Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi   

"YOU KNOW MY NAME.

BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.

Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love's thrall.

Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves.

Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children.

How wilfully they refuse to concede that a woman could be powerful, strategic, divinely blessed to rule.

Death will silence me no longer.

This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived."

From one of the most remarkable and acclaimed storytellers of her generation, the #1 bestselling author of FAEBOUND and THE FINAL STRIFE, this epic and groundbreaking new novel shows us Cleopatra on her own terms."

• Harper Collins Australia

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth   

"'In 1954, at just fourteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.'

In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play.

Until they discover Elsie's past.

In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel.

'She is known around the world as Mad Mabel. But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty?'

When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight.

'In a world first, at the age of eighty-one, Mabel Waller is speaking. This is her story.'"

• Sally Hepworth

The Nocturnals by Frances Whiting   

"In the summer of 1997, five high school students meet. Nina, the Good Girl. Beatrice, The Poetess. Harriet, the Ghost. Cosmo, the Professor. And Hunter, the Golden Boy. In their last year of school, they become inseparable, five sides of the same star, until a fault line cracks between them, scattering them to all corners of the globe.

Now, fifteen years later, Hunter has called them with his conch shell lips to return to the place where they lived and laughed and cried together, before secrets were whispered, and promises were broken. No-one knows why he has assembled them, but there is no question they will go. Because to outsiders, they might be, in turns, a little bit weird, a little bit glamorous, and a little bit dangerous. But to each other, they are, and always will be, The Nocturnals.

From bestselling author Frances Whiting comes an irresistible, witty, darkly delightful and utterly endearing novel of friendship - and the lengths we will go to protect those who we love."

• Harper Collins Australia

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke  

"'My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive…'

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle – and her followers are sick with envy. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What her followers don’t know won’t hurt them.

Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn't her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible.

As darkly funny as it is shocking and gripping, Yesteryear is an electrifying examination of tradition, fame, faith and the grand performance of womanhood, from a thrilling new talent in fiction. "

• Harper Collins Australia

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans 

"84 Charing Cross Road meets A Man Called Ove in this Radio 2 Book Club pick: a heartwarming, witty story about the life of an extraordinary woman, told through her letters.

In her letters to family and friends we come to know the life of Sybil Van Antwerp: stubborn, cantankerous, opinionated, always steadfast in her belief in the power of the written word.

But as the clock begins to tick for Sybil, the need for a few post-scripts to the life she’s led becomes apparent. Fixing her difficult relationship with her children. Taking a final chance at romance. Atoning for an old legal case which has come back to haunt her. And finally, reckoning with a devastating loss that she has spent the last thirty years holding close to her chest.  "

• Penguin Australia

Change by Édouard Louis 

The major new novel from the once-in-a-generation author of The End of Eddy 

"Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination and violence in his working-class hometown - so he sets out to study in Amiens, and, later, at university in Paris. He sheds the provincial 'Eddy' for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug dealers alike.

Everything he does is motivated by a single obsession: to become someone else. Change is at once a personal odyssey, a story of dreams, friendship and the perils of leaving the past behind, and a profound portrait of a society divided by class, inequality and power."  Translated by John Lambert

• Penguin Australia

Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

"The second novel in Marlon James's revolutionary DARK STAR TRILOGY.

In this mighty follow-up to his number one bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Booker-winner Marlon James once again draws on a rich tradition of African mythology, fantasy and history to tell the story of Sogolon the Moon Witch.

Part adventure story, part tale of an indomitable woman, Moon Witch, Spider King chronicles the antagonist-turned-antihero's journey from an ostracised no-name girl, hated by her brothers and made to live in a termite hill, to a woman with fully developed powers engaged in a long-standing feud with the Aesi, chancellor to the king."

• Penguin Australia

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022

"It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church."

• Allen & Unwin Australia