Woo Woo by Ella Baxter
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Sabine’s exhibition opens in a week, she’s exhausted by Melbourne art scene politics and she’s spiralling. Then she gets a stalker, and properly unravels – into a psychedelic kind of fear – and then a tornado of weird, creative fury and catharsis.
Ella Baxter’s second novel transcends social satire (and the need for too much chat about all the recent art novels) by actually enacting creativity: making art, not peering in on it. Do I want to read a book where the melting ghost of a conceptual artist hands a stalked woman an albatross and tells her to embrace her bloodlust? So much. – Imogen Dewey
The Land of Lost Things by Andy Griffiths
Fiction, Pan Macmillan, $16.99
I’m sure many kids were wondering what would be next for Andy Griffiths after he published the final instalment of his Treehouse series last year. The Land of Lost Things, the first in a new series, follows You and Me – in homemade adventure suits – on a journey to find a lost lucky rabbit foot.
Illustrations by Bill Hope capture the frenetic adventure with page-turning detail, perfect for keeping reluctant readers hooked, and there are extra jokes in the fine details of the page. It’s a clever story, suited to reading aloud, with unexpected turns everywhere (flying socks, a talking book, smelly feet) and entertaining villains (Knuckleheads and a rabbit pirate). – Clare Millar
Tiny by Louise Southerden
Nonfiction, Hardie Grant Explore, $34.99
When “commitment-phobic, nomadic, home-is-a-hotel travel writer” Louise Southerden decided to put down roots, she did it in a way that aligned with her minimalist ethos and bank balance: by building a 25 sq metre tiny house on wheels.
This intensely introspective memoir documents the gruelling build – from drilling holes to assembling walls – with her on-and-off partner Max, their relationship falling apart as the tiny house rises up. Southerden reflects on love, menopause, mental health, freedom and stability as she constructs her own unique bolthole on the periphery of the Australian dream. – Janine Israel
Slick by Royce Kurmelovs
Nonfiction, UQP, $34.99
Royce Kurmelovs has trawled the archives for his latest book on corporate crimes and misdemeanours, following Just Money and Boom and Bust. In Slick, he takes a long view of the fossil fuel industry - its role in government, its knowledge of climate change, the people who work in it, and those who fight against it.
Kurmelovs’ reportage takes readers into forgotten moments in history, from a 1970s industry conference to protests in the Kimberley in 1980, recreating the people and policies that have shaped the industry - and Australia - today. Through diligent research, analysis and no shortage of writerly flair, Kurmelovs asks: how did we get here? – Celina Ribeiro
The Echoes by Evie Wyld
Fiction, Penguin Books, $34.99
Evie Wyld’s fourth novel charts the strained relationship of two thirtysomethings, Max and his Australian girlfriend Hannah, living together in London. On the surface their troubles are common – will they marry, have children, meet each other’s parents? But underneath lie many secrets, which become no less complicated by the fact Max has died by the time the book begins: “I do not believe in ghosts, which, since my death, has become something of a problem.”
Max’s haunting of their home allows us to watch and learn more about Hannah, in vignettes set long before and after Max’s death. These eventually coalesce – in a little over 200 pages – to form a complex portrait of a woman who is haunted by far more than a dead boyfriend. – Sian Cain
Dirrayawadha by Anita Heiss
Fiction, Simon & Schuster, $32.99
In her review of Anita Heiss’ 2021 book Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray – set amid the 1852 Gundagai flood – Beejay Silcox described “a raw and resilient heartsong” and “a book that belongs in every high-school classroom in the country”. Dirrayawadha is something of a companion piece: another First Nations-centred historical epic set during the frontier wars, this time starring Windradyne, a Wiradyuri warrior prepared to fight for their country, and his sister Miina, who is working for a white family when beguiling Irish convict Daniel arrives at the settlement.
Dirrayawadha is full of heart and hope, truth-telling and history – and shimmers with language too, with a Wiradyuri glossary I needed less and less as I journeyed through the story. – Steph Harmon
Hi from Outer space by Fiona K
Children’s book, Allen & Unwin, $17.99
Fiona Katauskas is Guardian Australia’s extremely talented and effortlessly on-point political cartoonist. She has said: “Cartoonists are lucky folk indeed – able to take all their experiences, beliefs, bile and passion, wrap them up in a metaphor and get inky fingers in the process.” Her new children’s book Hi From Outer Space is a playful and tender tale following Alex, who wants to win the National Young Cartoonist Competition, as he randomly encounters an alien from Planet Wendy while walking the family dog. Perhaps the perfect subject to get your fingers inky for?
It’s chockablock with twists and Katauskas’ piquant illustrations – you may find yourself reading this book before your kids do, or even if you don’t have kids. – Claire Keenan
Young Hawke: the Making of a Larrikin by David Day
Biography, HarperCollins Australia, $49.99
Bob Hawke seems so familiar to Australians that we could be forgiven for thinking nothing new could possibly be discovered about him. Wrong. David Day’s biography of the young man who became Australian Labor’s longest-serving – and perhaps most beloved – prime minister brings fascinating new dimension to this complex and deeply flawed man.
While Hawke loved his religiously zealous parents intensely, the young man who grew from their sometimes neglectful care emerges – inevitably, perhaps – as something of a rebel against their militant abstemiousness and anti-licentiousness. But the young Hawke is also so much more in this fascinating, elegantly written account. – Paul Daley
Chae: Korean Slow Food for a Better Life by Jung Eun Chae
Cookbook, Hardie Grant, $60.00
“When you go deep with Korean food, you make friends with time, you celebrate slowness,” writes chef Jung Eun Chae. Her Korean restaurant Chae – once located in her one-bedroom Melbourne apartment, now in the Dandenong Ranges – still seats just six diners and maintains an unwavering made-from-scratch philosophy. Her kimchi recipe takes two days to prepare and two weeks to ferment; the jeotgal (salted seafood), an essential component of the kimchi, takes a year.
The chapter on how to make the cornerstone fermented ingredients of Korean cuisine – soy sauce, gochujang – is a marvel; her seasonal recipes (and photography by Armelle Habib) are the chronicles of a chef who reveres her home cuisine as an art form. – Yvonne C Lam
Voyagers by Lauren Fuge
Nonfiction, Text Publishing, $36.99
Fuge is an accomplished science writer with a literary sensibility, both of which she demonstrates in this intriguing book about the human desire to explore. Split into four sections – ocean, desert, forest, ice – she examines what drove our species to spread all over the planet (and off it), as well as the impact that centuries of movement is having on the environment and climate.
This is no airy-fairy travelogue, but an activist’s call for us to stop and reconsider how we travel now. “The future is unsafe, but it’s malleable, and our efforts are meaningful in ways that are impossible to chart,” she writes. “Every decision we make now matters.” – SC
