News

2 March 2020

Are Your Favourites on Here? The Longlist for the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) has Been Announced

Are Your Favourites on Here? The Longlist for the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) has Been Announced

The Australian Publishers Association has announced the longlist for the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) and we’re thrilled to see so many of our favourite titles of 2019 made the list.

More than 250 publishers, booksellers, agents, media and industry representatives have voted for books published in 2019 across 12 categories. A shortlist will be released on Thursday 9 April, with winners announced at the publishing industry’s night of nights on 29 April.

Better Reading is excited to be sponsoring the Book of the Year Award… we can’t wait to see which titles will be on that. But in the meantime, we’re thrilled with the titles in all the categories. So many of our favourites have made the cut.

General Fiction Book of the Year award.

  • Bruny, Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin, Allen & Unwin)
  • Call Me Evie, J.P. Pomare (Hachette Australia, Hachette Australia)
  • Cilka’s Journey, Heather Morris (Echo Publishing, Echo Publishing)
  • Good Girl, Bad Girl, Michael Robotham (Hachette Australia, Hachette Australia)
  • Peace, Garry Disher (Text Publishing, Text Publishing)
  • Silver, Chris Hammer (Allen & Unwin, Allen & Unwin)
  • The Scholar, Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins Publishers, HarperCollins Publishers)
  • The Wife and the Widow, Christian White (Affirm Press, Affirm Press)

The ABIA longlist is a fantastic reading  full of titles you’ve already read, and those you need to add to your TBR pile.

For the complete longlist, visit the official ABIAs website.

Reviews

Great Aussie Crime: Read an Extract From Peace by Garry Disher

Review | Extract

5 December 2019

Great Aussie Crime: Read an Extract From Peace by Garry Disher

    Rural Noir at its Finest: Read a Review of Peace by Garry Disher

    Review | Our Review

    3 December 2019

    Rural Noir at its Finest: Read a Review of Peace by Garry Disher

      Tense, Atmospheric, Astute: Read an extract from The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

      Review | Extract

      22 February 2019

      Tense, Atmospheric, Astute: Read an extract from The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

        McTiernan’s New Thriller Impossible To Put Down: Review of The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

        Review | Our Review

        19 February 2019

        McTiernan’s New Thriller Impossible To Put Down: Review of The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

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                              Publisher details

                              Peace
                              Author
                              Garry Disher
                              Publisher
                              Text Publishing
                              Genre
                              Crime Fiction
                              Released
                              05 November, 2019
                              ISBN
                              9781922268150

                              Buy now

                              Synopsis

                              Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He’s still new in town but the community work—welfare checks and working bees—is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a ute and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch’s life has been peaceful.Until he’s called to a strange, vicious incident in Kitchener Street. And Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living outside town on a forgotten back road.Suddenly, it doesn’t look like a season of goodwill at all.

                              Publisher details

                              The Wife and the Widow
                              Author
                              Christian White
                              Publisher
                              Affirm Press
                              Genres
                              Australian Fiction, Thriller
                              Released
                              24 September, 2019
                              ISBN
                              9781925972757

                              Buy now

                              Synopsis

                              A deadly secret.

                              An island town.

                              A storm brewing.

                              Set against the backdrop of an island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is a thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local who is forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer.

                              But nothing on this island is quite as it seems. Only when these women are pushed to the edge can they uncover the whole, crashing truth about the men in their lives.

                              The Wife and the Widow is another mind-bending power read from Christian White. It’s a brilliant tale of deception and sacrifice from Australia’s most exciting new crime writer.

                              Publisher details

                              Good Girl, Bad Girl
                              Author
                              Michael Robotham
                              Publisher
                              Hachette
                              Genres
                              Fiction, Thriller
                              Released
                              23 July, 2019
                              ISBN
                              9780733644610

                              Buy now

                              Synopsis

                              The girl with no past. Six years ago, Evie Cormac was discovered, filthy and half-starved, hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a shocking crime. Now approaching adulthood, Evie is damaged, self-destructive and has never revealed her true identity. The boy who survived. Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven, a man haunted by his own past, is investigating the death of champion figure-skater Jodie Sheehan. When Cyrus is called upon to assess Evie, she threatens to disrupt the case and destroy his ordered life. Because Evie has a unique and dangerous gift - she knows when someone is lying. And nobody is telling the truth. Good Girl, Bad Girl is an unnerving psychological thriller from one of the greatest crime writers of today, Michael Robotham, bestselling author of The Other Wife and The Secrets She Keeps.

                              Publisher details

                              Call Me Evie
                              Author
                              J.P. Pomare
                              Publisher
                              Hachette
                              Genre
                              Thriller
                              Released
                              27 December, 2018
                              ISBN
                              9780733640230

                              Buy now

                              Synopsis

                              In this compulsive, twist-filled and haunting psychological suspense debut perfect for fans of Sharp Objects and Room, a seventeen-year-old girl struggles to remember the role she played on the night her life changed forever...****Don't trust him. It wasn't me. It couldn't have been me.Meet Evie, a young woman who has fled with her uncle to the isolated New Zealand beach town of Maketu. Jim says he's hiding her to protect her, that she did something terrible back home in Melbourne. Something Evie can't remember.But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle.In a house that creaks against the wind, Evie pieces together the events that led her here. And as her memories return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her saviour . . . or her captor.A riveting debut novel that fearlessly plumbs the darkest recesses of the mind, Call Me Evie explores the fragility of memory and the potential in all of us to hide the truth even from ourselves.

                              Publisher details

                              The Scholar
                              Author
                              Dervla McTiernan
                              Publisher
                              HarperCollins
                              Genre
                              Fiction
                              Released
                              01 March, 2019
                              ISBN
                              9781460755419

                              Buy now

                              Synopsis

                              From the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Ruin comes a compulsive new crime thriller featuring DS Cormac Reilly.Being brilliant has never been this dangerous ...When Dr Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit and run outside Galway University late one evening, she calls her partner, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him.A security card in the dead woman's pocket identifies her as Carline Darcy, a gifted student and heir apparent to Irish pharmaceutical giant Darcy Therapeutics. The multi-billion-dollar company, founded by her grandfather, has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy - it has funded Emma's own ground-breaking research. The enquiry into Carline's death promises to be high profile and high pressure.As Cormac investigates, evidence mounts that the death is linked to a Darcy laboratory and, increasingly, to Emma herself. Cormac is sure she couldn't be involved, but as his running of the case comes under scrutiny from the department and his colleagues, he is forced to question his own objectivity. Could his loyalty to Emma have led him to overlook evidence? Has it made him a liability?

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