Taboo relationships, steamy affairs and delicious desserts: the best Australian books out in July

The Guardian

30-06-2025

Nonfiction, Ultimo, $36.99
Relationships between university professors and their students often aren't explicitly against the rules – but they aren't quite right, either. For her second nonfiction book, Madison Griffiths spent a year interviewing four women who'd had relationships with their university teachers to hear how they feel about those romances now (spoiler alert: not good!) and explore the ethics around them.
It's a personal topic for Griffiths: at age 21 she began dating her former uni tutor, a romance that, now aged 31, she has complicated feelings about. Don't expect linear narratives; instead Griffiths has produced academic and often poetic meditations on sex, power and desire. – Katie Cunningham
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $32.99
A summer in Athens? Check. Millennial malaise? Check. A steamy affair that upends everything? Check. Amy Taylor's second novel has all the hallmarks of popular contemporary fiction, imbued with her signature tenderness and intelligence. London couple Emma and Julian are at a crossroads, and welcome the younger Lena into their relationship. Her presence teases out some tricky questions, all while the stifling Greek heat reaches feverish, claustrophobic heights.
Taylor mixes literary musings with juicy plot twists and plenty of interpersonal drama – this is a moreish reading experience, the type of book you'll want to gulp down in one breathless sitting. – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
Fiction, Giramondo, $32.95
Raaza Jamshed's debut novel is short in length but layered with complex meaning. The narrative opens in death – literal and figurative – captured through the image of eucalyptus trees, which Jahan, the novel's protagonist, has been told will regenerate. But, despite her pleas, no signs of life emerge from the seeds that she has painstakingly cared for.
This opening holds the promise of the novel as a whole – the deep poetry of the language, the complexity of the setting (under threat from bushfire), and the central themes of loss and regeneration. A powerful, promising new voice. – Bec Kavanagh
Cookbook, Hardie Grant, $60
If you don't recognise Christopher Thé by name, you may recognise his famous creation: Black Star Pastry's strawberry watermelon cake, or 'Australia's most Instagrammed cake' as the New York Times called it in 2019. Thé sold Black Star Pastry six years ago, opening Sydney cafe Hearthe with a new focus on baking with native Australian ingredients.
These 80 intricate recipes reflect his latest creations. There's saltbush scones with desert lime marmalade, Illawarra plum clafoutis, Geraldton wax cheesecake and 'flowering' wattleseed biscuits. Though there are easier projects, such as his 12-year-old daughter's choc chip biscuits, it's best suited to a confident baker. Those up to the challenge of making layered paperbark cake, with smoked chocolate ganache and blue gum salted caramel, will be rewarded with MasterChef-worthy desserts proudly rooted in Australian flavours. – Emma Joyce
Fiction, Black Inc, $36.99
Moreno Giovannoni's The Immigrants is an intensely personal story following members of one Italian family living and working in Australia. After arriving from Tuscany in the mid-1950s, Ugo is determined to make the most of the plentiful work opportunities in agriculture. His wife, Morena, who is supposed to stay in Italy and wait for Ugo to return, sails to 'the colony' to be with her husband. The pair move to rural Victoria, grow tobacco, and are surrounded by a vibrant community of fellow immigrants.
This book is written with such tenderness and clarity, you'll be instantly drawn into the suffering and joy of these lives. – Joseph Cummins
Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99
Katherine Brabons' Cure explores the social aspects of illness in the family with reflective poise. Vera and her adolescent daughter Thea both experience chronic pain and fatigue. Vera has an ambivalent relationship to traditional medicines, turning to an online community for possible cures and symptom relief, while Thea retreats into the private world of her journal.
In this gentle and unassuming narrative, the pair journey to Italy to seek an obscure man who promises to heal people of their illnesses – a trip Vera has taken before. Capturing the difficult intimacies between a mother and daughter, Cure questions the stories they tell about their bodies, wellness, healing and memory. – Isabella Gullifer-Laurie
Fiction, Penguin, $34.99
Chloe Adams' debut novel draws on a seam of family history stretching back to the second world war and its brutal Pacific front. Twenty-nine-year-old Mary escapes looming spinsterhood and the banality of middle-class female life by enlisting as part of Australia's postwar operations in Japan.
The novel opens in 1949 with Mary back home in Melbourne, pregnant but unmarried, then cuts to a year earlier as she arrives in Hiroshima prefecture. Adams' writing is assured and absorbing as she conjures this new world through Mary's eyes, and her interior life as illusions are eroded. Seventy-five pages in, it's looking promising. – Dee Jefferson
Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $32.99
Your Friend and Mine is a sliding doors story in which Margot, a fortysomething restaurateur, is unexpectedly lifted out from her routine when a letter from a long-dead friend arrives.
The letter from Tess, Margot's best friend 20 years prior, transports her to a time when their lives had seemed rich and full of potential. As a stipulation (or a provocation, perhaps) of her will, Tess invites Margot on a fully funded trip to the UK to meet her old friend's family, and to finish Tess's bucket list. Jessica Dettmann's third novel balances humour and pathos with ease, as Margot undertakes a journey to reconnect with her old friend, and herself. – BK