A lost novel by a Nobel laureate and others for your to-read list

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Translated by Anne McLean, Penguin. $35.

Colombian Nobel laureate Marquez's posthumously published "lost" novel was edited by Cristobal Pera from a fifth draft and a document preserving offcuts from earlier attempts. In it, Ana Magdalena Bach is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Amid sultry days and tropical downpours, lotharios and con men, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire, and the fear that sits quietly at her heart.

Catherine Chidgey. Allen & Unwin. $32.99.

Winner of New Zealand's Fiction Book of the Year 2023, this story stars Tama the magpie. When he is rescued by Marnie, she and her husband Rob, a farmer, have new possibilities. Tama can speak, and his fame is growing. His father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans and Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds - and all the precarity, darkness and hope within them - bleed into one another. The conclusion takes place at the annual Axeman's Carnival.

Alexia Casale. Penguin. $34.99.

Sally never meant to cave her husband's head in with a skillet. Or at least she didn't until suddenly, she did. But Sally isn't the only woman in town who reached breaking point. When coincidence brings four female strangers together, a surprising friendship is formed since they have two things in common: the women were all pushed too far in their abusive relationships, and they each have a corpse to dispose of now. So can they find the best way to bury their husbands - and get away with it?

David Baldacci. Pan Macmillan. $34.95.

In 1968 in southern Virginia, Jack Lee, a white lawyer who has never done anything to push back against racism, takes on the case of Jerome Washington, a black man charged with killing an elderly, wealthy white couple. Jack fears his legal skills might not be enough to prevail in an unfair system and forms a difficult partnership with Desiree Dubose, a black lawyer from Chicago. Apart from the skills of the prosecutor, there are powerful outside forces at work to blunt the victories achieved by the civil rights era. Together they fight for the chance of a fair trial and true justice.

Vanessa Pirotta. NewSouth. $32.99.

Wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta has been mugged by whales, touched by a baby whale and covered in whale snot. Here, she dives beneath the surface to reveal the mysterious world of humpback whales - from their life cycle and the challenges humans present, to why whale snot and poo are important for us and the ocean. And then there's the cutting-edge new technologies that allow us to see where they swim, listen to them talk and spy on them underwater.

Peter Pomerantsev. Allen & Unwin. $49.99.

In 1941, Britain was struggling to combat the powerful Nazi propaganda machine. But inside Germany, there was one notable voice of dissent from the very heart of the military machine - Der Chef, a German whose radio broadcasts skilfully questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens. But what these audiences didn't know was that Der Chef was a fiction, a character created by the British propagandist Sefton Delmer. And the book's author is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own involving the invasion of Ukraine.

Marina Kamenev. NewSouth. $36.99.

While the nuclear family still exists, many more types of kinship surround us. This book delves into what influences us to have children and the new ways that have made parenthood possible. It explores the experiences of couples without children, single parents by choice and rainbow families, and investigates the impacts of adoption, sperm donation, IVF and surrogacy, and the potential for a future of designer babies. Assisted reproductive technology has developed quickly, and the ways in which we think and speak about its implications - both legally and ethically - need to catch up.

John Bradshaw. Australian Scholarly Publishing. $44.

Aeneas Gunn achieved posthumous fame in 1908 as the "Maluka" of his wife Jeannie (Mrs Aeneas) Gunn's autobiographical novel, We of the Never-Never. They went to Elsey cattle station in the Northern Territory in 1902 and he died the following year of dysentery, after which she moved back to her hometown, Melbourne. Gunn's story, before and after Elsey, can now be told, thanks to the discovery of a large cache of his letters. A proud and capable literary man, Gunn found his vulnerabilities exposed in unusual circumstances. His Anglocentric views would, in time, be tempered by the woman he loved and admired.