The Nile's Books of the Month: August

The Nile's Book of the Month: Non-Fiction

Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century by George Megalogenis

One of our greatest political journalists charts Australia’s course into the new century.

For decades our politics has failed to keep up with a changing Australia. The federal elections of 2022 and 2025 were an overdue wake-up call to three shocks that have reshaped our national identity:

• For the first time since federation, we have a population that’s majority migrants and their children.
• Professional women are now the largest segment of the workforce, replacing blue-collar men.
• On the world stage, both our allies and our key trade partners have proven unreliable.

Together, these shocks have changed the electoral maths for our politicians. For too long both major parties operated on outdated assumptions about Australia that go back to the Howard era.

With original interviews and research, Three Shocks tells the inside story of how our politicians caught up to the times or were left behind. Labor learned how to win again by embracing our new diversity; the Liberals suffered back-to-back landslide defeats that have threatened their very existence.

These three shocks will define our national politics in the future, but they should change how we all think about Australia and who we are becoming in the twenty-first century.

The Nile's Book of the Month: Fiction

Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Sorrow and Bliss comes an achingly tender, poignant, funny and bittersweet story of love, loneliness and finding connection in the most unlikely of places.

‘So smart, so funny, so moving - Mason has done it again, this time using behind the scenes of a literary festival to reveal the complexity of loneliness and how one woman attempts to dig herself out. I absolutely loved it’ - Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

Sophie Pattison is such a lovely person. Warm, kind, amazingly positive. She works as a freelance sound technician for literary festivals. She is a massive reader and was recently forced to move house. She is bracingly lonely.*

So much so, the absence of others feels like a physical weight, if that makes sense. But then, Sophie discovers an author through work, and comes to adore her. Her books, her interviews, podcasts, and wisdom and brilliance, her beautiful words. It’s like solace and company. It’s almost like love. And Sophie would love to meet her, although she never will, obviously. The author would never come to her festival. She’s too famous for that. Too brilliant, too beautiful. And in a way, thank goodness, because that would change everything. Sophie’s entire life.

But… what if she did?

*although she has a best friend called Emma, and an amazing brother. And a husband. But a number of things happened there.

The Nile's Book of the Month: Young Adult

A River I Must Be by Kate Foster

A compelling and moving verse novel by award-winning author, Kate Foster, who combines her heart-felt writing with an authentic view of autism and the pressure of masking. And the joy of freeing yourself from that.

Like a river, I must keep flowing, finding a way through if I want to survive. I will adapt

no matter the pain this causes me. I will paint on a mask and hide my struggles.

But can I be strong like a river?

Rebecca Tapia has started at a prestigious new school and is overwhelmed by the rules and expectations. With her mum away and her dad facing challenges of his own, Rebecca’s only way of surviving is to mask her autism.

A compelling and moving verse novel by award-winning author Kate Foster, who combines her heartfelt writing with an authentic view of autism and the daily pressure of masking.

And the joy of freeing yourself from that.

The Nile's Book of the Month: Children's Book

Eighty-Nine Questions for After by Ashleigh Barton

A wise and beautifully written middle-grade novel about finding answers to the big questions in life from popular children’s author Ashleigh Barton.

Ester Star is a germophobe and hypochondriac and she’s convinced she’s going to die. To prepare for her imminent and inevitable demise, Ester keeps a list of all the questions she hopes to have answered in the afterlife - things she knows she’ll never have the answers to during her lifetime. What really happened to the dinosaurs? Just how big is the universe? Are ghosts real? She’s up to eighty-nine questions and counting.

When Ester’s usual after-school sitters announce they are moving away, her mum comes up with an alternative arrangement that turns her world upside down. Every day after school, Ester is to spend her afternoons with Mum at work. At a hospice. Terrified of all the things she might catch at a hospice, Ester is anxious every second she’s there.

But soon she meets Joan, an elderly lady who used to be in the circus. Joan tells Ester she doesn’t believe in the afterlife, but she does have one question she’ll regret never having answered while she’s alive. Why did her sister disappear all those years ago, after they had been so close growing up in the circus together?

With the help of Peter, another kid who spends his afternoons at the hospice, and her new next-door neighbour, a tech whizz named Mackenzie, Ester sets out to have Joan’s question answered.

Will Ester realise there’s more to life than worrying about dying?