Find your next great read at the library
There are plenty of new books to love in the library this term – including much anticipated new work from Australian writers; challenging non-fiction and epic fantasy. We are always happy to help with suggestions - here is a round-up of our top picks:
Thirteen years after The Book Thief, Markus Zusak is back with Bridge of Clay. A far-reaching Australian family saga, it is ‘a profoundly heartfelt and inventive novel about a family held together by stories, and a boy in search of greatness, as a cure for a painful past’ and comes highly recommended by one of the library’s most avid readers, Lorraine Lockhart.
A companion piece to the beautiful short-stories, Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City is a visually stunning collection of extraordinary mythical tales about our relationship with animals, both real and imagined.
Building on our collection of work by indigenous writers: Welcome to Country by Marcia Langton is a landmark travel guide to indigenous Australia. Catching Teller Crow is the first joint novel from siblings Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina, part ghost story and part crime thriller told in poetry and prose, it interweaves themes of grief, colonial history, violence, love and family. Walk Back Over by Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic Jeanine Leane, is a collection of poems revealing the personal and political layers of a nuanced history of this country, listening to the past and speaking to what has been left out of official records.
Challenging our thinking with new non-fiction: Boys will be Boys by Clementine Ford looks at toxic masculinity, dismantling the age-old idea that entitlement, aggression and toxicity are natural realms for boys, and revealing how the patriarchy we live in is as harmful to boys and men as it is to women and girls. The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper takes readers inside the hunt for a fire-lighter after the devastating Black Saturday fires of February 2009. Described as ‘true crime writing at its best: gripping, gritty and unsparing but never gratuitous in its details’ Hooper goes beyond the procedurals and the scene setting to examine the greater context of the tragedy. A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bontgiovanni and Tristan Jimerson is a short and fun comic guide that explains what gender neutral pronouns are, why they matter, and how to use them.
Adding to our great collection of graphic fiction: Losing the Girl by Eisner-nominated cartoonist MariNaomi looks at life through the eyes of four suburban teenagers: early romance, fraying friendships, and the traces of a mysterious—maybe otherworldly—disappearance, a beautifully drawn coming-of-age story with a sci-fi hook. Zenobia by Morten Dürr and Lars Horneman is a heartbreaking Danish graphic novel that calls our attention to the thousands of people who each year die during migration. Told with great sensitivity in few words and almost exclusively with pictures, an all-too-real story of one child’s experience of war.
Escape the everyday and immerse yourself in an epic fantasy: highlights for fantasy fans this term include A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos, already a best-seller in France and winner of the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, it has just been published in English; Oathbringer, the latest instalment in Brandon Sanderson’s epic Stormlight Archive series – plus a bonus novella Edgedancer. A Curse of Ash and Embers is new from Australian author Jo Spurrier, a dark coming-of-age tale full of mystery and intriguing world building. Finally, years in the making, Kingdom of Ash is the unforgettable conclusion to Sarah J. Maas’s bestselling Throne of Glass series. Form an orderly queue!
Remember you can browse the catalogue and reserve items at any time - just log in with northcote\compass ID and password at https://au.accessit.online/NRT07/
Happy reading!