Pictures of You: Collected Stories
Tony Birch
Pictures of You: Collected Stories brings together the best of acclaimed writer Tony Birch’s short fiction from the past two decades. Cherrypicking from across his oeuvre, this anthology showcases his skill at finding the extraordinary in ordinary lives, and the often-unexpected connections and kindnesses between strangers. His work is by turns poignant, sad, profound and funny – and always powerful.
Throughout this stellar collection, Birch’s preoccupation with the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked, and the search for justice for people and the natural environment shines bright.
Read our staff review here.
The Warrumbar
William J. Byrne
On the day man first walks on the moon, thirteen-year-old Robbie Brennan meets Moses, an old man camped by the side of the road. Over the following months, Robbie is drawn to Moses’ stories – tales of hardship, war, and redemption – unearthing a past entwined with his own. When Robbie learns that Moses grew up at the Mission, the Aboriginal reserve that once existed on the outskirts of town, with his mother Delsie, Robbie’s understanding of his family’s history and identity is forever changed.
At home, Robbie must navigate the unpredictable wrath of his beloved but sometimes violent father, a man whose temper keeps the household in a constant state of anxiety. But when Robbie witnesses a tragic event at the Warrumbar dam, his world is shaken further. Haunted by his past in the boys' home and terrified of the consequences, he faces a choice: speak the truth and risk everything or stay silent and carry the burden forever. But in a small country town where a boy like Robbie – poor, on society’s margins, and with ‘some of that black blood in him’ – is rarely believed, does the truth matter?
Set against the backdrop of 1969 Australia, The Warrumbar is a compelling coming-of-age story about love, injustice, and the courage it takes to do what’s right.
The Maskeys
Stuart Everly-Wilson
Locals see George Maskey as a hollow braggard who is at least partly responsible for the crime and drug related deaths Naples has seen over the years. His wife blames him for the death of their teenage twins. His gay stepson regards him as a racist homophobe. And Serenade Theadora, the town's famed mystic, sees him in equal parts as good and bad. But George, the family patriarch, is not the star of this story.
When Rodney, the loyal Maskey right-hand man, is kidnapped by service-station proprietor Gayle Reynolds in a bungled revenge against his boss, events are set in motion that will see the Maskey family changed forever. Love-starved reader of romance novels, physical runt, dreamer; Rodney has lived in a forest on the Knuckle, tending the Maskey's marijuana plantation since the death of his mother. Gayle regards his capture as an opportunity to learn the whereabouts of her missing son, Duncan: Rodney's childhood best friend.
For Rodney, captivity turns his life upside down. He meets Leanne, the girl who brings him his meals. And in her, the unattractive young man, who has despaired of ever finding love, sees a person he could risk everything for.
Gravity Let Me Go
Trent Dalton
There are one thousand stories up and down your street. There are nine thousand stories in your neighbourhood. This is the one about true crime journo Noah Cork, and the most important story he almost missed in pursuit of his dreams.
Dark, gritty, hilarious and unexpected, Gravity Let Me Go is a novel about marriage and ambition; truth-telling and truth-omitting; self-deception and self-preservation. It's a novel about the stories we want to tell the world and those we shouldn't, and how the stories we keep locked away are so often the stories that come to define us.
It's the story of a murder. It's the story of a marriage. It's the story of a lifetime.
Read our staff review here.
One Story
Pip Finkemeyer
In the sun-drenched chaos of 2010s Silicon Valley, a tech company's meteoric rise culminates in a devastating fall. Dot Van Jensen, the trailblazing CEO-turned-fugitive, narrates her story from a hidden corner of Indonesia. A scandal has painted her as the villain, a puppet-master who fractured democracy and paved the way for a darker future. But is the truth as cut and dry as the headlines seem to imply?
While Dot weaves a tale of One Story's genesis, her co-founders – her son, Jon, whose formative years saw him sheltered from technology on a secluded ranch, and Rae, the enigmatic partner who saw in Dot a path to power – grapple with their own legacies.
As a documentary crew digs for the truth, a chorus of over a thousand voices, the company's employees, fill the pages with their own narratives. They always believed the work they were doing was putting them on the right side of history, and they’re not going to let it be told any other way. If anyone is going to take the fall, it’s going to be Dot, and if she won’t fall, there are plenty who will push her.
Read our staff review here.
The Underworld
Sofie Laguna
Martha Mullins is a misfit. Her mother is glamorous, aloof and judgemental. Her father, mostly absent. Academic and shy, Martha finds herself fascinated by the underworld, a place she learns about in Roman mythology classes at school. To Martha, the underworld and its divine inhabitants provide a place of refuge, escape, imagination and desire.
But Martha also finds joy in friendship. Connection. Intimacy. It's Martha's band of friends who show her the value in spontaneity, fun, laughter. Until things go wrong.
How will Martha find her way in the world where she cannot be herself? Will she ever find a home for the love she feels?
Read our staff review here.
Seed
Bri Lee
Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global antinatalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It is a biodiversity insurance policy against humanity's devastating effects on the rapidly warming planet.
But when their helicopter doesn't pick them up, and strange things begin to happen, their faith in science is suddenly not enough. Mitchell has been keeping big secrets – from Frances and from himself. The ice haunts him with memories of a devastating betrayal and questions of legacy and fairness crowd his mind. If they don't get back to McMurdo Station before the last flight home they face a long, dark polar winter together. Alone.
As the days get shorter, these two people of firm logic and reason begin finding fault lines in their perfect social experiment.
Read our staff review here.
Secrets
Judi Morison
Ruth, the widowed matriarch of a grown family, has only months to live, and a secret she’s kept for sixty years. Now she must put things right before she dies. But as she has learned, the longer something is kept hidden, the harder it is to bring out of the shadows.
With her grandson in gaol and her family fractured, Ruth must address the past, present and future. She must reveal her secret, reconcile her family, and find a way to keep her beloved homestead, Cora, in the family – and her family in Cora.
A sweeping saga spanning more than half a century, Secrets has a cast of indelible characters whose lives have been devastated by racism, trauma, addiction, incarceration, loss and shame. Yet for all that their secrets break your heart, Ruth and her family ultimately leave it stronger. This spirited, compassionate novel is a testament to the power of truth-telling and the possibility of healing.
A Great Act of Love
Heather Rose
Caroline will tell the story of how she came to Tasmania, when it was still called Van Diemen's Land, many times. She will cast her inventions into the future. Those who carry them on will call it history, but she will call it her life.
Van Diemen's Land, 1839. A young woman of means arrives in Hobart, with a young boy in her care. Leasing an old cottage next to an abandoned vineyard, Caroline Douglas must navigate an insular colony of exiles and opportunists to create a new life on this island of extreme seasons and wild beauty. But Caroline is carrying a secret of such magnitude it has led her to cross the world, and it will take all she is made of to bring it into the light.
Read our staff review here.
The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done
Clare Stephens
It's an ordinary Tuesday morning when Ruby Williams' name starts trending online. She's uploaded an interview that has outraged journalist Felicity Cartwright, a social media personality who has built her profile by policing exactly what women are allowed to say and how they're allowed to say it. Ruby is at the centre of a brutal public shaming, watching on in horror as her reputation is torn apart.
At first Ruby thinks she can get on top of it if she can just explain herself better. But she soon realises she'll never be able to placate the tsunami of strangers baying for her blood. The vitriol pouring in through her phone cracks open a visceral, personal shame from her past that she's refused to face. Because the worst thing Ruby's ever done is not defined by this interview, but by a single, chilling scream.
