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From a noir reimagining of Little Women to a deep dive into the physics of the human body, our critics review new releases in fiction and non-fiction.
Fiction
Beth is Dead
Katie Bernet, Penguin, $24.99
Genre adaptations of literary classics written by women can become publishing sensations. In 2009, Jane Austen got reworked into comic survival horror with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. More recently, Tirzah Price’s Austen-themed YA murder mystery series, Pride and Premeditation (2021-), saw Elizabeth Bennet turn detective. In a similar vein to Price, Katie Bernet’s Beth is Dead reinvents Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as contemporary crime fiction. Concord, Massachusetts: present day. Gentle, musical young Beth March appears to have been murdered (in the original novel, she dies of the lingering effects of scarlet fever), and her sisters Meg, Jo, and Amy are compelled to find the killer. Bernet’s lively, twist-filled mystery preserves the personalities of the characters in Alcott’s coming-of-age classic, while transposing them to 21st century circumstances. Narrated by the sisters from first-person perspectives, Beth is Dead is rather brilliantly constructed. A clever metafictional homage for Little Women fans, this is YA crime that should be just as entertaining to readers unfamiliar with its literary source.
Cape Fever
Nadia Davids, Scribner, $29.99
Gothic novels and the long shadow of colonialism are eerily natural bedfellows. Nadia Davids’ Cape Fever creates psychological tension through unequal power dynamics in 1920s South Africa. Mrs Hattingh is a white, once-wealthy widow living in a decaying mansion who hires Soraya Matas, a woman from the city’s Muslim Quarter, as a maid. Familiar gothic tropes creep into the narrative. Mrs Hattingh pines for her son, injured in the Great War, to return from London, but his arrival is constantly deferred. Meanwhile, she presumes her new maid illiterate and offers to transcribe letters to Soraya’s fiancé for her, in an act of kindness that soon turns manipulative. The dark history of the mansion makes itself felt as Soraya, who can sense ghostly presence and is attuned to the spirit world, falls into an increasingly close and disturbing orbit with her employer. Davids invests this haunted house story with such a sustained sense of psychological suspense and menace you could argue that the supernatural aspects are superfluous. It’s a compelling and claustrophobic tale, a literary gothic woven from warped threads of colonialism, racism, and their grim legacies
The Bourne Revenge
Brian Freeman, Head of Zeus, $32.99
Robert Ludlum passed away in 2001, but his fictional action-hero spy Jason Bourne simply won’t die. The original Bourne trilogy has since been expanded at a frenetic pace, with Ludlum’s estate choosing Eric van Lustbader to pen 11 more Bourne novels between 2004 and 2017, and Brian Freeman to crank out another seven since 2020. The latest in the franchise sees Bourne up against a Chinese espionage outfit called Volt Typhoon. He has stolen ultra-powerful AI software, known as “the Files”, from them and the mysterious agent Bai Ze intends to find (and kill) Bourne get it back. At the same time, Bourne discovers a woman he once loved has been murdered and seeks to avenge her death, even as he’s sleeping with his boss Shadow, who has immense leverage over her lover and is attempting to restore his lost memories. (As series readers know, Bourne’s defining characteristic is that he developed amnesia, with little sense of his identity or backstory, after being shot in the head.) Non-stop action with more than a dollop of sex awaits hardcore fans, in a franchise that delivers the escapism they want almost to the point of parody.
Salt Upon the Water
Lyn Dickens, Wakefield Press, $32.95
This sweeping colonial romance features Colonel William Light, the first Surveyor-General of South Australia, responsible for choosing the site for the city of Adelaide. He was born in Penang, of mixed Asian and European descent. Lyn Dickens’ Salt Upon the Water tinkers with history, weaving in magical realism as Light (whose recorded romantic life did not lack variety or incident) meets and is enchanted by Clarissa Fitzroy, a woman also of mixed heritage who tracks him down in Australia a decade after memorable encounters, including a hot-air balloon ride, in England. Clarissa is the novel’s protagonist. Yet the dilemmas faced – dispossession by the British East India Company, erasure and exoticisation, idealism running up against brutal colonial realities, and the racial prejudice of the British Empire’s white ruling class – are shared by both major characters. The novel won Wakefield’s Unpublished Manuscript Award, and it writes into South Australia’s colonial history with a broad imaginative canvas, a poetic touch, and a deep empathy for the discrimination its characters face.
The Furphy Anthology 2025
Hardie Grant, $35
The annual Furphy Literary Award has been sponsored for the last six years by Joseph Furphy’s descendants, with a collection of the best yarns entered in the competition published each year. Furphy himself would have appreciated the offbeat, irreverent, tragicomic tale that won in 2025. In The Eulogy Business, West Australian author Serena Moss delivers an anonymous narrator moonlighting as a freelance ghostwriter, promising eulogies of strangers: “No judgement. Quick turnaround.” Making up tall stories about the dearly departed soon becomes addictive, as the narrator discovers that fiction smooths the grieving process for loved ones and, in some cases at least, might be the only way to truth. But when a surprise eulogy request comes in, the ghostwriter’s own ghosts linger over a writing challenge close to home. Brisk, funny, with a poignant twist, it’s a deserving winner in a volume which, with few exceptions, contains short fiction of high quality and an enviable variety of tones, styles and subject matter.
Non-Fiction
Nature People
Cesar Puechmarin, Affirm Press, $49.99
Anyone can be a naturalist. It’s a heartening thought. The only qualifications required are that you devote yourself whole heartedly to nature, says wildlife photographer and filmmaker, Cesar Puechmarin. In this enchanting work, he introduces us to 13 ardent Australian guardians of nature. They are academics, conservationists, urban ecologists, artists and enthusiasts like Josh Bowell who has no formal scientific training and yet has become an accomplished marsupial glider expert. Indigenous animal handler Clinton Brewer draws on the ecological knowledge imbedded in traditional stories and songs. “Dreaming for me is like the mesh, the system of our cultural and emotional beliefs of the landscape and how we perceive things.” Puechmarin joins this diverse array of dedicated naturalists in the field to capture how they see the world. His atmospheric photographs not only zoom in on nature in action but also the naturalists themselves in their habitat to reveal the wonder and curiosity that drives them.
The Coast
Chris Hammer, MUP, $36.99
An air of gentle melancholy hangs over Chris Hammer’s immersive journey from the Torres Strait to Bass Strait to observe for himself what climate change is doing to the east coast of Australia. As he travels, this mood is deepened by grief over the death of his father. And yet the beauty of much of this seaboard, its wild creatures and what is being done to protect it acts as a countervailing force, lifting his spirits and giving him hope. Thirteen years have elapsed since The Coast was first published and it is chastening to reflect on the escalation of coral bleaching, rising sea levels and destructive weather. But perhaps Hammer’s optimism still holds, with increased regulation of the fishing industry and the declaration of marine parks making sustainability more than a buzz word. It is also a story of what this coast means to the people who live there and how it has shaped their lives. Love, loss and hope jostle with each other in a tale that tracks the changes remaking this populous coastline.
Dear New York
Brandon Stanton, Macmillan, $65
It’s a testament to Brandon Stanton’s people skills, as well as his talent as a photographer, that the New Yorkers who feature in this profoundly moving album were prepared to drop their guards and bare their souls to a stranger. Stanton set out with the aim of capturing the soul of New York by photographing people in the streets. Until it dawned on him that “this city cannot be captured. No frame is large enough”. What he does capture is a cornucopia of astounding human stories and the people who animate them. A man with a haunted, scarecrow face tells of getting out of prison and finding envelopes full of money his mother had left for him from wedding dresses she had made. A woman holding a newborn talks of the joy of seeing her partner dote on their daughter, having lost her father at an early age. A ravaged-looking woman in the subway speaks of growing up amongst junkies and thinking that the cartoon character Speedy Gonzales was on coke. “As a little kid, that’s what I thought. Because it’s all I knew.”
Pull
Brennan Spiegel, Scribe, $36.99
We are used to thinking about gravity in relation to celestial bodies, but what about its impact on our own bodies? And our minds? We talk about feeling “uplifted” and “on top of the world”. Or “low” and “down in the dumps”. Every aspect of our being is shaped by the force of gravity, from our blood flow to our mood, says medical doctor Brennan Spiegel. Drawing on his own experience, that of his patients and research in the field of “graviception” – the ability to sense and align with gravity – he weaves an intriguing exploration of the role gravity plays in our physical and mental health. Some people even suffer from “gravity intolerance”, experiencing distress because ‘their bodies can’t manage the weight of the world’. Spiegel writes with an appropriately light touch as he examines the push and pull between gravity and our bones, muscles, heart, vessels, gut and inner ear; how this interaction influences our brain and how we might harness these pressures to thrive.
A Time For Bravery
Edited by Anna Chang and Alice Grundy, Australian Institute Press, $35.99
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While it opens with the heroic story of Piero, a political refugee from Chile who paid with his life resisting the Pinochet regime, most of the essays in this collection are concerned with the ordinary courage needed in everyday life. A recurring theme is that bravery is like a muscle that must be developed and regularly exercised in order to make it second nature. Teal independent Sophie Scamps talks of how her experience as an athlete and doctor helped her flex the courage muscle when it came to stepping up to be the candidate for Mackellar. Labor senator Fatima Payman was inspired by her refugee father’s bravery when she crossed the floor over Gaza knowing the consequences for her career. Many of the essays lament the lack of courage shown by the political class for whom “bravery” is synonymous with “foolhardy”, especially when it comes to hard issues like tax reform, refugees or the housing crisis. As well as tackling pressing social issues, these pieces inspire us to reflect on what courage might mean in our own lives.
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