Rachel Freeman reviews After Darkness by Christine Piper.

Tea with Arwa, a memoir by Arwa El Masri, provides a valuable glimpse into a Muslim woman’s experience living in Australia. This memoir follows the story of Arwa, a young woman navigating a new country, struggling to reconcile her Saudi and Australian identities. The book succeeds in broadening the readers understanding of Muslim culture, while […]

“The Danish writer Isak Dineson wrote that ‘All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story’.” In her second memoir, poet and psychologist Doris Brett turns personal tragedy into a story of resilience and determination, as she once again navigates the journey from life-threatening illness to recovery. She likens the experience to […]

David Terelinck’s collection of Tanka Slow Growing Ivy is a testament to the ability of shorter form works to produce great emotion and power. Tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry in which poems follow a 5-line structure and verse’s a syllabic pattern. Released earlier this year Slow Growing Ivy succeeds in heightening the […]

Liam, the narrator of Luke Brown’s My Biggest Lie, is a young, hip, glib, literary type with a taste for illicit substances and a precarious relationship with the truth. He has just been dumped by his girlfriend, Sarah, and in the eyes of the world, is responsible for the death of literary megastar, Craig Bennett. […]

Vivienne Plumb’s second book, The glove box and other stories, is a collection of short fictional stories about women on the road. Each of her character-driven tales tells of hitchhiking adventures—and misadventures—across the Australian continent. Some of the women are looking for work, others are running from their past, and a few aren’t quite sure […]

“Through all these stories the reader is left with one conclusion: fire is inescapable.”
Craig Hildebrand-Burke reviews ‘Fire: an anthology’ edited by Delys Bird.

  Explaining the concept of death and loss to young children can be a difficult subject to tackle for most parents. The Wattle Tree tries to deal with this issue by relaying the story of Molly – a little girl who has lost her Grandma. The prose is sparse and the illustrations are bright and […]

“Ultimately, the real treasure in this book is Romania: its allies and enemies; freedom and oppression; natural beauty and heartbreaking tragedy. ”
Sarah Morton reviews Once, Only The Swallows Were Free by Gabrielle Gouch.