Guardian Australia editors and critics have selected the most anticipated Australian books releasing in October 2026, spanning memoirs, fiction, poetry, cookbooks and nonfiction. The list includes new works from Magda Szubanski, Shaun Tan, Pip Williams, Bruce Pascoe and Judith Lucy.
Shaun Tan's 'masterpiece' and Carrie Tiffany's moving novella
Shaun Tan's latest work, Hometown (Allen & Unwin, $35), is described as a culmination of the artist's career. The tale follows a teenage girl who feels at home in her eerie world until a stranger tells her she doesn't belong. Critic Tim Byrne calls it "a stunning, deeply spiritual allegory of idiosyncrasy and self-acceptance" and "a dazzling, poignant, stunningly realised masterpiece."
Carrie Tiffany's novella The Lady with the Dog (NewSouth, $29.99) begins with an ageing protagonist receiving a diagnosis. As she sits in her garden, an old dog becomes her companion, and through this relationship details of her past emerge. The illustrations by Noel McKenna are "almost as moving as the story itself," writes Steph Harmon, noting the story is "ripped from Tiffany's own life."
Nonfiction: Pascoe, Grenville and Cooke
Bruce Pascoe's The European Mind: Colonialism, Capitalism, Christianity and How to Recover (Magabala Books, $36.99) lays blame on those three forces for racism and violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Paul Daley writes that Pascoe draws on western and European sources to prosecute his case.
Kate Grenville's The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters (Black Inc, $36.99) is an "absorbing meta-fiction" about a schoolteacher in rural New South Wales. Grenville stumbles across letters accusing him of harming children and tries to uncover the truth more than a century later.
Richard Cooke's The Last Best Place on the Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia (Black Inc, $36.99) is a "very funny and deeply researched" account of the website's history, including fights between volunteers and radical attempts to improve it.
Memoirs from Szubanski, Lucy and Li Cunxin
Magda Szubanski's I Can't Tell You But I Will (Text Publishing, $55) follows her 2015 memoir Reckoning. It focuses on her mother Margaret, with whom Szubanski had a "fractious, if loving relationship," weaving her decline and death with Szubanski's work on the marriage equality campaign.
Judith Lucy's Well Well Well ... (Scribner Australia, $36.99) explores wellness, including float tanks, reiki and an ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon, after she retired from standup in 2022.
Li Cunxin's The Lucky Son (Penguin, $36.99) is the follow-up to Mao's Last Dancer. It highlights his wife Mary, who sacrificed her career to guide their deaf daughter Sophie into music and dance.
Fiction, poetry and cookbooks
Pip Williams' third novel The German Ward (Affirm Press, $34.99) is set in 1916 and follows Eva, an academic, who discovers a love affair between an English nurse and a German doctor through sketches by artist Iso Rae.
Andy Jackson's poetry collection Askew (Giramondo, $27) addresses the climate crisis, male suicide and social disharmony. Sian Cain notes that "Askew manages to be so tender while charting such distressing times."
Alice Zaslavsky's Weeknights with Alice (Murdoch Books, $45) offers veg-leaning recipes under 40 minutes. Julia Busuttil Nishimura's Simple Pleasures (Plum, $44.99) leans into Mediterranean territory with pasta and stews, with photography by Armelle Habib.
