contains the groundbreaking photorealistic painter’s musings on her contemporaries, art practice, legacy, and motherhood.

PublicAffairs

In True Face: A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked by Jonna Mendez (Mar. 5, $30, ISBN 978-1-5417-0312-4) follows the author’s career arc from secretary to spy, recounting some of her most treacherous tours of duty and culminating in her promotion to the CIA’s chief of disguise.

Random House

How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone by Cameron Russell (Mar. 19, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-59548-0). The supermodel recounts her entry into the modeling industry at 16, subsequent disillusionment, and eventual resolution to organize for labor rights with her fellow models.

Feh by Shalom Auslander (July 23, $29, ISBN 978-0-7352-1326-5). The novelist delivers his first work of nonfiction since 2007’s Foreskin’s Lament , a memoir about his struggle to shake off generational guilt.

Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines by Carol Kino (Mar. 5, $29, ISBN 978-1-9821-1304-9). This dual biography covers the lives and careers of Frances and Kathryn McLaughlin, twin New York City magazine photographers in the 1930s and ’40s who acquired success before women were nudged back toward domestic duties in the ’50s.

Seven Stories

Breaking the Curse: A Memoir About Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft by Alex Difrancesco (June 4, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64421-384-1) swirls together self-help and memoir as the author reflects on the ways alternate spirituality helped bring them peace after addiction and transphobic attacks.

St. Martin’s

Rise of a Killah by Ghostface Killah (May 14, $35, ISBN 978-1-250-27427-4) takes an illustrated look at the life of the rapper and Wu-Tang Clan cofounder.

The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa (May 21, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-959030-75-1). Singaporean writer Tjoa excavates memories lost to PTSD in this memoir of her childhood that’s structured as a mystery.

Union Square

Inconceivable: Super Sperm Donors, Off-the-Grid Insemination, and Unconventional Family Planning by Valerie Bauman (Apr. 16, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-4549-5143-8) describes the author’s plunge into an underground community of off-book sperm donors as she sought to become a single mother.

Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French (Apr. 16, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-310-36744-4). French delivers a memoir about her difficult childhood in Appalachia, which she escaped by marrying a stranger and moving to New York City, where she started ghostwriting memoirs for conservative politicians.

This article has been updated with further information.

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AUTHOR TALK: LIFE LESSONS FROM HUGH MACKAY - FREE EVENT

Come along to the SMSA to hear Hugh Mackay talk about his new book THE WAY WE ARE , interviewed by Catherine du Peloux Menagé, Artistic Director at BAD Sydney Writers Festival. FREE event . Amidst our epidemics of loneliness, anxiety and depression in this unique post-Covid era, and as the impacts of entrenched poverty and ubiquitous technology continue to take hold, Mackay examines the major trends that are shaking the foundations of the Australian way of life. Abbey's will be there too for you to meet Hugh, buy your copy and get it personally signed . • WEDNESDAY 5 JUNE, 2024 • 12.30-1.30pm • Venue : Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney, 2000 • REGISTER TO ATTEND - via the EVENT INFO link below.

The Way We Are

Lessons from a lifetime of listening...

Hugh Mackay

$34.99  

In Stock 😊

A Very Secret Trade

The dark story of gentlemen collectors...

Cassandra Pybus

A Lie That’s Been Killing Us Since...

$32.99  

The Queen is Dead

$24.99  

Australia's Lost Heroes

Anzacs in the Russian Civil War...

Damien Wright

Kindred Spirits

Plants and People

$49.95  

Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia

A Groundbreaking Collection of Torres...

Samantha Faulkner

If Everyone Cared Enough

Her Voice Reclaimed

Margaret Tucker

Griffith Review 84

Attachment Styles

Debra Oswald

$27.99  

A Little History of the Australian Labor Party

Nick Dyrenfurth

The Waiting Game

The Untold Story of the Women Who...

Nicola Clark

The Cleopatras

The Forgotten Queens of Egypt

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

The Shadows of Socrates

The Heresy, War, and Treachery Behind...

Matt Gatton

$49.99  

Forthcoming You can preorder this

The Plague That Shook the Roman...

Colin Elliott

$59.99  

The Light of Asia

A History of Western Fascination...

Christopher Harding

The English Actor

From Medieval to Modern

Peter Ackroyd

$22.99  

Charles III

New King. New Court. The Inside...

Robert Hardman

$36.99  

Not in-store but you can order this

Thorns, Lust and Glory

The betrayal of Anne Boleyn

Estelle Paranque

City of Light, City of Shadows

Paris in the Belle Époque

x Mike Rapport

Iron and Blood

A Military History of the German-speaking...

Peter H. Wilson

$39.99  

October 7 and the Left (Jewish Quarterly...

Hadley Freeman

Battleground

10 Conflicts that Explain the New...

Christopher Phillips

$39.95  

David Grann

The Stalin Affair

The Impossible Alliance that Won...

Giles Milton

New Cold Wars

China's rise, Russia's invasion,...

David E Sanger

A History of the World in 47 Borders

The Stories Behind the Lines on...

Jonn Elledge

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

David Gibbins

Armies of the Scythians and Sarmatians 700 BC to AD...

Weapons, Equipment and Tactics

Gabriele Esposito

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Bettany Hughes

Britain 3000 BC

Rodney Castleden

Life, Death and Disease in the Middle...

Alice Roberts

Ancient Egypt on Five Deben a Day

Donald P. Ryan

$19.99  

Rome, Persia and the War that Shaped the World, 565-630...

Luke Edenfield

The Mighty Warrior Kings

From the Ashes of the Roman Empire...

Philip J Potter

$44.99  

The Powerful Women of Outremer

Forgotten Heroines of the Crusader...

Helena P Schrader

Wonder of Arabia: A crossroads of...

Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani

Inside the Roman Legions

The Soldier’s Experience 264–107...

Kathryn Milne

An African History of Africa

From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence...

Zeinab Badawi

Long Walk To Freedom

'Essential reading' Barack Obama...

Nelson Mandela

$26.99  

Nine Daughters of South Africa

Cato Pedder

Drink Maps in Victorian Britain

Kris Butler

Wise Words from King Charles III

Karen Dolby

The Windsors at War

The Nazi Threat to the Crown

Alexander Larman

The Eight King Henrys of England

Matthew Rice

Hitler's British Nazis

The Hidden Story of the Fascist...

Norman Ridley

Victorian Fashions for Women

Neil R Storey

1000 Tudor People

Melita Thomas

The Wild Men

The Remarkable Story of Britain's...

David Torrance

The Mysterious Death of Katherine Parr

What Really Happened to Henry VIII's...

June Woolerton

Our Enemies will Vanish

Yaroslav Trofimov

A Message from Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelensky

The Afterlives of China's Cultural...

Tania Branigan

Private Revolutions

Coming of Age in a New China

The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas...

The Life and Times of an Early German...

Andrew Drummond

$52.99  

White Terror

A True Story of Murder, Bombings...

Jacob Kushner

The Global History of a River

Robert Ivermee

Saving Michelangelo's Dome

How Three Mathematicians and a Pope...

Wayne Kalayjian

The Remarkable History of the Lagoon...

Dennis Romano

$79.95  

The Forbidden Daughter

Zipora Klein Jakob

The Survivor

How I Survived Six Concentration...

Josef Lewkowicz

Tribes and Politics in Yemen

A History of the Houthi Conflict...

Marieke Brandt

Judgement at Tokyo

World War II on Trial and the Making...

Gary J. Bass

The War of 1812

Barbarian Warrior vs Roman Legionary

Marcomannic Wars AD 165–180

Dr Murray Dahm

Those Must Be The Guards

The Household Division in Peace...

Paul de Zulueta

World War I

The Definitive Visual History

The Union Army 1861–65 (1)

The Regular Army and the Territories...

The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire

Ryan Gingeras

$29.99  

Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

David Graeber

Eastern Front 1945

Triumph of the Soviet Air Force...

William E. Hiestand

Landing in the Dawn

Dissecting a Legend - The Landing...

Hurst James

The Crisis That Led to Hitler's...

The Last Secret Agent

The untold story of my life as a...

Pippa Latour

De Gaulle and Churchill

The Foundations of a Perplexing...

Evan McGilvray

Coalition Armor vs Iraqi Forces

Iraq 2003–06

Chris McNab

The Untold Story of Fearless WW2...

Clare Mulley

Great-Uncle Harry

A Tale of War and Empire

Michael Palin

Czechoslovak Armies 1939–45

Nigel Thomas

The Ones Who Got Away

Mighty Eighth Airmen on the Run...

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

The United States, Central America,...

Jonathan Blitzer

The Black Box

Writing the Race

Henry Louis Gates, Jr

How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America...

Robert Kagan

$56.95   $50.89

After Watergate

Political Scandals from Nixon to...

Peter J Ling

The Great Abolitionist

Charles Sumner and the Fight for...

Stephen Puleo

$70.95  

The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic

Reconstruction, 1860-1920

Manisha Sinha

$65.95  

Salmon P. Chase

Lincoln's Vital Rival

Walter Stahr

$51.95   $46.95

The Situation Room

The Inside Story of Presidents in...

George Stephanopoulos

An Emancipation of the Mind

Radical Philosophy, the War over...

Matthew Stewart

$53.95  

The Demon of Unrest

Erik Larson

$75.95   $68.51

What's Cooking in the Kremlin

A Modern History of Russia Through...

Witold Szablowski

$46.99  

How the Spanish Empire Was Built

A 400 Year History

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Uncivilised

Ten Lies that Made the West

Subhadra Das

Smoke And Ashes

Opium's Hidden Histories

Amitav Ghosh

Nuclear War

Annie Jacobsen

Remembering Peasants

A Personal History of a Vanished...

Patrick Joyce

The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons...

Sarah Scoles

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