As September draws to a close we don’t want you to miss out on two amazing prizes you could win. Today is your last chance to win a beautiful Hilary Mantel book pack or a signed copy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl! Hilary Mantel and Gillian Flynn couldn’t be more different as writers, but they do share a couple of traits, both selling millions and millions of copies worldwide, a... Read more

It’s not just the fact that this novel is set at my university in the north of England that makes me love it. It’s Grant’s superb ability to capture the feeling of the times in this terrifically authentic story about student life, especially the first awkward foray into relationships, friendships, infatuations and other uneasy human manoeuvrings on the road to self-awareness. ... Read more

I’ve been a fan of Moran’s ever since I read her hilarious story in the British press about trying to learn Beyonce’s All the Single Ladies dance routine. She is a one-of-a-kind talent, untamed by success, outspoken, mouthy, with a wild and brilliant voice on just about everything. And now she’s tackled fiction. Despite an author’s note at the front of the book it ... Read more

You don’t have to be a twitcher to enjoy this book which opens with a fascinating theory: Australian birds sound different because of what they eat! Apparently they are on a sugar high, because there is more nectar available to them from native flora than to other birds elsewhere. While our marsupials continue to capture the world’s attention (Prince George and the Bilby, Gary Shtey... Read more

The energy of this debut novel just leaps off the page. Musa, a charismatic rapper, has successfully translated the idiom and pulse of performance to the page with its syncopated rhythms and hard-edged beats. Inevitably, he is being compared with his mate Christos Tsiolkas for his full-frontal engagement with contemporary Australian society: in this case, multicultural masculinity with its surg... Read more

Shy by Sian Prior Shy. It’s a shy word, a timid little word that begs to remain unnoticed. Only three letters long, and it begins with an exhortation to silence. Shhh. Reserved is different. It’s for tall men with jutting jaws. Prime ministers can appear reserved: never shy. Restrained carries itself with dignity. Even introvert has a whiff of authority about it: these people have b... Read more

Wildlife by Fiona Wood Life? It’s simple: be true to yourself. The tricky part is finding out exactly who you are… “In the holidays before the dreaded term at Crowthorne Grammar’s outdoor education camp two things out of the ordinary happened. A picture of me was plastered all over a twenty-metre billboard. And I kissed Ben Capaldi.” Boarding for a term in the wild... Read more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT6ohRweRfU[/ Little Failure A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart Gary Shteyngart‘s loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer, or at least an accountant, something their distracted son was simply not cut out to do. Fusing English and Russian, his mother created the term Failurchka-‘Little Failure’-which she applied to her son. W... Read more

What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by Daniel Bergner Women are the monogamous sex. Women crave intimacy and emotional connection. Women don’t want sex with strangers. Right? Wrong. Could ‘the fairer sex’ in fact be more sexually aggressive and anarchic than men? In What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, critically acclaimed ... Read more

Looking for things to see at The Sydney Writer’s Festival? Come along and hear some experts from Booktopia chat about the wonderful world of books… Read more