All That I Remember About Dean Cola

Tania Chandler

The boys from back home stand beside the bed, watching her bleed onto the white sheet. ‘He only said to scare her,’ one of them says.

Sidney is happily married to her firefighter husband and thinking about having a child, but her life has been marred by psychotic breakdowns. Haunted by memories of Dean Cola — the teenage crush who is an essential piece of the puzzle that is her past — she returns to the town where she grew up. Something unthinkable happened there, but is she strong enough to face it?

A compelling portrait of mental illness, memory, and the ways that the years when we ‘come of age’ can be twisted into trauma.

The Threads of Retribution

Carlos Higgi-Naumann

After almost four decades, Amelia Grover receives the answer to a question she asked during her childhood; she does not remember it. It is a fulfilment of a promise made by Agrippina. Amelia must cross a series of thresholds. Dimensions bring predestination that Amelia must assume, forcing her to lose something precious.

Through Agrippina's letter and Amelia's tapestry, her memory tells this saga; about a house built on a white rock; first counting the sadness and happiness of the five generations that came to live in the house. Hidden are the reasons; a Mother and son must be born. They will be the descendants of a family chosen by destiny. Alondra and Kaspar Sabacio will arrive in this world with a predetermined and precise aim; to remove from the planet, its most severe scourge, religion.

This book brings reincarnations from the present, taking them to an unsuspected future. They are past living, and with them, they bring their guilt, liberation, becoming and the actions of all. The time of this story is indefinite.

Nancy Business

R.W.R. McDonald

Tippy, Uncle Pike and Devon are back for another camp cosy crime mystery from the award-winning author of The Nancys. It's been four months since Tippy, Uncle Pike and Devon were together for Christmas. Now back for the first anniversary of Tippy's father's death, the Nancys are reformed when Riverstone is rocked by an early morning explosion that kills three people and destroys the town hall.

A new case is born. Is the accused bomber really guilty? Is there a second bomber? And if so, does that mean a threat to destroy Riverstone Bridge is real? And is asparagus a colour? Once again, it is up to the Nancys to go against the flow and ignore police orders to get to the truth.

It's great to be back in Nancy business again, but this time it's all different. Uncle Pike and Devon can't agree on anything and Tippy is learning hard truths about the world and the people she loves the most.

The Call of the Rift: Crest

Jae Waller

Kateiko is back in the third installment of the alternative high historical fantasy Call of the Rift series. Before Flight, in another world beyond the veil, Kateiko must leave her family to salvage a life she once desperately wanted, or stay with them and build a new life with those she swore to protect.

In the third book in The Call of the Rift series, Jae Waller invites us into another dimension and introduces an alternate version of her captivating heroine in a world full of familiar and unknown faces, including many we thought long dead.

Small Acts of Defiance

Michelle Wright

May, 1940: After a bitter tragedy, young Australian woman Lucie and her French mother Yvonne are forced to leave home and seek help from the only family they have left-Lucie's uncle, Gerard.

As the Second World War engulfs Europe, the two women find themselves trapped in German-occupied Paris, sharing a cramped apartment with the authoritarian Gerard and his extremist views.

Drawing upon her artistic talents, Lucie risks her own safety to engage in small acts of defiance against the occupying forces and the collaborationist French regime, where the authorities reward French citizens for denouncing so-called 'traitors' in their community.

Faced with the escalating brutality of anti-Jewish measures, and the indifference of so many of her fellow Parisians, Lucie must decide how far she will go to defend the rights of others.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia

ed. Carly Findlay OAM

One in five Australians has a disability. And disability presents itself in many ways. Yet disabled people are still underrepresented in the media and in literature. In Growing Up Disabled in Australia – compiled by writer and appearance activist Carly Findlay OAM – more than forty writers with a disability or chronic illness share their stories, in their own words. The result is illuminating.

Contributors include senator Jordon Steele-John, paralympian Isis Holt, Dion Beasley, Sam Drummond, Astrid Edwards, Sarah Firth, El Gibbs, Eliza Hull, Gayle Kennedy, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Fiona Murphy, Jessica Walton and many more.

Good Indian Daughter

Ruhi Lee

Long before Ruhi fell pregnant, she knew she was never going to be the ‘good Indian daughter’ her parents demanded. But when the discovery that she is having a girl sends her into a slump of disappointment, it becomes clear she’s getting weighed down by emotional baggage that needs to be unpacked, quickly.

So Ruhi sets herself a mission to deal with the potholes in her past before her baby is born. Delving into her youth in suburban Melbourne, she draws a heartrending yet often hilarious picture of a family in crisis, struggling to connect across generational, cultural and personal divides.

Sifting through her own shattered self-esteem, Ruhi confronts the abuse threaded through her childhood. How can she hold on to the family and culture she has known and loved her whole life, when they are the reason for her scars?

In My Defence, I Have No Defence

Sinéad Stubbins

Sinéad Stubbins has always known that there was a better version of herself lying just outside of her grasp. That if she listened to the right song or won the right (any) award or knew about whisky or followed the right Instagram psychologist or drank kombucha, ever, or enacted the correct 70-step Korean skincare regime, she would become her ‘best self’.

In My Defence, I Have No Defence raises the white flag on trying to live up to impossible standards. Wild and funny and wickedly relatable, it is one woman’s reckoning with her complete inability to self-improve and a hilarious reprieve for anyone who has ever struggled to be better. This is the comfort read of the year from Australia’s most exciting new comedy writer.

Where the Magic Happens

Amanda Christensen, Coral Vass & Nicky Johnston

When Cooper is told he needs to be brave, put on a mask and fight a fierce brain tumour, something wonderful and magical happens.

Where the Magic Happens is a heart-warming story about a young boy’s fight with brain cancer.

It is an excellent resource for any child, parent, sibling, teacher or friend who has been impacted by brain cancer in some way.

Recommended for children aged 3-8 years.

My Princess Wears a Superhero Cape

Melissa Gijsbers, illustrated by Megan Higginson

‘Princesses wear pink dresses and tiaras, don’t they?’

Lydia and Zoe are stuck inside on a rainy day playing with their princess dolls.

Can Lydia show Zoe that princesses can wear a superhero cape and a pink dress?

A Pair of Pears and an Orange

Anna McGregor

A Pair of Pears and an Orange is an adorable story about making new friends and finding creative solutions to playground problems.

Big Pear and Little Pear love playing together. But when Orange joins in, their games don’t work and Big Pear feels left out. A relatable, hilarious, and kind-hearted tale about navigating friendship when three definitely starts to feel like a crowd!