May New Releases 2026

Understanding relationships isn’t just about other people — it starts with understanding yourself and where you’ve come from. 

In How We Relate, clinical and forensic psychologist Dr Ahona Guha takes us on an illuminating journey through the psychology of human connection. Drawing from her many years of clinical experience, she reveals how our earliest relationships shape every connection we form — from family and friendships to romance and work.

How do childhood blueprints influence adult behaviours? Why do some friendships fail while others flourish? What makes the difference between healthy and toxic dynamics? With warmth and practical insight, Guha explores the hidden patterns that govern our interactions, offering concrete strategies for breaking free from destructive cycles.

Whether you’re struggling with difficult family members, navigating workplace politics, or seeking deeper intimacy in love, this book provides the psychological tools to understand yourself and transform your relationships. How We Relate is your guide to building the meaningful connections you deserve.

WINNER OF THE 2026 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power.

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the ‘something’ is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

The extraordinary tale — ‘A two-volume mystery!’ Mark Twain called it — of the solicitor who incited a campaign to free a man he knew was guilty of attempted murder, who lost his reputation and ability to practise, and who embarked on a decades-long political career to regain it all.

Sydney, 1895. Richard Meagher is a brilliant criminal defence solicitor with ambitions in politics. Into his life comes George Dean, a handsome, popular ferryman accused of attempting to poison his own wife. The evidence pointing to Dean’s guilt is damning but, in Dean’s protests of innocence and the clamour of public support, Meagher senses that a great opportunity is at hand.

Nine months later, everything is in ruins. Dean is in gaol, and Meagher has lost everything. Determined to recover his reputation and vindicate his actions, Meagher begins a twenty-five-year quest to rewrite the ‘Dean case’ and reclaim all he has lost. That quest will put him in the glare of public scrutiny, arouse enemies at every turn, propel him to high political office, and entwine his cause with the making of the Australian nation.

In a work of true crime with a twist, moving from sordid Sydney streets to the corridors of parliament, and spanning the critical years of Australia’s history in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, The Stained Man tells the riveting story of Australia’s most sensational scandal — and of how an indelible stain was eventually expunged.

True love or easy money — which would you choose?

Fresh from graduating with her master’s in philosophy, Anna is shocked when a career counsellor tells her she has ‘no special skills’. Desperate for work and financial independence, she accepts a thankless job at a TV talk show. She might be making minimum wage, but at least she has her boyfriend Lulu, the love of her life, to come home to at night.

But one day Lulu starts throwing up cash — thousands of euros in just a few days — hurtling the twenty-something couple into unforeseen wealth. Having spent their lives proudly rejecting consumer society, they suddenly find themselves rich, and Anna is loving every minute of it: she gets a designer bag, they vacation in Tahiti, they throw wild parties in their fancy new apartment.

As Anna grows accustomed to a life of luxury, Lulu’s health suffers, and she wonders: what would be worse, losing him or losing the money?

In Self-Worth newcomer Emma Tholozan delivers a raw, brutally funny portrait of a generation without ideals.

What unites us with frogs ferrying tadpoles on their backs, beetles regurgitating food into the mouths of their larvae, or a shorebird luring a predator away from her nest by pretending her wing is broken? Creatures around the world have strategies to keep their offspring alive that are varied and surprising — and often familiar.

In this compelling and entertaining study, science journalist Elizabeth Preston explores the biology, brain circuitry, and behaviours we share with species across the animal kingdom that care for young. In the field and in the lab, readers will also meet scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding these animals, often while juggling families of their own.

Alongside animal parents that range from lonely octopuses to warfare-waging mongooses, we’ll encounter our own species in a new way. Elizabeth Preston argues that Homo sapiens’ history of caring for children cooperatively has left a legacy in all of us, parents and non-parents alike, and is the basis for our caring human society.