Australian fiction
Thunderhead by Miranda Darling
Winona Dalloway wakes up at 5am to steal a sense of freedom. From the outside, she seems an ordinary suburban mother/wife/person, but inside the thunder is growing louder and louder. Chaos stirs and swells into the corners of her mind…
The Work by Bri Lee
Bri Lee’s foray into fiction should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following this smart and perceptive writer. Reflected in her nonfiction work are the issues of privilege, consent, relationships, and identity, and clearly, here, she…
What I Would Do to You by Georgia Harper
Georgia Harper’s debut novel, What I Would Do to You, is an example of speculative fiction executed to perfection. Set in the not-too-distant future of 2039, the death penalty has been reintroduced in Australia for the most heinous crimes…
Dirt Poor Islanders by Winnie Dunn
Winnie Dunn’s debut novel is unlike anything you’ve ever read, because it is unlike anything that has been published in Australia before. That said, it’s a universally relatable tale of the painful process of coming to an understanding of self…
Death of a Foreign Gentleman by Steven Carroll
One of Steven Carroll’s superpowers as a novelist is to look back at history and make very astute observations about how society works. We have seen this skill in his other works, and now with this quiet detective novel, we…
The End of the Morning by Charmian Clift & Nadia Wheatley (ed.)
There is both a joy and a sadness in reading Charmian Clift’s unfinished novel, The End of the Morning, as it is published now, 55 years after her death. Nadia Wheatley, Clift’s long-time advocate, biographer, and champion of the…
No Church in the Wild by Murray Middleton
Murray Middleton won the 2015 Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, an award for an unpublished manuscript by an author under 35 and known for uncovering writers like Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, and Andrew McGahan. The resulting book of Middleton’s award, When There’s…
Pheasants Nest by Louise Milligan
Should a story, which begins in a suburb you know well, which involves sexual assault, and ends in the middle of nowhere, come with a warning even if there is a love story in it? I think so. Here is…
Cool Water by Myfanwy Jones
In the 1950s a dam was constructed in Far North Queensland. In the process, the town that had existed there previously was emptied and flooded, remaining beneath the water even today. There is something haunting and unsettling about this idea…
Lead Us Not by Abbey Lay
Millie is in her final year of high school at ‘Our Lady’s’, a Catholic school that Abbey Lay ensures is dripping with recognisable details of at least an element of every Australian’s education experience. The school is not our –…
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