What to read this summer, from Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment to Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo
Summer is peak reading season for Australians, and the ABC Arts, Culture and Entertainment team is no exception.
We’ve spent weeks with our noses buried in all manner of good books and we’ve cherry-picked our favourites to share with ABC readers.
Our eclectic tastes span romantasy, crime, literary fiction and more. So here’s a list of page-turners to dive into, with something for everyone — from a cult Japanese bestseller to illuminating non-fiction.
Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
Macmillan Australia

The idea for Here One Moment came to Moriarty while waiting on the tarmac on a delayed flight to Hobart. (Supplied: Macmillan Australia)
Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment was the highest-selling fiction book in Australia in 2024, and for good reason. The powerhouse writer who brought us Big Little Lies, Apples Never Fall and Nine Perfect Strangers hooks us in yet again with her latest novel, and its playful exploration of relationships, death and fate.
Here One Moment begins with a woman on a plane telling her fellow passengers how and when each of them will die. For many of these people, her words hit too close to home. One man is told he’ll die in a workplace accident at 43, another that he’ll be killed in an assault at 30.
We follow a handful of these passengers as they spiral, reckoning with the idea that “fate can’t be fought”. While most of our characters don’t really believe in psychics, it does prompt them to reflect on their lives. If you knew how and when you might die, what would you change?
We also get a peek into the world of Cherry, the “Death Lady” from the plane. While at first these chapters feel like frustrating breaks from the lives of the panicking passengers, you soon start to look forward to them as Cherry becomes someone you care about.
Here One Moment has all the attributes of a Liane Moriarty classic: well-crafted characters, page-turning mystery and recognisably Australian locations.
It’s a novel about the unpredictability of life, the joyous and the devastating, warts and all.
— Rachel Rasker
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
Penguin
Alderton is also known as a podcast host and the Dear Dolly columnist for the The Sunday Times in the UK. (Supplied: Penguin)
The second novel from Alderton — who earned legions of mostly millennial women fans with her memoir, Everything I Know About Love — is the story of Andy, a flailing stand-up comedian in his mid-30s, living in London. He’s just been dumped by his girlfriend Jen and he’s gutted.
It was ambitious of Alderton to inhabit a young male protagonist, but you can tell she’s done the work to find an authentic voice: a mix of barbs, nostalgia and nods towards sincerity — but a reticence to really talk about feelings. Andy and his friends feel real, the sort of 35-year-olds who struggle to arrange a time to catch up, but who connect over cultural references when they do.
Andy is stuck in his feelings — often to the detriment of the people around him. It’s something we can all relate to when we’re at our lowest.
But Alderton’s writing on break-ups never becomes overwrought, thanks to the specificity of Andy’s experience: he tries living on a houseboat, he becomes an odd man’s lodger, he obsessively DMs a stranger on Instagram.
We see how a break-up hits differently when you’re in your 30s: people are settling down, with kids, marriages, fully fledged careers. At the same time, Andy is grappling with the grim realisation that he may never make it as a stand-up.
Good Material explores how your relationships — both romantic and platonic — shift as you age, and how you constantly, repeatedly need to figure out who you are and how best to be in the world.
— Hannah Story
One Dark Night by Hannah Richell
Simon & Schuster
One Dark Night is Richell’s sixth novel. (Suppled: Simon & Schuster)
Rachel Dean is the head of student welfare at a prestigious private school where her daughter Ellie, a talented artist, is a scholarship student. When the body of a teenage girl is found in a nearby forest, Rachel’s newly ex-husband, DC Ben Chase, investigates the case. It transpires that the girl is a student at his daughter’s school, and as his family becomes more embroiled in the case, Ben is forced to step back from the investigation.
One Dark Night is the seventh novel by Hannah Richell, a former Sydneysider who returned home to the south-west of England (where this novel is set) after the death of her husband, publisher Matt Richell, in a surfing accident in 2014.
Good crime fiction parses contemporary anxieties and, in One Dark Night, Richell explores issues including climate change activism, the misuse of social media and the effects of trauma. She also casts her eye to the domestic as Rachel and Ben navigate their marriage breakdown while parenting a teenager.
Richell ratchets up the suspense as suspicion falls on different characters by turn, and keeps readers guessing until the end. For me, a summer read must be a page-turner, and One Dark Night absolutely passes the test.
— Nicola Heath
Modern Divination by Isa Agajanian
Pan Macmillan
Modern Divination is the first instalment in what will be a two-part series. (Supplied: Pan Macmillan)
Modern Divination isn’t your average A Court of Thorns and Roses-esque adult romantic fantasy novel centring white, cisgender heterosexuals with high-key traditional values.
Not only has non-binary author Isa Agajanian crafted a uniquely atmospheric world and fascinating magic system with their debut, they’ve also imagined deeply refreshing characters.
Our lead is Aurelia Schwartz, a 23-year-old bisexual witch with emotional baggage determined to keep her magical life secret from her fellow students at the University of Cambridge.
But the life she’s worked so hard to create threatens to come undone when her magic turns unpredictable. Worse still, someone is hunting witches.
In desperate need of help from another witch, Aurelia is forced to turn to her infuriating classmate, Teddy Ingram, who’s the only person who can offer her refuge.
Modern Divination features all the tropes big in romantic fantasy right now, from academic rivals-to-lovers to forced proximity and found family. But, more importantly, it executes them beautifully.
With writing that strikes the perfect balance between sparse and lyrical prose, deft world-building, a character-driven focus and spot-on pacing, this urban contemporary fantasy is the kind of book you’ll stay up reading for the slow-burn bisexual yearning.
— Yasmin Jeffery
The Cycle by Shalene Gupta
Pan Macmillan
Gupta is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Fortune and Harvard Business Review. (Supplied: Flatiron Books)
A lot of people don’t know much about premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Thankfully that’s changing, due to more media attention and people on social media sharing their experiences.
Shalene Gupta suffers from PMDD, and through a combination of rigorous research and personal anecdotes, her book The Cycle offers a wealth of information about the disorder, managing to be both educational and truly compelling.
One of Gupta’s first arguments outlines how young boys are conditioned to consider menstruation a taboo topic, and how this silence ultimately negatively affects people who menstruate. While this book wasn’t written with men in mind, it’s the first of myriad lessons and perspectives that those who don’t menstruate should learn from.
She also examines the uncomfortable battle between medical professionals and feminist groups on the topic of PMDD, and her willingness to offer both sides of the story without judgement illustrates why there’s been such silence and discomfort around PMDD for decades. Why would a feminist want to allow men further opportunity to tie a woman’s emotional state to her period?
The book is most absorbing when Gupta shares her own experiences with the disorder: the broken relationships, the suicidal ideation and the frustration that comes with dealing with medical professionals who just don’t get it. She shares such intimate details, but it never feels like too much information.
This brilliantly balanced and genuinely brave book will make anyone with PMDD in their life feel less alone, and hopefully armed with enough information to get the right diagnosis, better understand their partner/friend/colleague’s struggles, and live a happy life, regardless of the impact of their menstrual cycle.
— Dan Condon
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
Fourth Estate
Butter was published in Japan in 2017. (Supplied: Fourth Estate)
The image of fresh, cold butter slowly melting over hot grains of rice remains embedded in my brain ever since reading Butter.
This book provides pages upon pages of literally mouth-watering descriptions of food: noodles, soups, sweets and, at one point, an entire Thanksgiving turkey.
But while food is the central theme throughout, this book really turns on a hot core of female rage.
Rika Machida is a Tokyo-based journalist who works long, thankless hours at a men’s magazine, all in the hope of becoming the first woman to make the editorial desk. She finds herself drawn to the case of a woman accused of murdering several wealthy men: lonely businessmen who she allegedly seduced with her cooking.
Based on the real-life case of Kanae Kijima, Manako Kajii is a woman who simply cannot tolerate “feminists and margarine”. Similar to the real-life case, the Japanese media and general public fixate on the fact that Kaijii is neither thin nor demure: female qualities seen as essential in Japan (and many other places).
Rika goes to visit Kajii in prison and they enter an uneasy relationship that is part exclusive interview and part instructive course in gastronomy.
Rika can’t resist the dangerous pull of this unabashed woman, and spends most of her time either visiting her in prison or visiting the restaurants Kajii mentions: dingy ramen joints with soup best eaten after sex; Michelin-starred restaurants that glitter like castles; even the pristine dairy-producing region of Japan where Kajii grew up.
As Rika begins to change in both body and mind, the people around her start to notice, and her rage deepens.
For what initially reads like a crime novel, the story is quite slow-moving, building up a dark, sometimes lustful tension. But even when a few thrilling turns do come about, Butter is most impactful in its meditations on misogyny, female friendship, family obligations and, most of all, our relationship with food.
— Katherine Smyrk
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Faber
Two of Rooney’s novels, Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018), have been adapted for television. (Supplied: Faber)
When I took Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo to the beach this summer, I suspected I’d be too distracted by the hubbub of waves, friends’ high-volume children and Djuki the energetic dog who insisted on sharing my splayed-out towel to read, but this book made concentrating easy and happily engaged my holiday brain.
I lay on the sand contorting myself under an umbrella to see how long I could avoid sunburn while happily gorging on its pages. It was an ideal blend of literary and moreish holiday read.
Rooney is often credited for popularising sad millennial girl novels in the late 2010s. This book retains the same age-relatable ideas and prose, and manages to be simple but incisive. But this time, the protagonists are brothers, and she inhabits young men’s brains convincingly well.
The canoodling scenes remain a stand-out Rooney skill. Once again, they were infused with humanness, blending the fumbles with the intensely felt — as satisfying to consume as the local Coffin Bay oysters I devoured at the end of a chapter.
Now, back in the city and at work, I’m still finishing it, and grains of sand intermittently fall out from between the pages into my bed.
Intermezzo is an excellent summer read. I give it five out of five sandy, salty days.
— Eloise Fuss