The best smart summer reads of 2020

Memorial
The debut novel from a rising literary star: a funny, sexy, sensual examination of two young men falling in and out of love.
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There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job
A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that requires no reading, no writing - and ideally, very little thinking.
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Writers & Lovers
Funny and heartbreaking, Writers & Lovers is the bitingly clever story of Casey, a young writer who has lost her direction in life, until two men step into her world and offer her two very different futures... ...
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Earthlings
Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano,...
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Song of the Crocodile
A captivating Australian saga from the winner of the 2018 black&write! fellowship.
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The Adversary
A story about sexuality, the ache of friendship and love, and sticky summers at the pool, this exhilarating debut novel captures the heartbeat of one transformative summer where alliances are made and broken.
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A Burning
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise - to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies - and find their lives...
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What Are You Going Through
A luminous, heartbreaking and life-affirming novel about choosing to die, by National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez, and the first to be published in trade paperback in Export territories for over fifteen years
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Smart Ovens for Lonely People
Conspiracies, memes, and therapies of various efficacy underpin this beguiling short-story collection from Elizabeth Tan.
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Love After Love
Meet the Ramdin-Chetan family: forged through loneliness, broken by secrets, saved by love. Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household, happy in their...
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Life After Truth
At their fifteen-year reunion, a group of Harvard graduates - labouring with early middle age, marriage and children, unrealised aspirations and a depressing political climate - rekindle old loves and old resentments. ...
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Bestiary
Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family's queer desires, violent impulses and buried secrets. One evening, Mother tells...
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A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing
A finalist for the 2020 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, this is a dazzling and original debut from a young writer with a fierce, intelligent and audacious voice.
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The Animals in That Country
Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.
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Everything in its Right Place
Everything in its Right Place tackles themes of class, love and sexuality with humour, truth and grit. It is a story of the legacies and dilemmas that families bring, of how we all must find our own way, astonishingly told. ...
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Lucky’s
An exuberant, magical Australian saga of family, love and second chances.
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Ghosts
32-year-old Nina Dean is a successful food writer with a loyal online following, but a life that is falling apart.
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Such a Fun Age
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the awkwardness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone 'family', the complicated reality of being a grown-up and the consequences of doing...
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Ordinary Matter
In 1895 Alfred Nobel rewrote his will and left his fortune made in dynamite and munitions to generations of thinkers. Since 1901 women have been honoured with Nobel Prizes for their scientific research twenty times, including...
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Loner
A sharp and unlikely coming-of-age debut novel from Australia's Sally Rooney.
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It’s Been A Pleasure, Noni Blake
Claire Christian's sparkling adult debut is the millennial rom-com you've been waiting for: feminist, queer, sex-positive and shamelessly feel-good.
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The Last Story of Mina Lee
A searing mother-daughter story exploring the diverse and unsettling realities of being an immigrant in America.
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Infinite Splendours
Lawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, an experience of betrayal...
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Where The Fruit Falls
An ancient ocean roars under the red dirt. Hush. Be still for just a moment. Hear its thunder-ing waves crashing on unseen shores.
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Sorrow and Bliss
Spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark and tender, full of pathos, fury and wit, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a dazzling, distinctive novel from a boldly talented writer. For fans of Sally Rooney, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and...
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The Golden Maze
Beloved ABC broadcaster and bestselling author of Ghost Empire and Saga Land, Richard Fidler is back with a personally curated history of the magical city that is Prague.
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A Deadly Education
In the start of an all-new series, the bestselling author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver introduces you to a dangerous school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death - until one girl begins to rewrite its...
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Sisters
The electrifying new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted author of Everything Under After a serious case of school bullying becomes too much to bear, sisters July and September move across the country with their mother to a...
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Kokomo
Winner of the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Both tender and fierce, heartbreaking and funny, Kokomo is a story about how secrets and love have the power to bring us together and tear us...
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All This Could Be Yours
From New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a sharp, funny, and emotionally powerful novel about a family reuniting at the deathbed of its patriarch. In reckoning with his secret past, can they rebuild and begin...
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