Books Archive

Thirty-one years after the fatal shooting of Cabramatta state MP John Newman, a book launch in Fairfield on 12 December 2025 brought people together to revisit one of Australia’s most contested crimes in the place where it all happened on 5 September …

This is a good, old-fashioned murder mystery, delivered with panache – and one that keeps us guessing until the final scene. Director Mark Kilmurry drives the plot along with precision, and his cast of five cannot be faulted. Frederick Knott’s Dial M …

  Trump is the “saddest word” for human rights, Australian author Dennis Altman said at the launch of his new book Unrequited Love: Diary of an Accidental Activist last month. Best known as an influential global gay rights activist, Altman’s new book deals …

Ebola, swine flu, SARS: we’ve seen many epidemics erupt in recent times, resulting in scores of deaths around the world. What we haven’t seen is a contagion resulting in deep, dream-filled sleep. Yet this is the calamity that befalls a small American …

When was the last time you stopped to think seriously about play? Chances are, it wasn’t when you were engaging in sport, or tackling a hobby with friends. We usually simply enjoy playing, and rarely give it much deeper thought. Yet, play …

A British nanny glides into a regimented family, upending its members’ structured lives and rigid routines. This may sound like a Mary Poppins scenario, but it isn’t. This is Dawn French’s new novel According to Yes: an often-gritty and poignant account of …

If you make a revolution, make it for fun, don’t make it in ghastly seriousness, don’t do it in deadly earnest, do it for fun. Don’t do it because you hate people, do it just to spit in their eye. DH Lawrence, A Sane Revolution Standing …

Garth Nix moderated a panel of three young adult fiction writers who discussed the genre and why it has been very successful. The panel featured Australian writer of short stories and young adult fiction, Margo Lanagan, US writer Laurie Halse Anderson This …

Thousands of people queued up on the weekend to take part in the various discussions and workshops on the closing days of the 2015 Sydney Writer’s Festival at Sydney’s arts hub in Walsh Bay. One I attended was Everyone’s a Critic, But …

Alan Cumming was in conversation with David Marr at the Joan Sutherland Theatre to discuss his memoir Not My Father’s Son, as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Wednesday May 22. In easy-going, jovial spirits at the Opera House, the multi-award …