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Bestselling books of 2024.

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.

  • Melanie Kembrey

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Author Alison Lester at Kilcunda Beach near her Victorian home.

This book cast a spell over generations. There’s magic in the film too

The movie adaptation of Alison Lester’s much-loved book leaves plenty of room for the imagination.

  • Nick Galvin

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.

  • Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll
There’s a lot to cover with the world’s most observant humorist as he drives the few hours between Washington and Pennsylvania.

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”.

  • Thomas Mitchell
Author Bernard Schlink

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.

  • Tom Ryan
There are plenty of great books to choose from this month.

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.

  • Jason Steger
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Janet Frame, left, and Sylvia Plath wrote two of the world’s greatest explorations of depression.

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.

  • Jack Cameron Stanton
Markus Zusak with his dog Frosty.

It was 60 bucks with glassed-in fins and my mum gave me half …

A brutal, salt-ridden learning curve for the young Markus Zusak was well worth it.

  • Markus Zusak
Carl Perkins performs on October 11, 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Elvis hijacked this musician’s most famous song. He didn’t mind

Carl Perkins worked with – and inspired – some of the greatest names in rock’n’roll. So why is his own story so unsung?

  • Michael Dwyer
One of the many former phone booths in Britain that found new life as community libraries.

The Pope has one, but what about Putin? This library book reveals all

Undercover or carried by camel, the world’s weirdest book depositories are hidden no more.

  • Jane Sullivan

Original URL: https://www.watoday.com.au/topic/literature-1m4g