5 Must‑Read Australian Books in 2025

Looking for a range of unforgettable Aussie stories that hit hard and stay with you long after you’ve finished reading? These five books deliver gripping plots, rich characters and uniquely Australian settings, from sun-soaked coastlines to gritty outback towns. Whether you’re into crime, historical fiction or powerful coming-of-age tales, these are the must-reads you won’t want to put down.

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko

When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Granny Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives. In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.

Buy a copy of Edenglassie here.

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

It’s not just secrets buried at Wild Meadows. For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance of a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

Buy a copy of Darling Girls here.

Osprey Reef by Annie Seaton

2019: Bethany Kristensen faces her toughest challenge to date, skippering the family charter business. With rivals doing their utmost to undercut her prices and reputation, the Kristensens’ operation hangs by a thread. Winning the tender for a new scientific research program headed out to the farthest edge of the reef is her last chance to keep the business going. But when rumour and vandalism turn to outright sabotage, things take a drastic turn… 1934: Stella Booth flees a future of domestic drudgery in small-town outback Queensland, heading for employment and an independent life in Mackay. But fate has other plans and an accident en route sends her life spinning in a most unexpected direction… Linked by a family mystery, decades apart, Bethany and Stella will both need to dig deeper than ever before they forge their place among the turbulent seas of the reef.

Buy a copy of Osprey Reef here.

Melaleuca by Angie Faye Martin

A country town, a brutal murder, a shameful past, a reckoning to come… The injustices of the past and dangers of the present envelop Aboriginal policewoman Renee Taylor, when her unwilling return to the small outback town of her childhood plunges her into the investigation of a brutal murder. Renee Taylor is planning to stay the minimum amount of time in her remote hometown – only as long as her mum needs her, then she is fleeing back to her real life in Brisbane. Seconded to the town’s sleepy police station, Renee is pretty sure work will hold nothing more exciting than delivering speeding tickets. Then a murdered woman is found down by the creek on the outskirts of town. Leading the investigation, Renee uncovers a perplexing connection to the disappearance of two young women thirty years earlier. As she delves deeper and the mystery unfurls, intergenerational cruelties, endemic racism, and deep corruption show themselves, even as dark and bitter truths about the town and its inhabitants’ past rise up and threaten to overwhelm the present…

Buy a copy of Melaleuca here.

Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton

A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat. They’ve found themselves a home inside a van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you’re on the run. But the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen ‘Lady’ Flora Box. A life of love with the boy who’s waiting for her on the bridge that stretches across a flooding, deadly river. A life beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there’s only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can ever do. She must look in the mirror.