The shortlists for this year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards have been announced. Already with a few awards this year, Margo Lanagan joins other award-winning authors like Jackie French, Morris Gleitzman and Margaret Wild in a wonderful field of authors and illustrators. Older Readers The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant A remarkable and gripping story about one re... Read more

There’s nothing like a kid’s review for a kids book. One of Booktopia’s younger friends, Isabel Blackmore, shares her thoughts on the upcoming Fairytales For Wilde Girls by Allyse Near. Fairytales for Wilde Girls has taken me on a journey that no other book has before. It puts you on a wondrous rollercoaster, taking you on unexpected twists and turns. Even a simple sentence ha... Read more

muse 1 (noun) a woman, or a force personified as a woman, who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist The death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been met with the very attitude she maintained until her final day. Black and White. There are those that applaud the courage of her convictions, her attention to a task she felt important to a country that she felt had... Read more

Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000) and nominees for the People’s Choice Award The Voyage by Murray Bail Frank Delage, piano manufacturer from Sydney, travels to Vienna, a city immersed in music, to present the Delage concert grand. He hopes to impress with its technical precision, its improvement on the old pianos of Europe. How could he not know his piano is all wrong for Vienna? Perh... Read more

Huge news this afternoon with the announcement that a new novel by Tim Winton will be published on 14 October 2013. “I’m delighted to be able to announce that on October 14 this year we will be publishing a new novel by Tim Winton, his first since the Miles Franklin Award-winning Breath, ” Ben Ball, Publishing Director, Penguin Books Australia revealed today. “Each new work from Tim... Read more

Hugh Mackay, psychologist, social researcher and writer, blogs about the basis of his wonderful new book The Good Life. What comes to mind when someone says ‘the good life’? Comfort and prosperity? A chance to cash in your chips, retire to the coast and put your feet up? A life enriched by the love of your family and friends? A life where dreams come true? How about a life lived for others, a l... Read more

Booktopia’s Editorial Director Caroline Baum sat down with award-winner Ashley Hay to discuss her new book The Railwayman’s Wife. In a small town on the land’s edge, in the strange space at a war’s end, a widow, a poet and a doctor each try to find their own peace, and their own new story. In Thirroul, in 1948, people chase their dreams through the books in the railway&#... Read more

One of the most celebrated film critics of all time, Roger Ebert, has passed away at age 70. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who started off in newspapers, he made the transition to television in 1975 with the program At the Movies with his fellow critic Gene Siskel, which made both men into household names. Approval from Ebert and his sidekick not only could influence mainstream box office... Read more

Readers the world over have been hit with devastating news that celebrated Scottish author Iain Banks has been diagnosed with gall bladder cancer and may have only months to live. As a writer of literary fiction his reputation is immense. His dark, savagely funny streak a joy, his view on the world truly that of a wonderful mind. His first novel The Wasp Factory, published in 1984, remains a de... Read more

Booktopia’s Editorial Director Caroline Baum shares her thoughts on book design today. Have you noticed how many book covers these days are not so much designed as cut and pasted? They all seem to be afflicted with a common disease: Getty-itis. Everybody is sourcing images from the same ginormous photo library and it’s producing a kind of sameness, a lack of aesthetic diversity that is ma... Read more