‘Deliciously addictive', ‘dripping with suspense': the best Australian books out in June

The Guardian

5 days ago

Science fiction, Pan Macmillan, $34.99
What does it mean to build a new world from the wreckage of a broken one? This question lies at the heart of Jennifer Mills' mesmerising new novel, Salvage, which tracks the fortunes of two estranged sisters: gruff, defensive Jude and spectral Celeste.
This is a work of speculative fiction, set in a near-future ravaged by war and climate crisis. To survive the chaos, Jude is convinced she needs to shed her past and avoid attachments. But she's wrong, and the arc of the novel tracks her realisation that building a new world requires care and community. Salvage is a timely and surprisingly optimistic manual for navigating our present polycrisis. – Catriona Menzies-Pike
Nonfiction, Simon & Schuster, $36.99
Most self-help books are peppered with personal stories that illustrate their advice. Though the tone is light and chatty, with bullet-point takeaways, that's not what you'll get from The Introvert's Guide to Leaving the House, by frequent the Guardian Australia contributor Jenny Valentish. Instead the book reads like the memoir of a writer who has learned how to help herself.
The mirror Valentish holds to readers is not always flattering. She explores tendencies toward grandiosity and the unpleasant impacts inwardness can have on other people. For that reason, her efforts to understand her limited appetite for socialising offer something rare for the self-help genre: genuine insight. – Alyx Gorman
Short stories, Simon & Schuster, $32.99
Lucy Nelson's debut collection of stories is centred on women – of a wide range of ages and in many different contexts – who don't have children. Some have chosen their childlessness, others have not. While they differ in the intensity and kinds of emotions this provokes within them, it is never the defining aspect of their lives.
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Nelson is interested in models of family and of connection, in bodies and their betrayals and consolations, in the lives that women forge for themselves when faced by the unexpected. These stories are fierce and tender, often quirky and hilarious, and driven by great compassion. – Fiona Wright
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $34.99
Shokoofeh Azar migrated from Iran to Australia a decade ago as a refugee, having been arrested multiple times for her work as a journalist investigating human rights abuses. Her second novel is as vividly imaginative as her first, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree: it opens as a gigantic, mysterious tree suddenly sprouts up in the family home of teenager Shokoofeh, our narrator. No one outside the family seems to be able to see the tree but it brings with it mind-expanding freedoms – just as the Iranian revolution begins and reality grows violent.
This novel is packed with ghosts, magical palaces, fortune tellers and folk stories; it could be described as magical realism, though Azar writes with a flair that sets her apart from the South American giants that have dominated the genre. – Sian Cain
Fiction, UQP, $34.99
Thomas Vowles' debut is one of the most tense and disturbing novels I've read in a long time. Ash, new to Melbourne, has fallen in love with James, a man he met on Grindr. At a house party he witnesses a violent interaction involving James's new boyfriend, Raf. Ash is desperate to find out the truth about Raf – trouble is, no one believes him, and his unrequited feelings for James might be clouding his judgment and grip on reality.
Vowles' background as a screenwriter is evident in the deliciously addictive – and stressful – way the story unfolds, with the narration becoming unreliable, and unhinged as Ash descends into madness. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
Poetry, Giramondo, $27
What history forgets, families remember. In her debut collection, Chinese Fish, Grace Yee forged a bridge between the two and announced herself as a poet to watch. In Joss: A History, she continues that potent project – blending family testimony with archival fragments to trace her connection to colonial Bendigo.
These are poems of grit and ritual, erasure and persistence, bureaucracy and grace, gold dust and Chinese cemeteries. Here, among the segregated gravestones, Yee captures the cruel, beautiful and ever-messy work of making a place in the world. 'What dreams weather beneath these mounds,' she writes, 'what fierce agitations churn the night.' – Beejay Silcox
Science fiction, NewSouth Books, $34.99
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This is a really charming and fun reworking of the Dracula story that reimagines the Demeter – the ship that transports Dracula to London in Bram Stoker's novel – as a spaceship, 2,293 days into her voyage transporting humans from Earth to Alpha Centauri. The Demeter is a chatty spacecraft – in fact, she is our narrator, haphazardly trying to keep her passengers from dying at the hands of the ancient vampire who has made his way onboard.
If you know the Dracula story, you'll find this enjoyable – there is a distinctly unhinged touch to the humour that I suspect Terry Pratchett fans will like. – SC
Fiction, Simon & Schuster, $34.99
The pernicious pleasantries, the boardroom politics, the happy hours and the sad snack drawers: all the grinding machinations of office culture crescendo to a quivering peak in Sinéad Stubbins' very funny, very horrifying novel Stinkbug. An advertising agency gets restructured (likely story); everyone is sent on a work retreat (likely story); it might actually be a cult? (likelier than you think).
Like a chunnering conversation with your worst colleague, Stinkbug is claustrophobic. Stubbins faithfully captures the cadences of corporate small talk and dials them up into a nightmarish cacophony of efficiency reports and pitch decks. You'll want to work from home for ever. – Michael Sun
Fiction, Text Publishing, $34.99
Gail Jones is a prolific writer – this is her 11th novel – but The Name of the Sister is somewhat of a departure. Fans of her lucid, beautiful prose won't be disappointed, but this is a thriller, set in Sydney and Broken Hill.
Familiar themes – identity, the nature of truth and memory – remind us of other books Jones has written (including One Another and Five Bells) but The Name of the Sister is dripping with suspense and intrigue. Driven by complex female characters, this novel is an intellectual page-turner. – Joseph Cummins
Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99
When Eva Novak returns to Australia, mysteriously summoned by her long-estranged sister, she is shocked to find Elizabeta dead in her home. The pair haven't spoken for a decade, since the crash that killed Eva's young daughter; Elizabeta was behind the wheel and hadn't strapped Gracie in.
Broken by grief and fury, Eva has two weeks to sort through the estate of the woman who killed her daughter – a task she sets to with a detached purposefulness that becomes increasingly devastating under Peričić's taut prose. But as she sifts through the house for all the documents she needs, Eva uncovers a far more complicated picture of what really happened that day – and how trauma can twist memories and recast entire lives. – Steph Harmon
Nonfiction, Murdoch Books, $34.99
Nathan Dunne, an Australian journalist, was living in London when he decided to go night swimming in Hampstead Heath. In the cold water he experienced what is known as depersonalisation: a severe dissociative illness that left him unsure about who he was and what was real; a terrifying and debilitating state of having no sense of self: 'In a single moment, a split second, I had been locked away, condemned to wander in a body that was not my own.'
This fascinating account charts his recovery, his research into a little-understood condition and his discovery of a whole community of people who have experienced it. – SC
Fiction, Hachette Australia, $32.99
Historical novels set among the mid-century upper crust aren't that unusual but choosing an Australian prime minister's wife as a heroine certainly is. Though the novel opens with Harold Holt's disappearance, the 'year' in the title isn't quite accurate: instead Zara reflects on her memories of their entire relationship since 1927, in digestible, dialogue-heavy prose.
Although you know from the outset that the story will take a tragic turn, the opening chapters of Kimberley Freeman's novel are fun and foamy. As Zara Holt was a fashion designer, there's a generous helping of very good frocks, too. – AG