-
2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Katherine Smyrk |Bhakthi Puvanenthiran |Dan Condon |Nicola Heath
It could be argued that true crime is the genre that keeps podcasting alive. The countless mysteries unearthed, turned over and sometimes solved keeps audiences hooked to their headphones and coming back for more. Amanda Knox's conviction and subsequent acquittal is a different kind of crime story. The world looked on open-mouthed as the 22-year-old was convicted of murder in an Italian court in 2009.
-
3 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Kate Evans |Claire Nichols |Nicola Heath |Declan Fry |Rosie Ward
Welcome to ABC Arts' monthly book column: a shortlist of new releases read and recommended by The Bookshelf's Kate Evans, The Book Show's Claire Nichols, ABC Arts' Nicola Heath and critics Declan Fry and Rosie Ofori Ward. All five read voraciously and their only guidelines for a recommendation here: make it a new release and make it something you think is great.
-
4 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Heath |Daniel Browning
An exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) in Melbourne featuring Lebanese Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi's work has been postponed indefinitely. Sabsabi, who is based in Western Sydney, was thrown into the national spotlight when he and curator Michael Dagostino were announced on February 7 as Australia's representatives at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
-
1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Heath |Claire Nichols
A few years ago, Diana Reid began to see a trend emerge: the trauma plot. It was everywhere in books, films and television series. "You get introduced to a character who's a bit odd or self-destructive — like Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character in Fleabag — and there are these flashbacks that penetrate the narrative that suggest something terrible happened," the author tells ABC Radio National's The Book Show.
-
1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Heath |Claire Nichols
In 2022, Robert Lukins spent three months traversing the United States in a tiny one-and-a-half-seater aeroplane built by his friend and travel companion. They were on the hunt for ghost towns — a shared obsession — in places like the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley, when they made a pit stop in Yosemite National Park. It was there Lukins befriended a rock climber with a hidden past.
-
1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Kate Evans |Claire Nichols |Nicola Heath |Declan Fry |Rosie Ward
The pages of February's best books promise a lot: a queer love story full of incisive observation about life, a fiction-memoir blend about a body in love and in pain, and a character convinced they're being hunted by snipers. Two are the work of Nobel Prize winners while others are penned by debut authors. One writer learns her father might've been a secret spy, another just where grief can take you. ABC Arts reviewers offer up all this and more in reading recommendations from this month.
-
2 months ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Heath |Claire Nichols
British writer Hanif Kureishi had just opened a beer and sat down to watch football on TV when he suddenly blacked out. It was 2022, and he was at the Rome apartment of his partner, Isabella d'Amico. "I don't really know what happened next, but I think I stood up, and then I just fell flat on my face — bang — and I broke my neck," he tells Radio National's The Book Show.
-
Jan 7, 2025 | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Heath
Growing up in Far North Queensland in the 1940s and 50s, photographer William Yang desperately wanted to fit in. But Yang, a third-generation Chinese Australian, always felt like an outsider, despite his mother's efforts. While she spoke Cantonese and his father spoke Hakka, a southern Chinese dialect, the family conversed exclusively in English. "My mother wanted us to be more Australian than the Australians," Yang tells ABC Radio National's The Stage Show.
-
Dec 18, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Heath |Mawunyo Gbogbo |Jared Richards |Katherine Smyrk |Anna Kelsey-Sugg
Few Australian books have been devoured and re-read by young people quite like those of John Marsden, who died this week, aged 74. For many of us, his work was a revelation: reading can be this good?!Marsden wrote more than 40 books in his lifetime, so narrowing the list to cherry-pick our favourites wasn't easy, but here are his books that most moved ABC Arts reviewers.
-
Dec 13, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Kate Evans |Claire Nichols |Sarah L'Estrange |Nicola Heath |Declan Fry |Rosie Ward
You know that uncomfortable feeling when you don't know what to read next? Well, get ready to take some notes because we're about to obliterate it. The Bookshelf's Kate Evans, The Book Show's Claire Nichols and Sarah L'Estrange, ABC Arts' Nicola Heath and critics Declan Fry and Rosie Ofori Ward offer up their best reads of 2024, leading us from grieving sisters to mismatched detectives, and from short stories based on real crimes to satire and dystopian futures.
