Australian Geographic has rounded up four new titles from NewSouth Publishing that read like a tour of the continent — no boarding pass required. Together they cover backyard wildlife, big-idea science, community-driven optimism and the fight to save endangered species, all published in time for Christmas.
First up is Wild Neighbours by Ann Göth and urban ecologist Darryl Jones ($34.99, out November), which explains the cockatoos, brush turkeys, blue-tongues and magpies that share our suburbs. It answers the questions you've probably wondered about: why magpies sing duets, how cockatoos cracked the bin-opening problem, and why koalas sleep so much. A good pick for anyone whose holiday walk ends up being a birdwatching session.
The Best Australian Science Writing 2026, edited by Fiona McMillan-Webster ($34.99), marks the anthology's 16th year. With a foreword by Professor Sujatha Raman and more than 40 contributors, it spans a failed Soviet Venus mission, maths applied to drug cartels, a dog who inspired a cancer treatment, and what backyard sprinklers reveal about life on the driest inhabited continent. It's built for dipping into one story at a time over summer.
Wild Hope by Claire Scobie ($36.99) is the most travel-flavoured of the four. After a personal turning point, Scobie moved to Gumbaynggirr Country on the NSW Mid North Coast and set out to find people actively building better futures — farmers, Elders, filmmakers and CEOs among them. Her reporting takes in efforts to make Melbourne's Yarra River swimmable again, community-owned power in Bristol, England, and kids learning Gumbaynggirr in a Coffs Harbour school. An antidote to doomscrolling, essentially.
Finally, The Vanishing Wild by award-winning science writer Justine E. Hausheer ($34.99) tackles a sobering fact: Australia has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation in the past 200 years. Hausheer travels the country for the stories — pygmy-possums in the Snowy Mountains, bitterns booming in Riverina rice fields, a night-time stakeout for the elusive night parrot in the spinifex, and fat-tailed dunnarts that may hold clues to de-extincting the Tasmanian tiger. It's been longlisted for the 2026 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.
Why it matters for travellers: each of these books doubles as inspiration for a trip — the suburbs and parks where urban wildlife thrives, the Snowies, the Riverina, the Mid North Coast — or as a companion for a long summer read en route. All are available via UNSW Publishing.
