5 best new books – quick links
5 best new books: September 2025
As If I’m Really There, Emilie Collyer – 1 Sep
Poetry. We’re big fans of Australian playwright and poet Emilie Collyer – see our five-star review of Collyer’s excellent play Super, performed at Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, a couple of months ago – and our views on Collyer’s previous poetry collection, Do You Have Anything Less Domestic?
This second collection has us champing at the bit. Here’s the blurb:
As If I’m Really There builds thematically and artistically on Emilie Collyer’s award-winning debut collection Do You Have Anything Less Domestic? This second collection digs deeply into Collyer’s avid feminine and feminist interest in the place of the body: what it feels like to have one, how bodies are gendered, assessed, analysed and valued, how the body of an artist and a body of creative work is forged.
Walking Sydney: Fifteen walks with a city’s writers, Belinda Castles – 1 Sep
Non-fiction. We’re getting our walking boots on for this intriguing new book by award-winning author Belinda Castles. It’s about walking, it’s about writing, it’s about Sydney – we’re in!
Here’s the blurb:
Walking Sydney invites us to walk with a city’s writers as they share places of home and imagination. From suburban streets to the shores of the harbour, as we walk amid diasporas, countercultures, activists, artists, dreamers and thieves, the city comes alive with story. Written by Belinda Castles from walks taken with fifteen writers, Walking Sydney is an opportunity to see the city afresh.
The writers featured include Jazz Money, Fiona Kelly McGregor, Eda Gunaydin and Malcolm Knox.
Ash, Louise Wallace – 2 Sep
Fiction. We can’t wait for this novel. New Zealand writer Wallace is the author of four collections of poems, including This Is a Story About Your Mother, published in 2023. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal showcasing the work of young writers from Aotearoa New Zealand, and the editor of Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2022.
Here’s the blurb:
Thea lives under a mountain – one that’s ready to blow.
A vet at a mid-sized rural practice, she has been called back during maternity leave and is coping – just – with the juggle of meetings, mealtimes, farm visits, her boss’s search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy.
But something is shifting in Thea – something is burning. Or is it that she is becoming aware, for the first time, of the bright, hot core at her centre?
Then comes an urgent call.
A summons to women everywhere, Ash is a story about reckoning with one’s rage and finding marvels in the midst of chaos.
Songs of a Thousands Seas, Zana Fraillon – 2 Sep
Novel for ages 9–12. We’re looking forward (as are the young people in our lives) to this new one by Zana Fraillon, the multi-award-winning author of The Bone Sparrow and The Way of Dog. It’s billed as a ‘lyrical verse novel’ and sounds great.
Here’s the blurb:
Houdini the octopus lives in an aquarium, but she misses her home in the wild Sea. She doesn’t like the visitors who bang on her tank. Or the way she can’t feel the sun on her skin or the wind rippling the water. It’s a dull existence for a creature with nine brains.
Then one day she meets someone who is different to the other visitors. Juno’s busy brain buzzes with so many questions and thoughts that Houdini’s skin tingles with wonder.
But the singing of the Sea is growing stronger and harder to resist. Can Houdini make Juno understand what she needs before it’s too late?
Mischance Creek, Garry Disher – 30 Sep
Crime fiction. Be warned: this is number 5 in Garry Disher’s bestselling Hirsh crime series – which means, if you haven’t read the previous four, you’d better get your reading glasses on quick-smart. You won’t regret it!
Here’s the blurb:
Hirsch is checking firearms. The regular police audit- all weapons secured, ammo stored separately, no unauthorised person with keys to the gun safe. He’s checking people, too. The drought is hitting hard in the mid-north, and Hirsch is responsible for the welfare of his scattered flock of battlers, bluebloods, loners and miscreants.
He isn’t usually called on for emergency roadside assistance. But with all the other services fully stretched, it’s Hirsch who has to grind his way out beyond the Mischance Creek ruins to where some clueless tourist has run into a ditch.
As it turns out, though, Annika Nordrum isn’t exactly a tourist. She’s searching for the body of her mother, who went missing seven years ago. And the only sense in which she’s clueless is the lack of information unearthed by the cops who phoned in the original investigation.
Hirsch owes it to Annika to help, doesn’t he? Not to mention that tackling a cold case beats the hell out of gun audits and admin …
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