Welcome to the ABC Arts wrap of the best books out in October, which is always a bumper month in the publishing world and this year is no different.

Our literary critics have read widely to bring you their suggestions on what to read next. On the list are the much-anticipated new novel from beloved local writer Jane Harper, a moving memoir set in a bohemian enclave of Sydney and a pacy Antarctic thriller that takes on some of the big issues of our time.

We also have a review of the first novel from Kiran Desai since she won the Booker Prize in 2006 — and this one is up for the Booker too.

Happy reading!

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Hamish Hamilton

Desai told The Guardian that Sunny and Sonia was a "modern-day romance that wasn't necessarily romantic". (Supplied: Penguin Books Australia)

First up, a warning: this book is a whopper. It's a love story but our main players won't even lay eyes on each other until page 233.

But settle in with Sunny and Sonia — you're in for a treat.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the long-awaited follow up to Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning second novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006). Desai has spent almost 20 years working on this new book and it's a rich and wonderful labour of love.

Listen to the podcast Your favourite fiction authors share the stories behind their latest books on ABC Radio National's The Book Show.

Sunny and Sonia are both wannabe writers (he's interested in journalism; she wants to write novels) born and raised in India who head to the United States in the 1990s as young students.

In America, they both find themselves in troublesome relationships — Sunny with distant Ulla, and Sonia with the older, controlling artist Illan. Desai's exploration of the nuances of cross-cultural relationships is incisive and often hilarious — "Whatever I eat, I find he's slipped curry in there" Ulla boasts/complains to her American friends.

But it's not just Sunny, Sonia and their partners who are painted in vivid detail. The sheer breadth of this novel allows Desai to bring every character in their orbit fully to life.

Sunny's proud mother and Sonia's bumbling father are highlights, as is Sonia's lonely aunt, Mina Foi — a woman abandoned by her husband and ignored by her family.

Sonia and Sunny both grapple with how to write about India without reducing it to a cliché — at one point Sonia is told to avoid arranged marriages and magic realism at all costs. Kiran Desai tackles this question by including it all: the cliché and the reality, the magic and the mundanity, in a richly enjoyable read.

— Claire Nichols

Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray

Summit Books

Chosen Family (2025) by Madeleine Gray explores the spectrum of female friendship. (Supplied: Simon & Schuster)

In 2023, Madeleine Gray's debut novel Green Dot saw her burst onto the Australian literary scene as a fresh, exciting vo