Allen & Unwin, Australia 2026
Cover design Hazel Lam
Cover illustration Louisa Maggio
The Bookshop of Buried Pasts is a lusciously rich tale of mothering and forgiveness. Spanning two timeframes and places – the 1960s in Cambridgeshire and the recent past and present day in a NSW Southern Highlands village, the story takes us on an historical investigation of crimes, coercion and connection.
Shelley Dark Publications, Australia 2025
Cover design Rony Dhar
The historian in Shelley Dark could not resist following the trail, when she discovered an unexpected family connection with an Australian Greek convict, hailing from the island of Hydra.
Fremantle Press, Australia 2026
Design Lisa White
Cover image Two Hares by William Bell Scott, met.museum.org
This profoundly affecting work of beautifully crafted literary fiction is the story of a Cormish life in the 1600s, a time when women possessing the healing arts were hunted down as witches and burnt or drowned for their knowledge.
Big Sky Publishing, Australia 2026
Cover design Think Productions
Catherine McCullagh presents the next phase of her alternate history of Occupied Britain in World War 2. The Nazis have been vanquished and ousted from power, the parliament restored.
Wild Dingo Press, Australia 2025
Cover design Alex Ross
Revelation Beach is a deeply affecting historical, political and crime fiction set in the dark realities of the 1960s and 1970s in Indonesia and East Timor and the more or less present day of Australia. It is also a story of abandonment, truth and lies, and of love.
Penguin Random House, Australia, 2025
Cover design Nikki Townsend Designs
Cover images David M. Schrader/Shutterstock; Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock; New Africa/Shutterstock; yuris/Shutterstock
This multiple love stories in this saga, set between 1828 and 1851, take us to Norway, Iceland, Liverpool in England, and Tasmania (then known as Van Dieman’s Land).
Ventura Press, Australia, 2025
Cover and internal design Debrah Parry Graphic
Cover images Alamy Stock Photo; Shutterstock
Alison Booth is an elegant writer. She has captured the time period (mostly 1919) of this story perfectly, with a combination of measured descriptive prose and era appropriate dialogue.
HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia 2025
Cover art Lindsey Carr
There is a luscious darkness to Kell Woods’ storytelling. This tale, set in the18th century, mainly in Brittany and to a lesser degree also in Lulworth Cove on the smuggling coast of England, is redolent with Celtic folklore and maritime history.
Professor Peter Stanley
Beyond the Broken Years (UNSW Press, Australia, 2024)
The Sherrin (Big Sky Publishing, Australia, 2025)
While it is not my usual practice to review books in tandem, these two sit well together, as one is analysis and survey and the other part of the practice of military writing.
Affirm Press, Australia 2025
Cover design Nada Backovic
While many Australians are happy to acknowledge their convict pasts, Madeleine Cleary is distinguished by pursuing research into forebears who ran brothels in 19th century Melbourne.
Hachette, Australia, 2025
Cover design by Hazel Lim
Cover images Adobe Stock (Emi Tse), Alamy and rawpixel
Emma Pei-yin’s debut novel When Sleeping Women Wake is an excoriating examination of occupation – in this case, the brutal Japanese occupation of Hong Kong between the years 1941 and 1945. It is an unflinching look at the behaviour of the occupying forces, and particularly their treatment of women and children.
Published independently through Ingram Spark, Australia, 2024
Cover and internal design by Sandy Cull
Cover images Silas Manhood/Trevillion Images; Chandra Ramsurrun/Alamy Stock Photo
SG (Simon) Bryant writes with an assured ease, conjuring up characters in whom we become instantly interested and a story that both entertains and intrigues.
Affirm Press, Australia, 2024
Cover design Andy Warren
Internal cover image The Drover’s Wife courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia and the estate of Russell Drysdale
Kyra Geddes’ beautifully written historical fiction joins the vast body of works which retell, refer to or interpret Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife.
Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2024
Cover design Nada Backovic
Cover photography Getty Images, Alamy, iStock, Pexels/Stein Egil
We can rely on Leonie Kelsall to deliver a story that moves us both emotionally and intellectually. In this dual timeline historical fiction, the author compares the lives and loves of two young women, Taylor in the 2008 to 2012 era and Anna in the 1970s.
Big Sky Publishing, Australia, 2024
Cover and internal design Think Productions
Catherine McCullagh has stayed in the realm of alternative historical fiction with this latest, thoroughly absorbing tale, set in a presumptive occupied Britain from 1940 to the end of the Second World War.
