May 🥰🥰 Books full of heart and humour 🥰🥰
Four gorgeous new titles with lots of appeal to warm your chilly nights
Well hello!
Welcome to the May edition of New Voices Down Under. My heart goes out to all of you affected by the recent damaging torrential rain. And, in other parts of the country, no rain. It reminds me of the poem by John O’Brien (pen name of priest Patrick Hartigan) Said Hanrahan.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If this rain doesn't stop."
The poem is a lament on the cycles of drought, floods and bushfires here in Australia. Originally published in 1919, O’Brien wasn’t writing about climate change, but the words have a partricular poignancy over a hundred years later.
None of the novels featured in May’s Books to Love are on the topic of climate change. Nonetheless, there is substance to these titles. There’s lots of noise in publishing circles about all four of this month’s featured novels. Sarah Clutton bursts onto the scene with her heartwarming tale, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains about a little boy who just wants to meet his dad. Another title garnering lots of excitement is the crime novel, Melaleuca, that will appeal to fans of Australian Outback Noir and beyond. What sets this apart is the incredible storytelling voice of author Angie Faye Martin and a story that will keep you guessing until the very end. For a darkly funny tale, it’s impossible to go past Sinead Stubbins hilarous biting novel, Stinkbug. If you ever had to do any corporate team building, you are in for an extra special treat.
In Meet the Author, I chat with Dominic Amerena about his literary novel, I Want Everything. Our unnamed narrator is failing to become the serious writer he wishes to be taken for until he stumbles across a literary sensation and recluse. Believing his luck is about to change, he embarks on a self-serving and thus doomed pursuit of the scoop of a lifetime.
And what would be a newsletter without Freebies? This month, you have the chance to win a copy of three of the featured novels. You know the deal, read the reviews and interview and answer the questions to be in the running.
And lastly, a shout out to Madeleine Gray, who has won the 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing with her debut, Green Dot. This fabulous novel has appeared on many a long and shortlist since publication. I interviewed Madeleine in the September 2023 edition of New Voices. You can revisit that interview here.
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Books to Love
The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains by Sarah Clutton
(Published ANZ 29 April 2025)
One day, on her farm in the north-west of Tasmania, Penny opens the door to find a young boy who declares his name is Alfred Bains and he is her grandson. She hasn’t seen her daughter, Emilia in over a decade. Not since Emilia departed suddenly for the mainland and, as it turns out, a life in Ireland. Emilia left a broken-hearted family behind. She has raised Alfie without ever revealing that he even has family in Australia. Nor has she ever told him the name of his father.
Alfie is determined to change all that. It’s his mission to cut through all his mother’s lies and deflections and meet the man he can call dad. Except it isn’t that simple. Emilia’s former husband died in a car crash—one of two tragedies to strike at the heart of that family. His great aunts have no idea who Alfie’s father is, not for sure. In fact, everywhere Alfie turns, no one seems willing to answer the question directly. Subterfuge becomes his only option. And, as it turns out, Alfie, with the clarity of the young, is very adept at getting answers, even if they’re not the ones he wants.
Sarah Clutton bursts onto the scene with a novel full of heart and humour. The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bain is a heartwarming story of innocence in the face of obfuscation. Brimming with a cast of characters who each has a story of their own, Clutton masterfully wrangles the residents of Beggars Rock into the semblance of the family they are supposed to be. Alfie is an endearing narrator, although he shares this role with other family members. Each question he asks leads him further and further into the troublesome past of the family. Secrets that have remained buried for decades are slowly unearthed and the story they tell adds a bittersweet edge to the truth. Maybe what Alfie Bains needs is not so much a father but a family who will love and cherish him and teach him what it means to belong. If feel-good fiction is what you are in the mood for right now, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains hits the spot.
A little bit about the author …
Sarah Clutton lives in a storybook village in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales on Gundungurra and Tharawal country. She has tried her hand at various jobs: research assistant, judge's associate, insurance claims guru, litigation lawyer, philanthropic foundation manager and ghost-writer. In between freelance writing gigs she is events manager for her local chapter of Rural Australians for Refugees. In 2018 she was the national recipient of the Dymocks/McIntosh Commercial Fiction Scholarship. The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains pays homage to her early years on a farm in North West Tasmania, and to the charms and challenges of small-town living.
Connect with Sarah Clutton
Find Sarah on Instagram here @sarahmclutton
Find out more about Sarah on her website here
Australia: Buy a copy of the book here
Melaleuca by Angie Faye Martin
(Published ANZ 30 May 2025)
Renee Taylor has returned to her hometown, Goorungah, in outback Queensland. She’s on secondment from her city job as a detective, taking a demotion to be close to her ailing mother. Hoping it will only be for a while since nothing much happens in the town. The discovery of the body of a brutally bashed girl by the creek changes all that.
The indigenous girl is a complete stranger to the townsfolk. With no clues to her identity or to a motive, the boss reluctantly allows Renee to lead the investigation. Searching for a connection to the town, Renee stumbles across a cold case from 1966 when two indigenous girls disappeared. As questions mount as to how they could seemingly vanish into thin air and their possible relationship to the dead girl, Renee finds herself embroiled in an investigation that speaks as much to the murder as to the town’s dark history of entrenched racism. A past that echoes her own family’s truths as it does to the townsfolk living here today.
Ange Faye Martin has written a cracker of a thriller in Melaleuca. To regular crime buffs, the set up will feel familiar but Martin takes us deep into the troubled and vexed history of a town where only the lives of white people counted. With her own heritage still a point of contention for many of the locals, Detective Renee Taylor is forced to reckon with how much the past resonates with the present. Taylor is smart, stubborn and atune to the complexities of investigating such a case. Martin weaves the tale back and forth, alighting on potential suspects who all have a reason to have wanted to silence those girls back in 1966. She keeps the reader guessing, sifting the evidence alongside Taylor. Satisfyingly, Martin ratchets up the tension until the very end.
The writing is taut, the characters richly realised, the plot terrific and the resolution on point. But the biggest shout out must go to Martin’s voice. This is a writer who draws you in from the first word until the last. Melaleuca, on every level, is an atmospheric page turner that heralds a brilliant new voice in crime fiction.
For your chance to win a copy of Melaleuca, scroll down to Freebies!
A little bit about the author …
Angie Faye Martin is a writer and editor of Kooma, Kamilaroi and European heritage. With a Bachelor of Public Health from the Queensland University of Technology and a Masters of Anthropology from the Australian National University, Angie spent many years working in policy roles in state and federal government before launching Versed Writings in 2019. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Garland, The Saltbush Review and The Rocks Remain. She is a member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network and accredited with the Institute of Professional Editors. Melaleuca is her debut novel.
Connect with Angie Faye Martin
Find Angie on Instagram here @angie_faye_martin
Find out more about Angie on her website here
Australia: Read a sample or buy a copy of the book here
Stinkbug by Sinead Stubbins
(Published ANZ 27 May 2025)
A select group of Winked advertising agency staff are heading off to a three-day corporate retreat. Rumours are circulating that a restructure is in the wings. Heads will roll and Edith does not want hers to be on the chopping block. As the busload of staff arrive at the former convent, Edith wonders what she has to prove to keep her job.
But the Consequi retreat is a corporate retreat like no other. Less rounds of golf and bonding exercises than scary challenges and what seems like an affront on them as individuals and as a group. They are told that in order to function effectively as a team they must have a work best friend. But in an effort to prove themselves worthy, some are willing to throw as much mud as necessary in the hope it sticks to someone else. As it turns out, the one person the group agrees is the definite outsider is Edith. She’s difficult to work with, has terrible social skills and is a proven liar. Edith is declared the stinkbug—the one who no one wants to touch lest she releases her toxic odour.
As the challenges grow more bizarre, Edith realises this is about more than keeping her job. Something weird is going on. Why are the external doors to the convent all padlocked? What’s with the electricified perimeter fence? Is she just being paranoid or are they pawns in a bigger game being played?
Stinkbug is the perfect novel for anyone who has had to endure corporate love-ins, ridiculous team bonding events and the rather masculine rah-rah that often goes along with it. Sinead Stubbins’ searingly hilarious novel nails this particular dreadfulness of corporate culture. Her cast of characters includes the smug bosses, the determined loner, the desperate sycophants and those dreadful enablers who insist on reminding everyone what fun they are having.
But, at its heart, it’s a novel about the choices we make to either be part of the herd of be true to ourselves. That it’s impossible to be one person at work and another outside of it. It’s all one life and being different is not a reason to be isolated and bullied. Edith is resourceful, smart and cynical. And, as it turns out, deservedly so. Stinkbug will have you squirming one minute and laughing the next. Stinkbug is, simply, delicious fun.
To win a copy of Stinkbug, scroll down to Freebies!
A little bit about the author …
Sinead Stubbins is a Melbourne/Naarm-based writer, editor and cultural critic, and the author of In My Defence, I Have No Defence. Her work appears in print, online and on TV.
Connect with Sinead Stubbins
Find Sinead on Instagram here @sineadstubbins
Follow her on Substack and sign up for her newsletter at
Find out more about Sinead on her website here
Australia: Buy a copy of the book here
Dominic Amerena is an Australian writer whose work has been widely published and anthologised. He has won numerous prizes, scholarships, fellowships, and grants, including the Vil La Joana Residency, the Hawthornden Fellowship, the inaugural Speculate Prize, an Australia Council New Work Grant and the Alan Marshall Short Story Award. He has a PhD from the University of RMIT and he lives between Melbourne and Athens, Greece. I Want Everything is his debut novel.
A little bit about the book …
The legendary career of reclusive cult author Brenda Shales remains one of Australia’s last unsolved literary mysteries. Her books took the world by storm before she disappeared from the public eye after a mysterious plagiarism case. But when an ambitious young writer stumbles across Brenda at a Melbourne pool, he realises the scoop of a lifetime is floating in front of him: the truth behind why she vanished without a trace. The
only problem? He must pretend to be someone he’s not to trick the story out of her.
One innocent lie leads to a slew that are definitively not, as Brenda reveals the strange and troubling truth of where her books came from. Yet the more the author unravels about Brenda’s past, the more he begins to question whether Brenda is a reliable narrator. Is she spilling secrets or spinning tales? Is she, like him, little more than a talented thief? To write the book that will make his name, he must balance his ethics and ambition and decide what he’s willing to sacrifice to become the next great Australian writer.
Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind this story?
My novel is about the lies we tell ourselves to get everything that we want. The self-deceit and deceptions that emerge when people are forced to weigh ambition against ethics. The novel is essentially about the toxic, parasitic relationship between a reclusive cult author and an ambitious young writer who’ll do anything to get what he wants. I wanted to tell a story where the tension was forever ratcheting up, about authenticity and deception and the costs of someone’s dreams and desires coming true.
The novel is informed by Australia’s relationship to literary hoaxes. From the Ern Malley affair to John Hughs’s terrible theft, Australian literary culture has been racked by cases of scandal and fraudulence. I was interested in what that might say about Australia’s relationship to coloniality and the settler unconscious and moreover how I might dramatize that in a fun and fast-paced way.
It’s such a great premise. A firecracker author who created a sensation then disappeared. An aspiring author who despairs he doesn’t have the chops to make it as successful writer. What is it about that setup, that dynamic, that you found so compelling?
My two main characters, the unnamed narrator, and the cult author, Brenda Shales are in constant conflict and counterpoint with each other. Their drives and desires are diametrically opposed (though for reasons I can’t quite reveal here without giving the game away). They want things the other can never quite give. I was interested in the idea of talent as a quality that could be taken and transfused, passed from one host to another, a toxic form of literary parasitism. I wanted to make something dynamic and dramatic where these two characters were drawn ever closer together and to mutual ruination.
When the story begins, the main character is kind of listless and directionless. By contrast, his partner, Ruth, is finding success with her writing. Why did you want to create him as a person who is acted upon by the world?
My novel revels in the libidinal thrill of negative states, ambition and jealousy, bitterness and entitlement. I want the reader to feel drawn to my shit of a narrator, even as they’re appalled by what he does. I think he possesses qualities (like passivity and ambivalence) which we all have to deal with (or not) in our everyday lives. My novel is in a sense about my character discovering that what he wants (success, fame and fortune) might not be what he actually needs.
Of course, meeting the reclusive Brenda Shales changes his life and is the thrust of the story. It felt like there was a moral theme underpinning the story about the truths we choose to believe—about ourself and those we project upon. Is that what you intended?
This novel is deeply invested in unpacking the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day and to keep intact the images of who we choose to believe we are. The narrator is subject to a series of suspect projections, onto his girlfriend Ruth, Brenda and most pertinently himself. His struggles for self definition and his inability to clearly see the people he loves exposes the shaky foundations of the self.
Another theme is parental love, or lack thereof. Each of the main characters has a fraught relationship with their parents, particularly their mothers. I confess, as a writer, I am obsessed with mothers. What were you exploring through these relationships?
At its core, this novel is about influence, literary or otherwise, the things that are passed down and carried through, the perils of authorship and bringing life into the world, whether that’s a book or a baby. I think once I began thinking about these ideas and themes, the motif of motherhood emerged quite naturally.
Many writers are drawn to write about other writers. Why do you think this is an endless topic of fascination for the writer but also the reader?
The idea of the creative life is intoxicating to many people, and a subject of endless fascination for me. Everyone has a desire to make things, but few get a chance to put art at the centre of their lives. It’s a choice which comes with real sacrifices, in terms of time money and lifestyle. And yet I believe it’s a brave and beautiful way to spend one’s life, a choice which disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed. This in part explains why so many writers and readers are drawn to these types of stories.
To WIN a copy of I Want Everything, scroll down to Freebies
Freebies!!
If you enjoyed the interview with Dominic Amerena, then this is your chance to win a copy of I Want Everything. Thanks to Simon & Schuster Australia for providing us with **two** copies to giveaway. All you have to do is send a reply email with the answer to this very tricky question.
What is the name of the famed literary recluse?
Thanks to our friends at HarperCollins Australia, we have **two** copies of Melaleuca to give away. All you need to do is answer the following questions.
Where is Melaleuca set?
And thanks to the fabulous folks at Affirm Press, we have **three** copies of Stinkbug to give away. All you need to do is answer the following question.
What is the name of the advertising agency where Edith works?
The fine print: Giveaways are currently only open to subscribers and you must reside within Australia to be eligible to win (postage!) The winners will be picked at random and will be emailed on Tuesday 17 June 2025. Good luck!
The End
And here we are at the end of another edition. I hope these books have tickled your fancy. Please leave a comment, follow along on socials and come back again next month where there will be more bookish news, reviews, interviews and freebies. See you soon!
Don’t forget, you can always catch up with us on Instagram @newvoicesdownunder
And, if you’d like to read my author newsletter, you can subscribe to A Cuppa With Meredith here The next edition is out Thursday 5 June!