Book Recommendations Archives

Grab a copy of Every Parent’s Nightmare here The story of Jock Palfreeman has captivated Australia. Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach took a look at award-winning journalist Belinda Hawkins’ account of the harrowing story of a young Australian jailed for murder. Wrong place, wrong time. Some phrases are uttered so often in our daily lives that they lose their punch, struggling to convey the re... Read more

Don’t be put off by the apparently obscure subject and considerable heft of Lucy Hughes-Hallet’s wonderful biography of Gabriele D’Annunzio, The Pike. D’Annunzio leaps off the page as a sex-mad spendthrift poet; a crack-pot warrior who led a small army to seize and rule an Istrian port city; and an almost-but-not quite-comic prototype for Mussolini’s Fascism. The Pike is a gripping portra... Read more

One of Australia’s favourite novelists Kate Forsyth, author of Bitter Greens and The Wild Girl, continues her monthly blog with us, giving her verdict on the books she’s been reading. Kate Forsyth: The last few months have been insanely busy for me, with all sorts of deadlines whizzing past my ears as a consequence of having four books with three different publishers coming out this year, as we... Read more

From The Guardian: The Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, who unleashed the worldwide boom in Spanish literature with his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, has died at the age of 87. He had been admitted tohospital in Mexico City on 3 April with pneumonia. Matching commercial success with critical acclaim, García Márquez became a standard-bearer for Latin American letters, esta... Read more

Clariel, the long-awaited and much anticipated prequel to Garth Nix’s bestselling Old Kingdom trilogy will be published in October 2014. Pub Date: Oct 2014 New Prequel: Clariel is the daughter of one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen, and to the King. When her family moves to the city of Belisaere, Clariel finds herself at the centre of ... Read more

THE GOLDFINCH : Donna Tartt, author of the phenomenal bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend, returns with a breathtaking new novel. Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented b... Read more

The shortlist for the 2014 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction is here. I am left gob-smacked by some of the exclusions – The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton and The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, for example. Surely a Man Booker Prize winner can win Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, too. And isn’t it time to forgive Elizabeth Gilbert for Eat, Pr... Read more

Not since the 60s folk scene have the lines been so brilliantly blurred between music, art and literature. From the extraordinary lyricism of Australian indie rock gods The Drones to the extravagant avant-garde persona of Kanye West, to be a musician is to be a songwriter is to be an artist once again. And the upside of this? Not only do we get to listen to great music, but also read books from... Read more

A brilliantly diverse longlist has been announced for this year’s Miles Franklin Award. In a wonderful year of Australian writing, heavyweights Tim Winton, Richard Flanagan and Alexis Wright are joined by some incredibly talented first time nominees like Fiona MacFarlane and Evie Wyld. Don’t miss the chance to grab a copy of these fantastic books and judge them for yourself. You can... Read more

Ever wondered what happens when Game of Thrones, the TV Show, catches up with A Song of Ice and Fire, the books? It’s cool. George R.R. has it covered. He tells us it’s all going to be okay in this Variety magazine interview. The season that’s about to debut covers the second half of the third book. The third book [A Storm of Swords] was so long that it had to be split into two. But... Read more