New Books / Reviews
Listings and Reviews of New Books Autumn 2025
Four years ago, in the small town of Birravale, Eliza Daley was murdered. Within hours, her killer was caught. Wasn’t he?
So reads the opening titles of Jack Quick’s new true-crime documentary. A skilled producer, Jack knows that the bigger the conspiracy, the higher the ratings and he claims Curtis Wade was convicted on flimsy evidence and shoddy police work. Millions of viewers agree. Just before the final episode, Jack uncovers a minor detail that may prove Curtis guilty after all. Convinced it will ruin his show, Jack disposes of the evidence and delivers the finale unedited, leading to Curtis’s eventual release. Then a new victim is found bearing horrifying similarities to the original murder. Has Jack just helped a killer walk free?
Determined to set things right, Jack returns to Birravale looking for answers. But with his own secrets lurking just beneath the surface, Jack knows more than anyone what a fine line it is between fact and fiction. Between life and death.
Malcolm Turnbull’s campaign against Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party is one of the greatest acts of revenge in Australian political history. This account explores the egos, deception and thwarted power that has left a trail of personal destruction across the political world. Friends have been turned into enemies, alliances destroyed and reputations shattered.
Time will tell whether Turnbull’s revenge brings down his own political party and sets Australia on a different course but the discourse has changed forever.
Alzheimer’s is the great global epidemic of our time, affecting millions worldwide: there are more than 5 million people diagnosed in the US alone. And as our population ages, scientists are working against the clock to find a cure.
Neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli is among them. His beloved grandfather had Alzheimer’s and now he’s written the book he needed then, a very human history of this frightening disease. But In Pursuit of Memory is also a thrilling scientific detective story that takes you behind the headlines. Jebelli’s quest takes us from nineteenth-century Germany and post-war England, to the jungles of Papua New Guinea and the technological proving grounds of Japan; through America, India, China, Iceland, Sweden, and Colombia. Its heroes are scientists from around the world, many of whom he’s worked with and the brave patients and families who have changed the way that researchers think about the disease.
This compelling insider’s account shows vividly why Jebelli feels so hopeful about a cure, but also why our best defence in the meantime is to understand the disease. In Pursuit of Memory is a clever, moving, eye-opening guide to the threat one in three of us faces now.
Hugh Mackay has spent his entire working life asking Australians about their values, motivations, ambitions, hopes and fears. Now, in The Good Life, he addresses the ultimate question: What makes a life worth living?
His conclusion is provocative. The good life is not the sum of our security, wealth, status, postcode, career success and levels of happiness. The good life is one defined by our capacity for selflessness, the quality of our relationships and our willingness to connect with others in a useful way.
Mackay examines what is known as the Golden Rule through the prisms of religion, philosophy, politics, business and family life. And he explores the numerous and often painful ways we distract ourselves from this central principle: our pursuit of pleasure, our attempts to perfect ourselves and our children, and our conviction that we can have our lives under control.
A collection of autobiographical essays by 22 women active in areas such as women’s issues politics, the law, the arts, and the media.
Contributors include Lynne Spender, Kay Setches and Moira Rayner. The editor is a Melbourne writer and lawyer.
Many people wanting to write do not know where to begin.
Carmel Bird has taught writing to a wide audience and understands the difficulties facing the new writer. Dear Writer … Revisited, is a collection of letters to an aspiring author, speaks on the one hand about writer’s block, about plots, about publishers, and on the other hand, about the nature of fiction, offering the inspiration required for writing.
Keen to escape the pressures of city life, Marsali Swift and her husband William are drawn to Listowel, a glorious historic mansion in the seemingly tranquil small town of Muckleton. There is time to read, garden, decorate, play chess and befriend the locals. Yet one night Listowel is robbed, and soon after a neighbour is murdered. The violent history of the couple’s adopted Goldfields town is revealed, and plans for a new goldmine emerge.
Atmospheric and beguiling this is a novel the seduces the reader with mysteries and beauties but also speaks of something much larger. The planet is in trouble, but is the human race up to the challenge? Are Marsali and William walking blindfold into a hostile world?
Bill Garner reminds us that Australia was settled as a campsite: the nation was born in a tent. But while Europeans brought tents, they did not bring camping. Australia had been a camping place for millennia. For more than a hundred years, settlers, women as well as men, colonised the country by living under canvas. It changed them into a new sort of native Australian. It gave them a feel for the place, a wry can-do attitude, and a lasting taste for equality. And it led to a sense of belonging.
Born in a Tent takes the story from the campfire to the gas bottle, from a tarp slung on saplings to polymer tents and aluminium poles. It reveals how deeply our camping holidays connect us to the land, to the past, and to one another.
The Comfort of Water, Maya Ward’s lyrical exploration of her river as it winds through the city and the wild is a revelation, a testament to the fact that the greatest of worlds are often at our doorstep. Its author understands the power of the natural world to transform lives, and writes about the connection between a river and the self with humility, humour, and a clear-headed wisdom. The telling of her own journey and that of her fellow walkers is seamlessly woven together with ecological and cultural history, the revelation of the pilgrim’s path and the unknowable depth of Aboriginal myth. Through trekking this Wurundjeri Songline, this ancient, ever-renewing river, she discovers rich possibilities of belonging, and shares how a river can nourish the passion and resilience required to transform our world.
The Burrow follows members of the Lee family as they navigate grief and hope in their quiet Australian Jin, an emergency physician and father; Amy, a published author and mother; Lucie, their bookish and introverted ten-year-old; and Pauline, Amy’s mother who’s trying to make amends.
Racked with grief for Ruby, Lucie’s baby sister who died in a shocking accident, the family adopts a rabbit in the hopes of bringing much-needed cheer to their home. At first, each family member benefits from the distraction of a new and needy creature, but when a violent home invasion breaks their fragile sense of peace, the family is forced to confront the terrible circumstances surrounding Ruby’s death.