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What we read in 2024: The year’s highest-selling books
Australian authors took out the top three spots, as our appetite for cookbooks and genre fiction remained insatiable.
- by Melanie Kembrey
Latest
A baby is found and a village is changed in this moving Irish novel
Niall Williams returns to the village of Faha in this vividly evoked story about community.
- by Brian McFarlane
New voices, old rivalries and Muriel too: holiday reads keep on coming
Our reviewers cast their eyes over eight new fiction and non-fiction releases.
- by Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll
The internet doesn’t always like David Sedaris, not that he cares
The bestselling writer says the internet promised to make everybody smarter, and instead it’s made everybody “louder and dumber”.
- by Thomas Mitchell
We should all know this story of the documents that changed Australia
Historian and author Clare Wright has spent a decade investigating the story of petitions on bark created by the Yirrkala community in Arnhem Land in 1963.
- by Ann McGrath
What drives Germany’s neo-Nazis? This masterful novel seeks answers
Bernhard Schlink took us inside the mind of an SS guard in The Reader. His latest work explores a modern country still shadowed by the past.
- by Tom Ryan
Barbra Streisand’s blunt question was this actor’s moment of truth
Josh Brolin, stepson of the legendary singer, and son of actor James Brolin, has written a memoir about his troubled life.
- by Nathan Smith
Secrets, confessions and an autobiography that was supposed to be posthumous: Twelve new books for the new year
From a memoir by Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisèle Pelicot, to the new novel by a Miles Franklin winner, there’s plenty in store for book lovers this month.
- by Jason Steger
This portrait of depression rivals Sylvia Plath at her most powerful
Reissued to mark the 100th anniversary of Janet Frame’s birth, The Edge of The Alphabet puts inner darkness into words.
- by Jack Cameron Stanton
Opinion
WordPlay
Isn’t it ironic? No, sorry, that’s sarcasm
If you love splitting hairs, you’re in for a treat.
- by David Astle
Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books