Staff Top 10’s
See a selection of staff top reads. Think of it as our personal recommendations!
2020
Adult
- Where the crawdads sing – Delia Owens
- Nothing to see here – Kevin Wilson
- The clergyman's wife – Molly Greeley
- Caging skies – Christine Leunens
- In the dream house – Carmen Maria Machado
- The memory police – Yoko Ogawa
- In the clearing – JP Pomare
- Such a fun age – Kiley Reid
- Wild fearless chests – Mandy Beaumont
- The wives – Tarryn Fisher
- Olive, again – Elizabeth Strout
- Riding with giants – Peter Holmes à Court
- The last wish – Andrezj Sapkowski
- The red address book – Sofia Lundberg
- Grandmothers – Sally Vickers
- The factory – Hiroko Oyomada
- The good turn – Dervla McTiernan
- Darkness for light – Emma Viskic
- There was still love – Favel Parrett
- The witches are coming – Lindy West
YA
- Little women – Louisa May Alcott
- The surprising power of a good dumpling – Wai Chim
- Conference of the birds – Ransom Riggs
- One of us is lying – Karen M McManus
- I wish you all the best – Mason Deaver
Junior
- Max Kowalski didn't mean it – Susi Day
- Hotdog: Show time – Anh Do
- Diary of a wimpy kid: Wrecking ball – Jeff Kinney
- The illustrated encyclopædia of ugly animals – Sami Bayly
- The beast of Buckingham Palace – David Walliams
2019
- City of trees – Sophie Cunningham
- The place on Dalhousie – Melina Marchetta
- Dark emu – Bruce Pascoe
- Little gods – Jenny Acland
- The bridge – Enza Gandolfo
- Growing up African in Australia – Maxine Beneba Clarke
- Troll hunting – Ginger Gorman
- The erratics – Vicki Laveau-Harvie
- Invented lives – Andrea Goldsmith
- Australia Day – Stan Grant
- Accidental feminists – Jane Caro
- No friend but the mountains – Behrouz Boochani
- The friend – Sigrid Nunez
- My year of rest and relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh
- Convenience store woman – Sayaka Murata
- Louis & Louise – Julie Cohen
- The land before avocado – Richard Glover
- Small blessings – Emily Brewin
- The Rosie result – Graeme Simsion
- The rip – Mark Brandi
- Growing up queer in Australia – Benjamin Law
- Born-again blakfella – Jack Charles & Namila Benson
- The autumn murders – Robert Gott
- Mouth full of blood – Toni Morrison
- Three women – Lisa Taddeo
- A universe of sufficient size – Miriam Sved
- Mother of pearl – Angela Savage
- The Nickel boys – Colson Whitehead
- My sister, the serial killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite
- 10 minutes, 38 seconds in this strange world – Elif Shafak
- The weekend – Charlotte Wood
- Peace – Garry Disher
- She said – Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey
- Her kind of luck – Michelle Balogh
- Girl, woman, other – Bernardine Evaristo
- The wife and the widow – Christian White
- Maybe the horse will talk – Elliot Perlman
- Fleishman is in trouble – Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- This taste for silence – Amanda O'Callaghan
- Westwind – Ian Rankin
- 488 rules for life – Kitty Flanagan
- Before the coffee gets cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Calypso – David Sedaris
- The Dutch house – Ann Patchett
- The testaments – Margaret Atwood
YA
- The knife of never letting go – Patrick Ness
- On the come up – Angie Thomas
- We are displaced – Malala Yousafzai
- Five feet apart – Rachael Lippincott
- Famous in a small town – Emma Mills
- The secret runners of New York – Matthew Reilly
- The sun is also a star – Nicola Yoon
- The ice wolves – Amie Kaufman
- After the lights go out – Lili Wilkinson
- The red scrolls of magic – Cassandra Clare
- Aurora rising – Amie Kaufman
- What I like about me – Jenna Guillaume
- I am change – Suzy Zail
- Looking for Alaska – John Green
- The tattooist of Auschwitz (YA edition) – Heather Morris
- The call of the wild – John London
- Frankly in love – David Yoon
- This is how we change the ending – Vickie Wakefield
- Whisper – Lynette Noni
- Young dark emu – Bruce Pascoe
Junior
- Clementine Rose and the bake-off dilemma – Jacqueline Harvey
- WeirDo: Hopping weird – Anh Do
- The phantom bandit – Geronimo Stilton
- Zac Power: Zac's biggest hits – H I Larry
- Mr Popper's penguins – Richard & Florence Atwater
- 47 degrees – Justin D'Ath
- His name was Walter – Emily Rodda
- The peacock detectives – Carly Nugent
- Ninja kid: Ninja switch – Anh Do
- Artemis Fowl – Eoin Colfer
- Wolf girl: Into the wild – Anh Do
- The world's worst teachers – David Walliams
- The 117-storey treehouse – Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton
- Final storm – Deborah Abela
- The treehouse joke book – Andy Griffiths
- Rise of the Mythix: Golden unicorn – Anh Do
- The glimme – Emily Rodda
- Guts – Raina Telgemeier
- The Australia survival guide – George Ivanoff
2018
- Transcription – Kate Atkinson
- Best summer stories – Aviva Tuffield
- Hell ship – Michael Veitch
- The fragments – Toni Jordan
- The arsonist – Chloe Hooper
- The lost man – Jane Harper
- Sisters of no mercy – Vincent Silk
- The year of the farmer – Rosalie Ham
- Any ordinary day – Leigh Sales
- Apple and knife – Intan Paramaditha
- The eastern curlew – Harry Saddler
- Too much lip – Melissa Lucashenko
- Clock dance – Anne Tyler
- Orchid & the wasp – Caoilinn Hughes
- The biographer’s lover – Ruby J Murray
- Sabrina – Nick Drnaso
- Motherhood – Sheila Heti
- Leila – Prayaag Akbar
- The geography of friendship – Sally Piper
- Growing up Aboriginal in Australia – Anita Heiss
- The bookshop of the broken-hearted – Robert Hillman
- Bohemia beach – Justine Ettler
- The mercy seat – Elizabeth H Winthrop
- From a low and quiet sea – Donal Ryan
- The shepherd’s hut – Tim Winton
- The yellow house – Emily O’Grady
- Less – Andrew Sean Greer
- Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine – Gail Honeyman
- Dear Mrs Bird – AJ Pearce
- Brave – Rose McGowan
- Call me by your name – André Aciman
- The tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
- Conversations with friends – Sally Rooney
- Terra Nullius – Claire G Coleman
- The lonely city – Olivia Laing
- The choke – Sofie Laguna
- Her body and other parties – Carmen Maria Machado
- Home fire – Kamila Shamsie
- The left hand of darkness – Ursula K LeGuin
- Milkman – Anna Burns
YA
- Ida – Alison Evans
- Every day – David Levithan
- Simon vs the Homo Sapiens agenda – Becky Albertalli
- Between us – Clare Atkins
- I am thunder – Muhammad Khan
- The journal of curious letters – James Dashner
- The darkest minds – Alexandra Bracken
- Changing gear – Scot Gardner
- Release – Patrick Ness
- Paper cranes don't fly – Peter Vu
- The lady's guide to petticoats and piracy – Mackenzi Lee
- Take three girls – Simmone Howell, Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood
- A song only I can hear – Barry Jonsberg
Junior
- The bad guys: Superbad – Aaron Blabey
- Diary of a wimpy kid: the meltdown – Jeff Kinney
- Storm boy – Colin Thiele
- Nevermoor: Wundersmith – Jessica Townsend
- The ice monster – David Walliams
- Biscuits, bands and very big plans – Liz Pichon
- The bad guys: Do-you-think-he-saur-us?! – Aaron Blabey
- The 104-storey treehouse – Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton
- Polly & Buster – Sally Rippin
- Hot dog: game time! – Anh Do
2017
- The first casualty – Peter Greste
- Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
- The trauma cleaner – Sarah Krasnostein
- Can you hear the sea – Brenda Niall
- The travelling cat chronicles – Hiro Arikawa
- The woman who fooled the world – Beau Donnelly & Nick Toscano
- Danger music – Eddie Ayres
- The rules do not apply – Ariel Levy
- First person – Richard Flanagan
- Fighting hislam – Susan Carland
- Hunger – Roxane Gay
- Force of nature – Jane Harper
- The handmaid’s tale – Margaret Atwood
- The mouth that roared – Les Twentyman
- Common people – Tony Birch
- The power – Naomi Alderman
- Taboo – Kim Scott
- Back to Broady – Caroline van de Pol
- Wimmera – Mark Brandi
- No middle name – Lee Child
- Into the water – Paula Hawkins
- The red hunter – Lisa Unger
- A writing life: Helen Garner and her work – Bernadette Brennan
- The boy behind the curtain – Tim Winton
- See what I have done – Sarah Schmidt
- Men without women – Haruki Murakami
- A murder without motive: the killing of Rebecca Ryle – Martin McKenzie-Murray
- Anything is possible – Elizabeth Strout
- Depends what you mean by extremist – John Safran
- An isolated incident – Emily Maguire
- Fight like a girl – Clementine Ford
- The girl before – JP Delaney
- Norse mythology – Neil Gaiman
- Future sex: a new kind of free love – Emily Witt
- Right behind you – Lisa Gardner
- Lincoln in the bardo – George Saunders
- Good me bad me – Ali Land
- Jasper Jones – Craig Silvey
- Working class boy – Jimmy Barnes
YA
- La belle sauvage – Phillip Pullman
- The hate u give – Angie Thomas
- Turtles all the way down – John Green
- Death cure – James Dashner
- Words in deep blue – Cath Crowley
Junior
- Diary of a wimpy kid: the getaway – Jeff Kinney
- Goodnight stories for rebel girls – Elena Favili
- You may already be a winner – Ann Dee Ellis
- Wonder – R J Palacio
- Nevermoor: the trials of Morrigan Crow – Jessica Townsend
2016
- The story of a new name – Elena Ferrante
- Those who leave & those who stay – Elena Ferrante
- The story of the lost child – Elena Ferrante
- Everywhere I look – Helen Garner
- The sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Talking to my country – Stan Grant
- Me before you – Jojo Moyes
- The natural way of things – Charlotte Wood
- The big short – Michael Lewis
- Our tiny useless hearts – Toni Jordan
- Hope farm – Peggy Frew
- Ruby – Cynthia Bond
- Jonathan unleashed – Meg Rosoff
- How I met my son – Yolanda Bogert
- The memory artist – Katherine Brabon
- The last painting of Sara de Vos – Dominic Smith
- The course of love – Alain de Botton
- Truly, madly, guilty – Liane Moriarty
- The dry – Jane Harper
- The girls – Emma Cline
- Westography – Warren Kirk
- Scattered pearls – Sohila Zanjani
- Skylarking – Kate Mildenhall
- The best of Adam Sharp – Graeme Simsion
- I’m supposed to protect you from all this – Nadja Spiegelman
- The hate race – Maxine Beneba Clarke
- Fire boy – Sami Shah
- The sellout – Paul Beatty
- The good people – Hannah Kent
- The woman on the stairs – Bernard Schlink
- The life and death of Sophie Stark – Anna North
- Tell the truth, shame the devil – Melina Marchetta
- The wonder – Emma Donoghue
- The Nakano thrift shop – Hiromi Kawakami
- All we had – Annie Weatherwax
- Lily and the octopus – Steven Rowley
- Full bore – William McInnes