As we rapidly approach the end of the year, the AU Books team have been desperately sorting books, rating and re-rating, choosing and re-choosing as they try to narrow down their favourite reads of 2024. It’s never an easy to task to choose just one, so we at least let them put forward a couple…
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With Christmas less than a week away, at the AU we’ve got to the task of agonising and arguing over our end of year lists – best albums, best films, best games, and of course best books. The Books team have taken a look over the year’s releases and compiled a list of some of…
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The highly anticipated sequel to Vanessa Len’s hit debut Only a Monster, Never a Hero is another wild ride through time and morality as Joan is forced to face the consequences of her actions and take on a new and powerful foe. Joan is still reeling from her decision to unmake the hero. Riddled with…
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Vanessa Len is a bestselling Australian author and educational editor, who has worked on everything from language learning programs to STEM resources, to professional learning for teachers. She took time out of her busy schedule to chat with Jess Gately about her writing process, book boxes and her new book Never a Hero. So, first of…
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Deadpan humour meets swashbuckling swords-and-sorcery in this collection of short stories from fantasy heavyweight Garth Nix. A series of adventurous tales about friendship and duty, Sir Herward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch King and the Puppet Sorcerer pulls together eight previously separately published stories, plus one new story of the dynamic god-slaying duo….
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The sequel to the best-selling The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is finally here, and Garth Nix certainly delivers. Return to the wild, dangerous but eccentric world of the magical crime-fighting bookseller St Jacques family in The Sinister Booksellers of Bath. Demi-mortal Susan Arkshaw has been steadfastly avoiding all bookseller business since discovering her magical heritage. She wants…
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Magical girls, politics, religion and revolution collide in Kate J. Armstrong‘s debut novel, Nightbirds. Set in a 1920s-inspired world where magic is prohibited, this YA fantasy explores the politics of women in power in an action-packed and wild ride through the fictional city of Simta. Matilde, Sayer and Æsa are Nightbirds, girls will innate magic…
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Melbourne’s Vanessa Len takes all the tropes you know and love and manages to make them feel new and exciting in her debut novel Only a Monster. This urban fantasy adventure features enemies-to-lovers romance, a hidden magical underworld, time travel, hot monster boys, and a mysterious monster king surrounded by a frightening monster court. The…
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Kitty Flanagan is an accomplished stand-up and regular on TV shows like Utopia and The Weekly With Charlie Pickering. She is a chronic over-thinker in the best possible way, and this is evident in her first book: Bridge Burning & Other Hobbies. A collection of funny anecdotes and personal stories, readers will find this book as relatable…
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It is hard for some of us to even fathom being an airplane crash victim. But for former Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Cynthia Banham it was reality. In A Certain Light Banham pens a family memoir that describes this irrevocable tragedy, and the fateful day that left her a double amputee with burns to over…
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Berlin, 1929. A car is pulled from the Landwehr Canal with a mutilated corpse at the wheel. Detective Inspector Gereon Rath, newly arrived from Cologne, is on the case, stepping outside his jurisdiction and onto a few toes in the process. His search sends him deep into the seedy underworld of Weimar Berlin, where drug…
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Recovering from a major surgery that took away his ability to speak, Sam is a young boy without a voice. So when his Aunt Dettie packs up Sam, and his sister Katie, and sets out to drive from Sydney to Perth, Sam is unable to protest. Promised that their estranged father is waiting for them…
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Drawing on lectures delivered in 2014 and 2017, Women & Power: A Manifesto is a small, yet powerful exploration of the historical silencing of women in the public sphere. The Ancient Roman and Greek cultures we so often hold up as the basis for our democracies today were never particularly kind to the loud woman…
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October has been good to book lovers, with a bumper collection of new releases. So here, as promised, are five more books we think you need to be reading. Three of the five books are highly anticipated sequels, prequels and follow-ups, though some are more long-awaited than others. Included on this list is a nice…
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