Readings Prizes 2025 Readings has announced the winners of the 2025 Readings Prize in each category and the winner of the Gab Williams Prize. The winning titles are: New Australian Fiction Prize I Want Everything (Dominic Amerena, Summit) * Young Adult Prize Aisle Nine (Ian X Cho, HarperCollins) Children’s Prize How to Free a Jinn (Raidah Shah Idil,
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Fleur McDonald’s latest book, The Missing, took me a little while to get to know the key players and how they would fit together in the story. In the Prologue we meet a group of teenagers, in an isolated town, who get together in an old building out of town, sharing
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Devotees of the great nineteenth century romantic novels will readily engage with the saga of Colonel William Light and Clarissa FitzRoy. Their paths are unconventional, colourful, and beset by forces outside their control. Clarissa with her long auburn locks and gowns of flaming red and deep-sea green is an eye-catching woman
Reviewed by Rod McLary The starting point of Dirt Trap is the series of what was variously called the gay hate murders or the gay gang murders which largely occurred [but not exclusively] between 1989 and 1990. Shockingly, many of these murders were allegedly perpetrated by gangs of young people aged between 12 and 18
Reviewed by Ian Hamilton The central premise of this book is clear and cogently defended (often in great detail). Jacob Silverman wishes to expose what he sees as unscrupulous behaviour by a group of mega rich men who seek to use their enormous wealth to buy political influence and loyalty. He portrays this as an
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke This is a beautifully presented, hard covered, square, children’s picture book written by Catherine Barr and illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat. Catherine writes non-fiction books that aim to inspire children to explore, understand and take action to protect the natural world. She has written over 35 books to spark conversation and curiosity
Reviewed by Colleen McLennan The novelist, Paullina Simons, was born in Leningrad in 1963 and moved with her family to the United States when she was ten years old. Her early interest in writing began when she was twelve years old. She was educated in New York, Kansas and England, graduating with a degree in
Booker Prize 2025 David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize worth £50,000 (A$100,800), for Flesh (Jonathan Cape). “Written in spare prose and spanning decades – from a Hungarian housing estate to the mansions of London’s rich elite – Flesh is a propulsive novel centred on an emotionally detached man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp,”
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Award winning journalist Grantlee Kieza OAM is well known as the author of many books which foreground notable Australians who are never found in the history books yet their impact on our history has been of great worth. Among this esteemed group are people like Mrs Kelly, Annette Kellerman, Sister Viv
Reviewed by Rod McLary DCI Karen Pirie – head of the Historical Crimes Unit of Police Scotland – returns to the forefront in this latest novel by one of the most successful of crime writers Val McDermid. Unapologetic in its immersion in Scottish idiom and humour, Silent Bones is a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying crime
The judges for the 2025 Voss Literary Prize for the best novel published in 2024 have shortlisted the following titles from the 52 eligible titles which were submitted by publishers: Michelle De Kretser, Theory & Practice Rodney Hall, Vortex Gail Jones, One Another Siang Lu, Ghost Cities * Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13 * The winner will be announced later in
Reviewed by Rod McLary Kiara Lui returns in Jack Heath’s latest book in the Kill Your … series. Readers will remember her as the investigating officer from Kill Your Husbands when she was Constable Lui – now she is Detective Sergeant Lui; and this book is no less intriguing with plenty of twists which will
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This is the story of Adelheid Brunner, an intelligent girl who chooses not to speak. On these grounds she is ignored by most scholars as of minimal capacity. Adelheid knows much of what is happening about her, her knowledge substantially aided by her habit of hiding in cupboards with her pet
Reviewed by Rod McLary Michael Dean – in an article published in the Historical Novels Review [Issue 88, May 2019] – drew a distinction between ‘historical fiction’ and ‘fictionalised history’ by saying the former is an ‘historical novel with predominantly fictional characters describing mainly fictional events’ and the latter ‘feature[s] real historical characters only and
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke This children’s book by American writer, Amy Timberlake, is the third in her Skunk and Badger stories. Because of the author’s nationality some of the words in this story were new to me, such as mukluk which I discovered is a sealskin or reindeer-skin boot typically worn by Indigenous peoples of