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Bookmark this ‘Propulsive’, ‘evocative’, ‘brilliant’: the best Australian books out in June

Each month, Guardian Australia editors and critics pick out the upcoming titles they’ve already devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands on

Published: 31 May 2022

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan review – new tech, old wounds

This companion novel to A Visit from the Goon Squad, in which memories are uploaded and shared, explores the loneliness of hyper-connectivity

Published: 28 Apr 2022

The 25 best Australian books of 2021: Helen Garner, Alice Pung, Tony Birch and more

Experimental elegies, portraits of resilience and political manifestos: 25 of the best reads of the year as picked by Guardian Australia critics and staff

Published: 12 Dec 2021

Book of the day Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi review – a hurtling hothouse of a novel

The legacy of empire is wild and wakeful in this exuberant story of a surreal train journey

Published: 3 Nov 2021

Australian book reviews Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser review – duelling novellas of charged, peerless writing

With two stories and two front covers, the reader chooses where to start: in France in the past, or in a dystopian Australian future

Published: 18 Oct 2021

Australian book reviews Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty review – overgarnished but pyrotechnic family drama

A missing grandmother is at the heart of this perfectly readable but indulgent new mystery from the mordant queen of Sydney suburbia

Published: 16 Sep 2021

Australian book reviews Who Gets to Be Smart by Bri Lee review – gutsy but unfocused interrogation of academic privilege

The Eggshell Skull author’s latest work endeavours to dismantle ideas about intelligence and self-worth in the Australian education system

Published: 10 Jun 2021
Book of the day The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee review – the man who shaped New York

Blunders, bad luck and ever-yearning love in a novel about the extraordinary life and death of an unsung hero

Published: 9 Jun 2021

Australian book reviews Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss review – a mighty and generous heartsong

Heiss’s indelible new novel is at once a joyful love story, a celebration of language, and an invitation to trace the old wounds of our history

Published: 20 May 2021
Book of the day Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal review – a bravura achievement

A celebration of the art of trompe-l’œil confirms this French prize winner as one of our most gifted stylists

Published: 7 May 2021

Angela O’Keeffe on Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles – and engaging with the art of awful men

The writer’s ingenious debut Night Blue is narrated by Australia’s most infamous and triumphant canvas: Blue Poles

Published: 30 Apr 2021
Australian book reviews Car Crash by Lech Blaine review – a bruisingly insightful memoir of two wreckages

A tragic accident and its resulting trauma fuels this candid, thoughtful debut and examination of our tired ideas about manhood

Published: 8 Apr 2021

Australian book reviews Monsters: A Reckoning by Alison Croggon review – beware the many-tentacled beast of empire

A tale of family estrangement and a discomforting, roiling sea of ideas that threatens to pull the reader under rather than along

Published: 11 Mar 2021

Australian book reviews The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray review – larrikin maximalism and undergraduate snicker

A former speechwriter, McKenzie-Murray’s novel aims to provoke but its easy parodies of Australian politics are unlikely to elicit more than a shrug

Published: 28 Jan 2021
Book of the day The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan review – response to a devastated world

In this magical realist tale, the Booker winner’s extinction metaphor is not subtle – but the fiction of the Anthropocene can’t afford to be

Published: 7 Jan 2021

Kate Grenville, Sofie Laguna, Julia Baird and others: the 20 best Australian books of 2020

Diligent journalism, urgent fiction, wondrous imagination: Guardian Australia critics and staff bring you their top reads of the year – in no particular order

Published: 16 Dec 2020
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam review – an X-ray of America

This page-turning thriller about class and race in the midst of unfolding catastrophe explores stasis, indecision and the agonies of parenting

Published: 3 Dec 2020