Readings Recommends: Fiction
The Pregnant Widow
$32.95$27.95 (Trade paperback / Jonathan Cape )
One of Britain’s finest writers returns with an extraordinary new novel
Summer 1970 – a long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of th... More »
Review
The Imperfectionists
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )
‘Off the record, who is it?’
He hesitates. ‘I don’t see why you need to know.’
But he does see, of course. ‘It’s my son.’
Their chuckles are audible over the speakerphone. ‘Are you
serious?’
Lloyd Bur... More »
Review
Child Of The Twilight
$27.99 (Paperback book / Harper Collins )
′It is strange and fascinating to me to think of people -- Avila in particular -- praying me into existence.′
Sydney Peony Kent is nineteen years old. She was a longed-for IVF baby, ′product of an unknown egg and unk... More »
Review
Skippy Dies
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Hamish Hamilton )
Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is... More »
Under Stones
$24.95 (Paperback book / Affirm )
Dip into the world of Bob Franklin‘s fiction at your own risk. The calm surface belies a swift undertow and snags galore. These are not horror stories in the traditional sense; they are more unsettling than that.
Under... More »
Review
A Fair Maiden
$29.95 (Paperback book / Quercus )
Fifteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the streets of Bayhead Harbor, New Jersey when she is approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless; like his name, a s... More »
Love Machine
$29.95 (Trade paperback / Hamish Hamilton )
Discover the real underbelly of the golden mile, Kings Cross, in Love Machine by Clint Caward.
Kings Cross is a circus of desire, and Spencer has a ringside seat.
In an underground sex shop he sees it all: the buck's par... More »
Review
The Unnamed
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Penguin Group Uk )
Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, ageing with the grace of a matinée idol. He loves his work. He loves his family. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out on all of it. He cannot stop w... More »
Once On A Road
$24.95 (Paperback book / Vintage )
How far would you go to protect your grand children from their mother?
Exploring the age old themes of duty and love, exile and return. This is the story of Naomi Adams and her estranged daughter-in-law Zoë Zalum. It is ... More »
Review
The Long Song
$32.99$27.95 (Hardcover book / Headline )
You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, ... More »
Review
The Other Family
$32.95$27.95 (Trade paperback / Doubleday )
An intriguing and timely novel about inheritance, and what happens in a tangled family when someone dies.
Richie had been a celebrated musician, wealthy, popular, and adored by Chrissie and their three daughters. But whe... More »
Playing The Field
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Michael Joseph )
In the glossy world of footballers' WAGs, love is the toughest game of all . . .
Jean Bennett, aspiring jewellery designer, knows as much about football as she does astrophysics. But when she moves to the bright lights o... More »
The Wife's Tale
$29.99 (Trade paperback / Little Brown )
On the eve of her wedding anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband to come home, listening for his car along the dark, icy roads. As the night draws on, and he fails to appear, Mary reflects on the true nature ... More »
Review
The Rare Bird Of Truth
$29.99$24.95 (Trade paperback / Simon & Schuster )
Virgil Mann is an Australian editor working in London who, via an unseemly brush with fate, has just become a publisher. Good luck? Bad luck? It’s too early to tell. One thing is certain—nothing in his past has prepared ... More »
Keeping Faith
$29.95 (Paperback book / Transit Lounge )
In Keeping Faith the innocence and certainties of childhood are delicately tested against the realities of adult life. Josh and Gracie grow up in a working class world centred on the values of faith and family. Both cher... More »
In The Mood
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Viking )
Set in post-war Sydney, In the Mood, by Laura Bloom is a heart-wrenching, evocative novel about love, fidelity, betrayal and intimacy.
It's February 1946, and Robert Booker is just home from the war. Home is a pretty wea... More »
No Way To Say Goodbye
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Penguin Group Uk )
IF YOU ASKED THE PEOPLE OF KENMARE ABOUT MARY, THEY'D TELL YOU SHE WAS BORN UNLUCKY. SOME WOULD SAY SHE'S A BIT 'STRANGE'. BUT ALL ADMIRE HER COURAGE.
They'd tell you Penny is the life and soul of the party. Yes, she dri... More »
The Reading Group
$24.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Group Uk )
A New Year. A New Page. A New Reading Group.
Five women meet for their first reading group, little realising this social gathering over books and glasses of wine might see them share more than literary debate … and will,... More »
Where Have You Been?
$32.95 (Paperback book / Univ West Aust Pr )
A domestic thriller that takes the form of a classic imposter novel, but with a 21st century twist. A seemingly perfect family household is rocked by the reappearance of a sister they thought was long gone. Suspicions so... More »
Review
Sydney Bridge Upside Down
$27.95 (Paperback book / Text Publishing )
With an introduction by Kate De Goldi
There was an old man who lived on the edge of the world and he had a horse called Sydney Bridge Upside Down. He was a scar-faced old man and his horse was a slow-moving bag of bones,... More »
Thereby Hangs A Tail
$23.99 (Paperback book / Allen & Unwin )
In the much awaited sequel to the fantastic, funny, New York Times bestselling Dog On It, Chet and Bernie are plunged into the dog-eat-dog world of purebred dog shows when pampered pooch, Princess, and her owner, are abd... More »
Going Bovine
$24.99 (Paperback book / Allen & Unwin )
Winner of the 2010 Michael L. Printz Award for best US Young Adult Novel
When Cameron finds out he's sick and going to die, he embarks on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America to find out how to live and... More »
Review
The Bed I Made
$32.99 (Trade paperback / Bloomsbury )
A gripping new story of obsessive love by the acclaimed author of The House at Midnight.
I'm at the airport now, coming back today, and I need to see you. What I did was wrong but let me apologise, Katie. I love you - yo... More »
The Wings Of The Sphinx
$21.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Books )
Food, love and murder – Sicilian style – in the gripping eleventh instalment of the New York Times bestselling Montalbano mystery series.
Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano. His relationship wit... More »
The Legacy
$32.99$29.95 (Trade paperback / Harper Collins )
What has happened to Ingrid?
Beautiful Ingrid inherits a fortune and leaves Australia, and her friends, and Ralph who loves her, to marry Gil Grey and set up home amid the New York art world. There she becomes the stepmo... More »
Review
Shades Of Grey
$32.99 (Trade paperback / Hodder Headline )
No one could cheat the Colourman and the colour test. What you got was what you were, forever. Your life, career and social standing decided right there and then, and all worrisome life-uncertainties eradicated forever. ... More »
The Cattleman's Daughter
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Michael Joseph )
Born and raised on the rugged Dargo High Plains by her cattleman father, Emily Flanaghan has lost her way in life.
Locked in an unhappy marriage in the suburbs, Emily misses the high country with a fierce ache. To make m... More »
The Winter House
$24.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Group Uk )
When Marnie receives a phone call that summons her to the side of a once-beloved friend, she is wrenched from her orderly London life and sent back into a past from which she has fled but never escaped.
Ralph, Marnie and... More »
The House Across The Road
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Michael Joseph )
A captivating domestic drama about the lives, loves and life-changing choices of some unforgettable women.
When Isabelle Barnes leaves home one morning, never to return, the streets of country Carwell are awash with rumo... More »
Chronic City
$32.99 (Trade paperback / Faber )
The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar.
Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a... More »
The Crossroads
$23.95 (Paperback book / Text Publishing )
translated by Jonathan Hunt
Thousands of depressed little towns, villages and hamlets dot the vast plain where Cristiano Zena lives with his hard-drinking father Rino. Unfocused urban sprawl with no centre to look to and... More »
The Agency
$23.99 (Paperback book / Allen & Unwin )
Meet Tess Drake, sexy super-agent to the stars. She's earned everything she has. When her boss dies in mysterious circumstances (and her nemesis is promoted to lord it over her) it's time for Tess take what she deserves.... More »
Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill
$24.99 (Paperback book / Portobello )
Madame Verona and her husband live in isolation on a hill above a small village. When Mr Verona died, Madame Verona stayed on, to make a cello—the instrument her husband loved. Then, when the last log he left for her has... More »
What Kate Did Next
$29.99 (Trade paperback / Arena )
Her husband’s a workaholic, her kids are growing up—now it’s time for Kate to follow some of her own dreams …
It seems like only yesterday that Kate Cavendish was one of the—most well-regarded photographers in to... More »
Winterland
$32.99 (Trade paperback / Faber )
Two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night in Dublin—one a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? A gripping thriller set in the Dublin underworld of h... More »
The True Deceiver
$23.99 (Paperback book / Profile )
Following the success of The Summer Book, A Winter Book, and Fair Play, Sort of Books introduces Tove Jansson's haunting novel of suspense - published for the first time in English, in a brilliant new translation from Th... More »
Counterpoint
$32.95$27.95 (Paperback book / Univ West Aust Pr )
Johann Sebastian Bach’s music forms the backdrop to this stunning short novel about motherhood and loss. Following the death of her daughter, a bereaved pianist immerses herself in Bach’s Goldberg Variations. As the woma... More »
The Swan Thieves
$32.95$27.95 (Trade paperback / Little Brown )
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life - solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a ... More »
The Blasphemer
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Doubleday )
An astonishing, ambitious and masterful new novel, with echoes of Birdsong, that reads at the pace of a thriller.
On its way to the Galápagos Islands, a light aircraft crashes into the sea. Zoologist Daniel Kennedy is co... More »
The Kingdom Of Ohio
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Viking )
After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has spent years trying to deny. The photograph depicts a man and a woman. The man is P... More »
Stillwater Creek
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Bantam Press )
An unforgettable, heart-warming novel about love and loss, betrayal and hope...
It is 1957 and, after the death of her husband, pianist Ilona Talivaldis and her nine-year-old daughter Zidra travel to the remote coastal t... More »
The Jewel Box
$24.95 (Paperback book / Bantam Press )
Two sisters. Two lovers. Too many secrets.
Grace Rutherford is the one and only Diamond Sharp, the 'It' girl of 1920s London, whose weekly newspaper column delights readers with tales of her nightly escapades: the dinner... More »
Me And Miss M
$24.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Group Uk )
Ever wondered what a celebrity's life is really like?
Struggling actress Fran has always had stars in her eyes but with a part in a car insurance ad as her only claim to fame, making it big is starting to look unlikely. ... More »