‘Blood-pumping', ‘outstanding', ‘urgent and essential': the best Australian books out in April

The Guardian

04-04-2025

Nonfiction, Black Inc, $36.99
Twenty years after she fictionalised her ex-convict great-great-great-grandfather Solomon Wiseman in The Secret River, speculating he took part in killing Dharug people, Grenville makes a pilgrimage through the landscape of northern New South Wales to better understand more than two centuries of suffering by Indigenous people dispossessed by colonisation.
Moments of profound clarity ensue in Unsettled: looking down on Mogo Creek to the Hawkesbury River's north, Grenville's imagination tracks her great-great uncles riding horseback armed with guns. 'In the great humming silence of this landscape – a silence created in part by what people like my forebears did – I know how little I really belong.' – Steve Dow
Fiction, Ultimo Press, $34.99
In former Triple J presenter Vijay Khurana's debut novel, two schoolboys flee their small town in Canada for a road trip to wherever. Adam is the alpha, an apparent student of Tate and Peterson and the only licensed driver – but it's Teddy who has the gun licence, and the money to put it to use. The devastating story that follows – narrated by each character in alternating chapters – is a tense and gripping power struggle of toxic masculinity, as the teenagers push each other further and further down a violent road of no return.
Where hit UK TV show Adolescence illuminated the myriad societal failures that are driving young boys to violence, this outstanding debut takes us inside the darkest and most vulnerable parts of their minds. – Steph Harmon
Poetry, UQP, $29.99
Safdar Ahmed, whose graphic memoir Still Alive was a searing indictment of Australia's refugee detention system, teams up with poet and author Omar Sakr (Non-Essential Work; The Lost Arabs) for this collection of poems and illustrations responding to the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October 2023.
Read cover to cover, it evokes Sakr's excruciating, sometimes bewildered, experience of bearing daily witness from afar (heightened by recently becoming a father), while the poet and artist both grapple with the moral complexities of their roles documenting what Sakr describes as 'the daily immiseration of Palestinians in the brutal reality of apartheid'. As the people of Palestine continue to suffer systemic violence and dehumanisation, this is urgent, essential work. – Dee Jefferson
Fiction, Hachette, $32.99
Chris Flynn's fourth novel follows a trio of old friends – who grew up together in the small country town of Gattan – in the aftermath of an inexplicable global catastrophe, which sees every nine-year-old on the planet suddenly drop dead. Each of them is struggling, in their own way, to regain some sense of agency in the face of this threat, and to protect or honour their children as the world threatens to collapse around them.
This is a fast-paced and compelling novel, written with Flynn's characteristic dark humour, and great generosity of heart as well. – Fiona Wright
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Debut author Sophie Quick's sharp, pacy satire centres on an unexpected antihero: a scammer with a heart of gold. Christina is a single mum in suburban Melbourne who has created a Zoom-only alter ego – Dr Ruth Carlisle – for the purposes of life coaching, then blackmailing her clients. As we learn more about her background, Christina's actions take on a Robin Hood quality. Her targets are wealthy – grifty influencers and sleazy marketers – while her financial situation is shaky at best.
Taking aim at TedCore and the self improvement industrial complex, the story also contains shades of Caroline and Natalie. Timely and slyly funny, it is a gut-check for anyone who's ever taken social media-sized slivers of life advice too seriously. – Alyx Gorman
Fiction, UQP, $34.99
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The premise might feel a dime a dozen: disillusioned woman flees big city to find herself in an exotic location. But this short, sparse, deeply absorbing debut – which won the 2024 Victorian premier's literary prize for an unpublished manuscript – is about so much more than that.
Ruth's refuge is Guatemala: a tourist town called Panajachel, painted so vividly you can almost see it. There she meets two women who inspire two very different infatuations; and soon, without us even noticing, Ruth is stuck – with a job, a house, and a desire to go deeper into the country and into herself. The promo calls the novel 'perfect for fans of Deborah Levy, Miranda July and Rachel Cusk'; as a fan of all three, I loved this one too. – Steph Harmon
Fiction, Transit Lounge, $34.99
What does it mean to bear witness? To listen to the survivors of war crimes recount their experiences and suffering? Out of the Woods, Gretchen Shirm's fourth novel, offers a poignant, insightful answer.
Incorporating real witness testimony, the narrative is closely intertwined with real events: namely the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in 1995, and the conviction at The Hague of a senior military commander for genocide. Though imperfect, the story asks probing questions about how we can begin to comprehend the incomprehensible. – Jack Callil
Crime/thriller, Penguin Australia, $34.99
This is a return-of-sorts to familiar territory for Bradley, who writes timely and thrilling novels imbued with a sense of social urgency, often involving the climate crisis and scientific developments. His last book, Deep Water, was a nonfiction hit – but he's back on fiction again, this time a crime novel set in a future Sydney that has been transformed by rising sea levels.
This propulsive novel follows Senior Detective Sadiya Azad's efforts to find a missing five-year-old who disappeared 'in the tideline', amid submerged apartments and pontoons as a huge storm approaches. – Sian Cain
Graphic novel, Scribe, $39.99
Rachel Ang's graphic novel is made to be devoured. Blood-pumping and fresh, these five loosely connected tales revolve around Jenny, a young Australian woman who stumbles through interactions with lovers, family and strangers with a sense of paralysis. From feeding fetishes, repressed childhood horrors and surreal exchanges with her future child, Jenny endures much in her painful quest to overcome bodily shame, and to connect.
Ang's expressive compositions and darkly comic voice perfectly capture these hermetic moments, which appear so slight and mundane on the surface but belie an interior storm. A bold, hallucinogenic collection that feels uncomfortably human. – Claire Cao
Nonfiction, UNSW, $34.99
By her own admission, Jane Rawson is not a nature natural. A novelist, former environment editor at the Conversation and literary magazine editor, her comfort zone is less bushcraft, more towncraft. In Human/Nature, she weaves in her own complex relationship with nature as she dissects the broader human understanding of the natural world, offering a moment of pause as the environment changes around us.
With levity, beauty and deep contemplation Human/Nature interrogates how our own ideas of purity, intelligence, care (for starters) affect how we impact, ignore, undermine and protect all the wild things which are not human. – Celina Ribeiro
Cookbook, Murdoch Books, $29.99
Zucchinis were the gateway veg for Alex Elliott-Howery's pickling habit. Her partner had a bountiful back yard crop that her kids didn't want to eat, so she taught herself to pickle. Her hobby became an obsession and then a business, when she opened Sydney's now-closed neighbourhood cafe Cornersmith in 2012. Four cookbooks, community cooking classes and another cafe later, she's a leading force in delicious solutions to food waste.
Her fifth book goes back to basics, featuring 80 quick, achievable recipes for condiments, such as bread and butter cucumber pickles, cauliflower relish and banana ketchup. It's no-fuss, light on storytelling and keeps it seasonal. A truly compelling pocket-sized guide to making your kitchen scraps worth keeping. – Emma Joyce