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Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

She first sees him in the water: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing university, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life.

As their relationship deepens, life at Sailors Beach offers her the stability she has been craving as the daughter of two drifters – a loving but impulsive mother and an itinerant father. But the arrival of Maeve, a friend from Jude's past, threatens to rock their fragile, newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something she doesn't fully understand, she finds herself questioning everything – about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants.

Brutes by Dizz Tate

In Falls Landing, Florida-a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers - something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she?

Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery

New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a run-down apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother's sometimes-boyfriend, Mikey. When she drops out of school, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely: she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol.

Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the countercultural movement. This should be the most enlivening experience of Mae's life, but as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism.

We Only Want What's Best by Carolyn Swindell

Bridget and Simone aren’t friends. But their daughters are in the same dance troupe, so they’re flying to Los Angeles for the girls to perform at Disneyland. Simone’s daughter Zahra is indisputably a leader in the group, but Bridget’s daughter Becky is a talent on the rise.

Simone and her husband are accustomed to business class, but Bridget is less comfortable there. Both lonely women are surprised to find something in common, until Bridget discovers images of Zahra and other dancers that shock her. Are they exploitative or art? A fierce examination of their dance world ensues, tension rises, and there’s no way for anyone to escape it. For two very different families and four teenagers, what unfolds over the flight will shock and threaten to destroy them.

I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel

I'm a Fan tells the story of an unnamed narrator’s involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, Sheena Patel makes startling connections between power struggles at the heart of human relationships to those in the wider world, offering a devastating critique of social media, access and patriarchal systems.

Between You and Me by Joanna Horton

Mari and Elisabeth have been at the centre of each other's lives for years. Close friends since university, they're now drifting through their mid-twenties, working casual jobs and living in run-down share houses. When they meet Jack, a charming academic historian twenty years their senior, they're attracted to the sophisticated, intellectual world in which he seems to move. As the summer gathers heat, Jack is drawn into their lives, and an unconventional relationship – halfway between friendship and love triangle – develops.

But soon things grow more complicated, and as secrets and betrayals detonate, the fallout sets the course for the rest of their lives.

Girl in a Pink Dress by Kylie Needham

Far away from the glittering lights and famous personalities of the Sydney art world she once knew, Frances now lives a quiet life in a remote mountain town, pursuing her art. When an invitation arrives from a former lover to attend his painting exhibition at a celebrated gallery, Frances is plunged back into the past, when a single act changed the course of her life.

Told across two time periods, Girl in a Pink Dress is a sharp-eyed and compelling story about love and art, about sacrifice and ambition, and the often damaging relationship between artist and muse.