Warm Winter Read 2025

Welcome back to Warm Winter Read! To keep you inspired to read daily this season, this year's author-ambassadors Ann Liang, Christian White, Melanie Cheng, Sarah Firth, Emelia Hart, Rachael Johns, and Connie Cao have recommended thirty-two books across a wide variety of forms and genres, fiction and non-fiction, for you to enjoy.

Stay warm and get reading this winter!

Updated July 15, 2025
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Wyndham Library
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The Valley
Hammer, Chris.
Paper Book
The latest stunning thriller from the bestselling author of Scrublands and The Seven.
Everyday Permaculture: Sustainable Living For Every Space
Gibbons, Anna Matilda.
Paper Book
Whether you're a renter, homeowner or apartment dweller, Everyday Permaculture is the guide to sustainable living for everyone. This book gives practical and simple ways for people to incorporate permaculture and other eco-friendly habits into their lifestyle, no matter where they...
Women & children
Birch, Tony
Paper Book
It's 1965 and Joe Cluny is living in a working-class suburb with his mum, Marion, and sister, Ruby, spending his days trying to avoid trouble with the nuns at the local Catholic primary school. One evening his Aunty Oona appears on the doorstep, distressed and needing somewhere to stay. As his mum...
The Ones We Love
Snoekstra, Anna.
Paper Book
'The Ones We Love is a raw examination of family, with page-turning twists and memorable characters. What more could you want?' -Christian White, bestselling author of The Nowhere Child and The Ledge   Something is...
At The Foot Of The Cherry Tree
Parker, Alli.
Paper Book
A stirring story of love and hope, based on the incredible true story of Australia's first Japanese war bride and a love that changed a nation forever. SHORTLISTED FOR 2023 DYMOCKS BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 ABIA MATT RICHELL AWARD FOR NEW WRITERS LONGLISTED...
The Wedding Forecast
Kenwood, Nina.
Paper Book
One thirty-year-old whose life is not quite the dream she''d hoped for. One best friend''s wedding. One ex and his new partner. One slightly famous actor from New York. One photographer called Patrick. And a prediction that looks...
Immortal Dark
Girma, Tigest.
Paper Book
A lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister in this dangerously romantic dark academia debut.Orphan Kidan Adane is the heiress to a fallen House of humans bound to vampiric creatures known as draniacs. As a...
Australian native food harvest : a guide for the passionate cook and gardener
Weatherhead, Julie
Paper Book
A room made of leaves : a novel
Grenville, Kate
Paper Book
What if Elizabeth Macarthur-wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney-had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That's the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful...
Duck a l'Orange for Breakfast
May, Karina.
Paper Book
Maxine 'Max' Mayberry, an ad executive with writing ambitions, is holed up in a friend's apartment after discovering her long-term boyfriend in bed with another woman. If that wasn't bad enough, Max has recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Enter Johnny: a cheeky yet charming Tinder pen pal...
The burnished sun
Riwoe, Mirandi
Paper Book
From the award-winning author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain come these superbly crafted stories that explore the inner lives of those who are often ignored or misunderstood. We follow a migrant mother who yearns to feel welcomed at a kids' party in a local park; a young skateboarder...
Follow your gut : a story from the microbes that make you
Wild, Ailsa
Paper Book
Meet the ecosystem inside you ... A timid Bifidobacteriumnamed Biffy is forced to leave their family and become part of a new community, in the gut of a newborn human baby. Follow Your Gutis a comic that ate a biology textbook. It's an epic adventure set over the first three years...
When one person dies the whole world is over
Ord, Mandy
Paper Book
*Longlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize* *Shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year Award 2020* A poignant, bright and elegiac work of illustrated nonfiction by one of Australia's most revered comics makers. When One Person Dies The Whole World Is Over<...
Dark rise
Pacat, C. S.
Paper Book
The first book in a brilliant YA fantasy trilogy from internationally acclaimed Australian author CS Pacat.
The Girl with No Reflection
Chow, Keshe.
Paper Book
Ying Yue believes in love. So when the royal matchmaker selects her to wed the crown prince, Ying hopes that love is exactly what awaits her. No matter that the royal family is notoriously reclusive, rarely leaving their walled palace-and no matter the rumors about the previous royal brides, who...
I Ate the Whole World to Find You
Ang, Rachel.
Paper Book
A coworker-turned-prospective-lover confesses a hard-to-swallow fetish. A train ride fantastically goes off the rails. Cousins revisit summer holiday bliss - or was it really horror? Exes fumble an attempt to reconnect over a dip in the pool. And an expectant mother slips into uncharted territory as...
Still alive notes from Australia's immigration detention system
Ahmed, Safdar
Paper Book
In early 2011, Safdar Ahmed visited Sydney's Villawood Immigration Detention Centre for the first time. He brought pencils and sketchbooks into the centre and started drawing with the people detained there. Their stories are told in this book.Interweaving journalism, history and autobiography, Still...
Garden like a nonno : the Italian art of growing your own food
Crupi, Jaclyn
Paper Book
Jaclyn Crupi is back with more Italian wisdom! In Garden Like a Nonno, Jaclyn uncovers the secrets of the green-thumbed nonnos from their no-nonsense approach to life to their zero waste gardening. Whether you have a tiny balcony or a sprawling backyard, you'll be growing your...
The sitter
O'Keeffe, Angela
Paper Book
Paris, 2020. A writer is confined to her hotel room during the early days of the pandemic, struggling to finish a novel about Hortense Cezanne, wife and sometime muse of the famous painter. Dead for more than a century, Hortense has been reawakened by this creative endeavour, and now shadows the...
The Degenerates
Richardson, Raeden.
Paper Book
Following the interwoven lives of four characters across India, Australia and the United States, the novel takes root in Melbourne and brings its streets, shopping centres and laneways to life with astounding originality--the city may never be the same again. The Degeneratesradiates...
Theory and practice
De kretser, Michelle.
Paper Book
It's 1986, and 'beautiful, radical ideas' are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students--and Kit. He claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her...
I Am Not Jessica Chen
Liang, Ann.
Paper Book
Jenna Chen has spent her life in the shadow of her flawless cousin. Jessica Chen is so smart she gets the top score on every test. Jessica Chen is so beautiful people stop in the hallway to stare at her. Jessica Chen is so perfect she got into Harvard. And Jenna Chen will...
The Hemsworth effect
Weir, James
Paper Book
A sleepy town is about to wake up and smell the turmeric lattes #DontForgetYourKeepCup   It started with the Hemsworths. Now, Byron Bay local, Aimee Maguire, is about to lose everything because she can't afford to pay the rent. Her engagement is also on an...
The Chilling
James, Riley.
Paper Book
An unputdownable thriller set in the pressure-cooker environment of an Antarctic winter.
Red River Road
Downes, Anna
Paper Book
On the Coral Coast of Western Australia, solo traveller Katy is on a mission to find her free-spirited sister, Phoebe, who disappeared along the same route a year ago. But as she drives her campervan further into the wild north, Katy realises she's not as alone as she'd first believed. Soon she is...
Ledge
White, Christian.
Paper Book
When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered. It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an...
The love contract
Vizard, Steph
Paper Book
Can she (pretend to) love her neighbour? An award-winning modern rom-com for all fans of fake dating, enemies-to-lovers stories. I didn't know the guy next door. And given he was now my daughter's manny and my fake boyfriend, I needed to find out. Single mum Zoe had the...
The spider and her demons
Khoo, Sydney
Paper Book
sydney khoo is a recipient of Penguin Random House Australia's Write It fellowship program, which aspires to find, nurture and develop unpublished writers across all genres, with a focus on underrepresented sections of our community. Between surviving high school and working at her aunt...
Tenderheart : A book about vegetables and unbreakable family bonds
McKinnon, Hetty Lui
Paper Book
Tenderheart is a book about vegetables. It is also a story of unbreakable family bonds, love and loss, and the legacy of food as a way to stay connected to loved ones, including those who have passed. In this masterwork from Australia's most respected vegetable-loving food writer, Hetty Lui McKinnon...
Moonlight and the pearler's daughter
Pook, Lizzie
Paper Book
Never thought I'd end up here
Liang, Ann
Paper Book
An instant New York Times bestseller! From the author of the instant New York Times bestseller I Hope This Doesn't Find You comes another hilarious and romantic romcom, this time following a former model determined to get revenge on the boy who ruined her...
This time it's real
Liang, Ann (Young adult author)
Paper Book
When seventeen-year-old Eliza Lin's essay about meeting the love of her life unexpectedly goes viral, her entire life changes overnight. Now she has the approval of her classmates at her new international school in Beijing, a career-launching internship opportunity at her favourite magazine ... and...
I Hope This Doesn't Find You
Liang, Ann.
Paper Book
Sadie Wen is perfect on paper- school captain, valedictorian, and a "pleasure to have in class." It's not easy, but she has a trick to keep her model-student smile plastered on her face at all times- she channels all her frustrations into her email drafts. She'd never send them of course - she'd...
A Song to Drown Rivers
Liang, Ann.
Paper Book
A love story that transcends time and place.Xishi's beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue - where the best fate for a girl is to marry well and support her family. When Xishi draws the attention of Fanli, the famous young military advisor, he presents her with a rare opportunity: to...
Wild place
White, Christian
Paper Book
Australia Day
Cheng, Melanie
Paper Book
Australia Day is a collection of stories by debut author Melanie Cheng. The people she writes about are young, old, rich, poor, married, widowed, Chinese, Lebanese, Christian, Muslim. What they have in common-no matter where they come from-is the desire we all share to feel that we belong....
Room for a stranger
Cheng, Melanie
Paper Book
By the winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, 2018. Since her sister died, Meg has been on her own. She doesn't mind, not really-not with Atticus, her African grey parrot, to keep her company-but after her house is broken into by a knife-wielding intruder, she...
The work wives
Johns, Rachael
Paper Book
How well do you really know the people you work with? For work wives Debra and Quinn, it's a case of opposites attract. They are each other's lifelines as they navigate office politics and jobs that pay the bills but don't inspire them. Outside work, they are also...
The wife and the widow
White, Christian
Paper Book
Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW is a mystery/thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband's secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside...
The nowhere child
White, Christian
Paper Book
Her name is Sammy Went. This photo was taken on her second birthday. Three days later she was gone.' On a break between teaching photography classes in Melbourne, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home twenty-eight years earlier....

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