The Best Australian Sea Stories: Our land is girt by sea
Jim Haynes
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781742371252
The deep blue sea has been an endless source of inspiration, wonder and imagination for explorers and writers alike. Australia's history and national character have been defined by the fact that we live on an isolated island continent girt by sea. The Best Australian Sea Stories is full of fascinating history, drama, and surprise. These stories trace the maritime history of ... More/Buy
The Best Australian Stories 2012
Sonya Hartnett (ed)
Black Inc, PB, 9781863955805
The Best Australian Stories 2012 is the country's premier annual collection of short fiction. This year sees Sonya Hartnett select thirty-two remarkable stories that roam widely in subject and style, but share 'a delicate complexity and a vibrant cleverness.' A travelling scout for a modern-day freak show meets a girl with a strange and wonderful gift. A winning lottery ticket tests ... More/Buy
The Cardboard Crown: Text Classics
Martin Boyd
Text Publishing, PB, 9781922079411
This remarkable novel, first published to a chorus of acclaim in 1952, is one of the lost classics of Australian literature. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer. Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who ... More/Buy
The Conversation
David Brooks
UQP, HB, 9780702249440
She came about five minutes later and sat at a table opposite him and closer to the wall, her back to the sea. Slim, not particularly tall, auburn hair, close-cropped, rather more studious than beautiful. Strong-featured. Or was it sharp-featured? A blend. In black jeans, a black jacket. Silver bracelet on a slender wrist. A young woman and an older man ... More/Buy
Dark Roots
Cate Kennedy
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070197
In these sublimely sophisticated tales, Cate Kennedy opens up worlds of finely observed detail. Her stories are populated by people at tipping points in their lives - moments that find them poised between a familiar past and an unfamiliar future. In 'The Testosterone Club', a neglected wife plans an unsavoury revenge on her boorish husband. In 'Resize', a married couple realise ... More/Buy
Everything Changes But You
Maggie Alderson
Michael Joseph, PB, 9781921518140
Home is where the heart is - but what happens to your heart when the people you love are scattered around the world? Hannah and Matt are very happy together, living in London's cool East End with their two young children. Hannah has a job she loves as a beauty editor and Matt is always just about to break through as ... More/Buy
The Fringe Dwellers: Text Classics
Nene Gare
Text Publishing, PB, 9781922079541
Set in a remote area of Western Australia, The Fringe Dwellers is the story of two part-Aboriginal sisters, Noonah and Trilby, who live in a family camp on the fringe of white society. Noonah accepts her position - but Trilby refuses to. First published in 1961, The Fringe Dwellers is a landmark novel in Australian literature. It was made into an ... More/Buy
The Golden Land
Di Morrissey
Pan Macmillan, PB, 9781742611358
Natalie is a young Gold Coast mother with a loving husband, two small children and a happy lifestyle. While helping her mother move house, she finds a little box containing a Burmese artefact. When Natalie learns its unique history through a letter left by her great-great uncle, it ignites an interest in its country of origin and her uncle's unfulfilled plans ... More/Buy
Griffith Review 38: The Annual Fiction Edition, The Novella Project
Julianne Schultz (ed)
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921922602
The annual Griffith REVIEW fiction edition is devoted to novellas. Shorter than a novel, longer than a story, the novella is the perfect length to read on the page or as an e-book. The Novella Project is a competition, generously supported by the Copyright Agency to find the best new works from Australia and New Zealand. Eminent judges are choosing from ... More/Buy
The Happiness Show: A Novel
Catherine Deveny
Black Inc, PB, 9781863955720
She ached for him. She longed for him. She missed the way he made her feel and how funny and smart and sexy she felt with him. And young. She missed the version of herself that she had left behind. At thirty-eight, Lizzie Quealy thinks she has things sorted: a happy relationship, a couple of gorgeous kids, a steadfast best friend ... More/Buy
Jack of Diamonds
Bryce Courtney
Penguin, HB, 9780670076079
During the Great Depression there was little hope for a boy born into the slums of Cabbagetown, Toronto. But Jack Spayd is offered a ticket out in the form of a Hohner harmonica, won by his brutal drunken father in a late-night card game. Jack makes music as a way of escaping his surroundings, and his talent leads him to a ... More/Buy
The Long Prospect: Text Classics
Elizabeth Harrower
Text Publishing, PB, 9781922079480
Sharply observed, bitter and humorous, The Long Prospect is a story of life in an Australian industrial town. Growing up neglected in a seedy boarding house, twelve-year-old Emily Lawrence befriends Max, a middle-aged scientist who encourages her to pursue her intellectual interests. Innocent Emily will face scandal, suburban snobbery and psychological ... More/Buy
The Secret Keeper
Kate Morton
Allen & Unwin, HB, 9781742374376
1961: On a sweltering summer's day, while her family picnics by the stream on their Suffolk farm, sixteen-year-old Laurel hides out in her childhood tree house dreaming of a boy called Billy, a move to London, and the bright future she can't wait to seize. But before the idyllic afternoon is over, Laurel will have witnessed a shocking crime that changes ... More/Buy
Selected Stories: Text Classics
Katherine Mansfield
Text Publishing, PB, 9781922079503
Here in one volume are twenty-three of the finest stories by Katherine Mansfield. Considered one of the finest short-story writers of the twentieth century, Mansfield was from a young age heavily influenced by Anton Chekhov, a master of the form. This new selection, with an introduction by the novelist Emily Perkins, ranges across Mansfield's oeuvre and shows the New Zealander's dazzling ... More/Buy
Sisters of Mercy
Caroline Overington
Bantam, PB, 9781742750422
Snow Delaney was born a generation and a world away from her sister, Agnes. Until recently, neither even knew of the other's existence. They came together only for the reading of their father's will - when Snow discovered, to her horror, that she was not the sole beneficiary of his large estate. Now Snow is in prison and Agnes is missing, ... More/Buy
An Unknown Sky and other stories
Susan Midalia
UWAP, PB, 9781742584270
Susan Midalia's second collection of short stories offers us a compelling variety of characters, all of them 'travellers' in search of connection and belonging. Tourists in Moscow and Vienna confronted by the weight of history. A young student teacher discovering her capacity for compassion. A teenage boy defending his mother's reputation. A brother anguished by his sister's illness. A widow infatuated ... More/Buy
WHISKY, CHARLIE, FOXTROT: A Novel
Annabel Smith
Fremantle Press, PB, 9781922089144
It is less than twenty-four hours since Charlie received the phone call from his mother and in those hours his only thought has been that Whisky must not die. He must not die because he, Charlie, needs more time. He and Whisky have not been friends, have not talked or laughed together for months, years. But he has never thought it ... More/Buy