Our booksellers have been loving these new books from emerging authors! Read them now to discover what has us excited.
Cloudless
Rupert Dastur
It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, a family endures the agonizing wait for their son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other pressing concerns to be met at home: the working of the farmland that has been theirs for generations and what to do with their troubled younger son.
Catrin's childhood sweetheart comes back to their small town, giving the boys' doting mother a glimpse into the life she could have had. And John, their father, falls once more into his gambling habit, even as the farm sits on the brink of bankruptcy. As each member of the family grasps at their own tenuous lifeline, they drift further from one another – until, on a cold winter evening, there is a fateful knock at the door.
The Ladie Upstairs
Jessie Elland
Scullery drudge Ann longs to become a lady's maid. Ann can't quite remember how or when she arrived at the grand Ropner Hall, but she loathes spending her days toiling in the dank kitchen.
When a chance meeting with Ropner's Lady Charlotte leads to the opportunity to become her personal maid, Ann is convinced she has finally escaped her own version of hell. But has she?
As Ann's new life above stairs takes a sinister twist, will it turn out that the terrors lurking up there are worse than the devils she knows below?
Saraswati
Gurnaik Johal
Centuries ago, they say that the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Punjab, alongside the Indus River and its five tributaries. Some dismiss this as myth or allegory, but when Satnam arrives in Punjab for his grandmother's funeral, he finds water in the dried-up well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious government scheme to unearth this lost river as an act of Hindu nationalist pride.
Tracing each river as threads in a tapestry, Gurnaik Johal takes us through the lives of seven people whose histories resurface with a river that will change the course of their future forever. Ambitious, moving and brimming with rich folklore, Saraswati is a debut novel from one of Britain's most-feted young writers.
Melaleuca
Angie Faye Martin
Renee Taylor is planning to stay the minimum amount of time in her remote hometown – only as long as her mum needs her, then she is fleeing back to her real life in Brisbane. Seconded to the town's sleepy police station, Renee is pretty sure work will hold nothing more exciting than delivering speeding tickets. Then a murdered woman is found down by the creek on the outskirts of town.
Leading the investigation, Renee uncovers a perplexing connection to the disappearance of two young women thirty years earlier. As she delves deeper and the mystery unfurls, intergenerational cruelties, endemic racism, and deep corruption show themselves, even as dark and bitter truths about the town and its inhabitants' past rise up and threaten to overwhelm the present …
Read our staff review here.
New Skin
Miranda Nation
Alex and Leah meet at medical school and form an immediate and intense connection. Over the course of four years, they are caught in the push-pull of passion and betrayal, longing and reunion. Neither can quite give up the relationship, even as they question whether they are good for each other. Years later, when Alex and Leah are drawn together once more, will they make the right choice?
New Skin evokes a coming of age in the 1990s and charts the course of first love and its power to shape who we become. Spare and compelling, this powerful debut introduces a dazzling new voice in Australian fiction.
Read our staff review here.
Wait Here
Lucy Nelson
A dazzling collection of hilarious and heart-wrenching stories united by a groundbreaking theme: each is a sidelong glance at the lives of women who will never be mothers and who feel every way it is possible to feel about it.
A dancer discovers she can never have children – a revelation that pales in comparison to the other ways her body has betrayed her. Two elderly sisters who’ve been inseparable throughout life make a momentous decision. A wet nurse at Coney Island’s infamous ‘Incubator Babies’ sideshow is haunted by the ghost of her own stillborn daughter. A young woman worries about the lack of male role models in her little niece’s life …
For the women in Wait Here, who can’t, don’t or won’t have children, childlessness is a hard-won prize, a freedom, a stain, a joy, a battle, a trifle, a conundrum, a wound, an uneasy comfort on a burning planet. It is nothing. It is everything.
Read our staff review here.
Notes on Infinity
Austin Taylor
When Zoe and Jack meet in a chemistry classroom in Harvard, they couldn't be more different – she's the daughter of a renowned MIT professor, he's escaping an upbringing steeped in poverty – but they are immediately drawn to one another.
Neither knows it yet, but in two years' time, they will have dropped out of college and become business partners in a billion-dollar company that promises longer life. But as they become wrapped up in a maelstrom of insatiable ambition, greed and ultimately deceit, their love for each other will be tested to its very limit …
A Beautiful Family
Jennifer Trevelyan
As the summer holiday stretches ahead, with her older sister more interested in boys, her mother disappearing on long walks and her father, beer in hand, watching the cricket, the youngest in the family often finds herself alone. At the beach, she meets Kahu, a boy who tells her a tragic story about a little girl who went missing, presumed drowned, a couple of years ago. Suddenly, the summer has purpose – they will find the missing girl and become local heroes.
With her family caught up in their own intrigue, she is free to diligently search for clues with her new friend. It also means she is the only one to notice her next-door neighbour, in turn, watching them. Among dips in the ocean, afternoon barbecues and lazy sunbaking, their detective work brings to the surface shocking discoveries that will change all of their lives forever.
Read our staff review here.
Stinkbug
Sinéad Stubbins
When Edith and a select group of employees at Winked advertising agency are sent to Consequi, an elite three-day work retreat in the remote mountains, she sees an opportunity to impress her bosses and dodge an inevitable restructure.
But this is no ordinary corporate retreat. Trapped together in the revamped convent, the threat of mass redundancy looming over them, their phones confiscated and the team-building activities becoming increasingly extreme, the 'work family's' cracks begin to widen – and Edith has a secret that threatens to make her the office outcast: the stinkbug. When Edith realises there's something suspicious about Consequi, she's faced with a decision: conform and shut up, or accept stinkbug status and find out what's really going on.
Read our staff review here.
Our New Gods
Thomas Vowles
Ash has recently arrived in Melbourne and fallen in love with his charismatic friend James. After witnessing a disturbing altercation at a party, Ash suspects that James's mysterious boyfriend is hiding a sinister side. Is he dangerous? Or is Ash's jealousy fuelling paranoid delusions?
A compulsive novel that offers no easy answers, Our New Gods marks the electrifying debut of a major talent. It has an assuredness that reflects Thomas Vowles's success as a screenwriter: the dialogue is sharp, the plot twists are dizzying, and the story will haunt readers long after the final page.
Read our staff review here.
📚 More amazing debut fiction can be found here.
