Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've picked The Long Distance Playlist by Tara Eglington.

Told primarily in instant messenger conversations, Skype, emails and texts, this is Jaclyn Moriarty's Feeling Sorry for Celia for the modern teen.

Taylor and Isolde used to be best friends - before THAT FIGHT, 18 months ago. It's been radio silence ever since - until Taylor contacts Isolde to sympathise with her breakup: the breakup that she never saw coming; the breakup that destroyed her confidence and ended her dreams of joining the National Ballet School.

Taylor's had his own share of challenges, including a life-altering accident that has brought his hopes of competing at the Winter Olympics to a halt. Isolde responds to Taylor, to be polite. But what starts out as heartbreak-themed Spotify playlists and shared stories of exes quickly becomes something more. And as Taylor and Isolde start to lean on each other, the distance between them begins to feel not so distant after all ...

A boy. A girl. A one-of-a-kind friendship. Cross-country convos and middle-of-the-night playlists. With big dreams come even bigger challenges. 

I've been following Tara Eglington's books since she first got published with the fun and witty release of How to Keep a Boy From Kissing You (followed by its fitting sequel How to Convince a Boy to Kiss You). Then came the brilliant exploration of female friendship in My Best Friend is a Goddess, so I can't wait to see how this latest novel goes. If her track record so far is anything to go by, this is going to be something special - I can't wait to get my hands on a copy!

Releasing 16th December 2019 from HarperCollins Australia

Waiting on Wednesday: New Australian Fiction

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've picked Kill Your Darlings' 2019 anthology of New Australian Fiction. 

A childless couple find an abandoned baby on the beach. A twilight car accident has a man lost in the bush. Two men on the coast share an unspoken love.

A father is prosecuted by his small-town community. A young woman has a threatening first date.

A writer is terrorised by the ghosts of his fiction. Drugs drive childhood friends apart. City folk visit a room for crying.

 New Australian Fiction features brilliant writers with distinct experiences, voices and styles from all corners of Australia.


Together they showcase the strength and diversity of Australian short fiction at its best. These stories will move, entertain and enlighten you.

As a fan of the KYD magazine, I'm excited to see how this short story collection pans out - it's promising to be timely and insightful, hopefully shining the spotlight on some brilliant new talent on the writing scene!

Releasing 1st October 2019 from Kill Your Darlings

Waiting on Wednesday: The Divers' Game

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've picked The Divers' Game by Jesse Ball.

From the inimitable mind of award-winning author Jesse Ball, a novel about an unsettlingly familiar society that has renounced the concept of equality—and the devastating consequences of unmitigated power. The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavour.

The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives. The Divers’ Gameis a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth: we must change or our world will collapse. What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture?

Brilliantly constructed and achingly tender, The Divers’ Game shatters the notion of common decency as the binding agent between individuals, forcing us to consider whether compassion is intrinsic to the human experience.

With his signature empathy and ingenuity, Jesse Ball’s latest work solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary fiction’s most mesmerising talents.

I've always enjoyed short stories, novels, and even TV dramas that are just that little bit off-kilter, and make you think. I'm looking forward to seeing if this latest novel from Jesse Ball can achieve that!

Releasing 1st October 2019 from Text Publishing

Waiting on Wednesday: This is How We Change the Ending

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've picked This is How We Change the Ending, the latest YA novel released by prolific Aussie author Vikki Wakefield.

I have questions I’ve never asked. Worries I’ve never shared. Thoughts that circle and collide and die screaming because they never make it outside my head. Stuff like that, if you let it go—it’s a survival risk.

Sixteen-year-old Nate McKee is doing his best to be invisible. He’s worried about a lot of things—how his dad treats Nance and his twin half-brothers; the hydro crop in his bedroom; his reckless friend, Merrick. Nate hangs out at the local youth centre and fills his notebooks with things he can’t say.

But when some of his pages are stolen, and his words are graffitied at the centre, Nate realises he has allies. He might be able to make a difference, change his life, and claim his future. Or can he?

This is How We Change the Ending is raw and real, funny and heartbreaking—a story about what it takes to fight back when you’re not a hero.

New books on the #LoveOzYA scene are always an exciting addition to my shelves, and Vikki Wakefield's novels always speak straight to the themes of family, belonging and class relationships.

Releasing 3rd September 2019 by Text Publishing

Waiting on Wednesday: Expectation

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've picked Expectation by Anna Hope, a coming-of-age novel about female friendship and managing the highs and lows which come with the shift into adulthood. 

Hannah, Cate and Lissa are young, vibrant and inseparable.

Living on the edge of a common in East London, their shared world is ablaze with art and activism, romance and revelry – and the promise of everything to come.

They are electric.
They are the best of friends.
Ten years on, they are not where they hoped to be.

Amidst flailing careers and faltering marriages, each hungers for what the others have.

And each wrestles with the same question: what does it take to lead a meaningful life?

I've seen this one described as something similar to a Sally Rooney novel (another author on my must-read list!), but what really has grabbed me with Expectation is the focus on the time in our lives where the future is at its brightest and the only thing left to do is see whether it retains the glow as the years go on. Stay tuned for a review on this book after its release!

Releasing July 2019 from Doubleday

Waiting on Wednesday: The Dreamers // Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've got two anticipated releases lined up: The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker and some non-fiction with the latest edition of the Quarterly Essay. 

A mesmerizing novel about a college town transformed by a strange illness that locks victims in a perpetual sleep and triggers life-altering dreams—by the bestselling author of The Age of Miracles, for fans of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.

Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. A quarantine is established. The National Guard is summoned. Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate.

Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

Written in gorgeous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking novel that startles and provokes, about the possibilities contained within a human life—in our waking days and, perhaps even more, in our dreams.

At the moment with Christmas shopping looming for this year's bookish haul, looking at releases for 2019 may seem far away! Nonetheless, I can't wait to read this one from Karen Thompson Walker. Her debut The Age of Miracles is a firm favourite of mine, and she writes fiction in a way which captures human nature at its most fragile, on the cusp of something extraordinary. Stay tuned, I'll definitely be posting more about this one once I get my hands on a copy!

Releasing February 2019 from Simon and Schuster

What is the inner life? And is it vanishing in the digital age? Throughout history, artists and philosophers have cultivated the deep self, and seen value in solitude and reflection. But today, through social media, wall-to-wall marketing, reality television and the agitation of modern life, everything feels illuminated, made transparent.

We feel bereft without our phones and their cameras and the feeling of instant connectivity. It gets hard to pick up a book, harder still to stay with it. In this eloquent and profound essay, renowned critic Sebastian Smee brings to the surface the idea of inner life - the awareness one may feel in front of a great painting or while listening to extraordinary music by a window at dusk or in a forest at night. No nostalgic lament, this essay evokes what is valuable and worth cultivating - a connection to our true selves, and a feeling of agency in the mystery of our own lives.

At the same time, such contemplation puts us in an intensely charged relationship with things, people or works of art that are outside us. If we lose this power, Smee asks, what do we lose of ourselves?

Expanding my reading habits into non-fiction has been both refreshing and eye-opening this year, and the latest edition of the quarterly essay seems right on point in an age where there is little time left to stop and be comfortable in our own thoughts; or simply appreciate life outside the screens we have become so attached to. I've got Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and Upstream by Mary Oliver on my list as well which cover some similar ground, so I'll be looking forward to reading them all over the holidays!

Releasing November 2018 from Black Inc.

Waiting on Wednesday: Bookshop Girl

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are looking forward to. This week I've picked Bookshop Girl by Chloe Coles.

A hilarious tale of female friendship, bookshops and fighting for a cause - perfect for fans of Holly Bourne and Louise Rennison.

Bennett's Bookshop has always been a haven for sixteen-year-old Paige Turner. It's a place where she can escape from her sleepy hometown, hang out with her best friend, Holly, and also earn some money. But, like so many bookshops, Bennett's has become a 'casualty of the high street' - it's strapped for cash and going to be torn down.

Paige is determined to save it but mobilising a small town like Greysworth is no mean feat. Time is ticking - but that's not the only problem Paige has.

How is she going to fend off the attractions of beautiful fellow artist, Blaine? And, more importantly, will his anarchist ways make or break her bookshop campaign?

As a bookseller, any plot that's even remotely bookish is bound to catch my eye! I love the sound of this cute and endearing story, which will hopefully go to show just how important bookshops are.

Releasing August 2018 from Bonnier

Waiting on Wednesday: Give Me Your Hand

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott.

Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn’t let anything stop her. But now someone else is standing in her way – Diane.

Best friends at seventeen, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret – the worst thing she’d ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine – and it blew their friendship apart.

 Kit is still the only person who knows what Diane did. And now Diane knows something about Kit that could destroy everything she’s worked so hard for.

How far would Kit go, to make the hard work, the sacrifice, worth it in the end? What wouldn’t she give up? Diane thinks Kit is just like her. Maybe she’s right. Ambition: it’s in the blood...

Megan Abbott has to be one of my all-time favourite psychological thriller writers - her prose is always mesmerising and atmospheric, leaping off the page with every twist. Her past few releases have featured the dark sides of teenage girls and toxic friendships, so it'll be interesting to see how she brings some of those similar themes to life here. If you're looking for a great read, I'd definitely recommend picking up Dare Me, The End of Everything or You Will Know Me.

Releasing 17th July 2018 from Little Brown

Waiting on Wednesday: The Woman in the Window

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.

What did she see?

It's been ten long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too terrified to step outside. Anna's lifeline to the real world is her window, where she sits day after day, watching her neighbours.

When the Russells move in, Anna is instantly drawn to them. A picture-perfect family of three, they are an echo of the life that was once hers. But one evening, a frenzied scream rips across the silence, and Anna witnesses something no one was supposed to see.

Now she must do everything she can to uncover the truth about what really happened. But even if she does, will anyone believe her? And can she even trust herself?

This is giving off some Girl on the Train vibes with a voyeuristic main character and her seemingly perfect subjects. I'm a big thriller fan so I'm curious to see how this one stacks up to the others I've read - it has Gillian Flynn's tick of approval so that's a good start!

Releasing 15th January 2018 from HarperCollins Australia

Waiting on Wednesday: The Empress

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked The Empress by S.J. Kincaid.

It’s a new day in the Empire. Tyrus has ascended to the throne with Nemesis by his side and now they can find a new way forward—one where they don’t have to hide or scheme or kill. One where creatures like Nemesis will be given worth and recognition, where science and information can be shared with everyone and not just the elite.

But having power isn’t the same thing as keeping it, and change isn’t always welcome. The ruling class, the Grandiloquy, has held control over planets and systems for centuries—and they are plotting to stop this teenage Emperor and Nemesis, who is considered nothing more than a creature and certainly not worthy of being Empress. Nemesis will protect Tyrus at any cost.

He is the love of her life, and they are partners in this new beginning. But she cannot protect him by being the killing machine she once was. She will have to prove the humanity that she’s found inside herself to the whole Empire—or she and Tyrus may lose more than just the throne. But if proving her humanity means that she and Tyrus must do inhuman things, is the fight worth the cost of winning it?

The Diabolic was one of the best YA sci-fi novels I've read - it's a thrilling space-opera with twisted power-struggles and shocking finale...or so we thought. I'm so glad that there has turned out to be a sequel, I can't wait to see what lies ahead for Nemesis.

Releasing 1st November 2017 from Simon and Schuster

Waiting on Wednesday: Welcome back to the world of 'The Diviners'

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray.

The Diviners are back and facing ghosts in this thrilling and eerie third instalment in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, set against the backdrop of 1920s New York City and the mysterious mental hospital on Ward Island.

1920s New York. Lights are bright. Jazz is king. Parties are wild. And the dead are coming. After battling a supernatural sleeping sickness that nearly claimed two of their own, the Diviners are set to face off against an all-new terror. Out on desolate Ward's Island, far from the city's bustle, sits a mental hospital haunted by the lost souls of people long forgotten - ghosts who have unusual and dangerous ties to the man in the stovepipe hat, also known as the King of Crows.

With terrible accounts of murder and possession pushing New York City to the edge of panic, the Diviners must band together and brave the sinister forces invading the asylum - a fight that will bring them face-to-face with the King of Crows. Now, as explosive secrets from the past come to light and malevolent forces gather from every corner, love and loyalties will be tested, and the Diviners will find themselves in a deadly battle for the very soul of the nation.

Heart-pounding action and terrifying moments will leave you breathless in this third book in the Diviners quartet by #1 New York Times bestselling author Libba Bray.

First off, can we just admire that cover for a second? I was hooked from the very beginning of this series with The Diviners, and Lair of Dreams was definitely a sequel to impress. 1920s New York was never so dazzling...and dangerous.

Releasing 1st October 2017 from Allen and Unwin

Waiting on Wednesday: Unearthed

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner.

When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying's advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.

For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study... as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don't loot everything first. Mia and Jules' different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.

In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race's secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race... 

Described as 'Lara Croft meets Indiana Jones - in space', I've definitely got my eyes on this one. Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner have already proved with their previous words, especially the Starbound trilogy, that they can produce some brilliant storylines - I'm hoping this new venture will be just as good!

Releasing 1st December 2017 from Allen and Unwin

Waiting on Wednesday: Heather, The Totality

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked Heather, The Totality by Matthew Weiner.

The explosive debut novel - about family, power and privilege - from the creator of the award-winning Mad Men.

The Breakstone family arrange themselves around their daughter Heather, and the world seems to follow: beautiful, compassionate, entrancing, she is the greatest blessing in their lives of Manhattan luxury. But as Heather grows - and her empathy sharpens to a point, and her radiance attracts more and more dark interest - their perfect existence starts to fracture.

Meanwhile a very different life, one raised in poverty and in violence, is beginning its own malign orbit around Heather.

Matthew Weiner - the creator of Mad Men - has crafted an extraordinary first novel of incredible pull and menace. Heather, The Totality demonstrates perfectly his forensic eye for the human qualities that hold modern society together, and pull it apart.

The blurb of this book had me from the words 'from the creator of Mad Men'. There's not too much information on the plot being given away just from the description, so I'm definitely intrigued - what is so special about Heather?

Releasing 1st November 2017 from Allen and Unwin

Waiting on Wednesday: Genuine Fraud

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart. 

How far would you go to become someone else?

A masterful young adult thriller from the author of blockbuster bestseller We Were Liars.

 Imogen is an heiress, a runaway, and a cheat. Jule is a fighter, a chameleon, and a liar. Imogen is done pretending to be perfect, and Jule refuses to go back to the person she once was.

Somewhere between the mansions of Martha's Vineyard and the shores of Cabo San Lucas, their intense friendship takes a dark turn.

A masterful thriller from the author of the unforgettable We Were Liars.

Not going to lie - my hopes are high for this one. There have been some brilliant YA thrillers I've read (We Were Liars definitely being one of them), alongside others like Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas. The blurb for this one doesn't give too much away, so I'm definitely curious to see just what trouble these characters get into...

Releasing 6th September 2017 from Allen and Unwin

Waiting on Wednesday: Freya

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where the participants tell their readers about an upcoming release they are waiting to read. This week I've picked Freya by Anthony Quinn. 

Freya Wyley meets Nancy Holdaway amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship…

Freya, ambitious and outspoken, pursues a career on Fleet Street while Nancy, less self-confident, struggles to get her first novel published.Both friends become entangled with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose own ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives.

Flitting from war-haunted Oxford to the bright new shallows of the 1960s, Freya plots the unpredictable course of a woman’s life and loves in extraordinary times.

Technically the hardcover of this book was released last year, but when I first heard about it from a customer at a bookstore just recently I thought that this new edition deserved a mention. Stories about friendships and writing are ones I'm immediately drawn to, and with the historical slant I can see this being something I'd really enjoy.

Releasing 14th August 2017 from Penguin