Our top picks of the month for book clubs

For a gathering with friends…

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted is a tremendous new novel by award-winning author Robert Hillman. It is the story of Tom Hope, a farmer, and Hannah Babel, a small-town bookseller. Tom dares to believe they could make each other happy. But it is 1968 – 24 years since Hannah and her own little boy arrived at Auschwitz – and Tom is taking on a battle with heartbreak he can barely even begin to imagine.


For an outdoor meeting…

The Wasp and the Orchid by Danielle Clode

In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. Over the next thirty years, she would go on to solve the mystery of orchid pollination, earn the acclaim of international scientists and, in 1949, become the first woman to be awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion. And yet, today, Edith Coleman has faded into obscurity. Zoologist and award-winning writer Danielle Clode tells the story of this remarkable woman.


For a late-night get-together at the local pub…

The Neighborhood by Mario Vargas Llosa (translated by Edith Grossman)

From the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. In the 1990s, during the turbulent and deeply corrupt years of Alberto Fujimori’s presidency, two wealthy couples of Lima’s high society become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail. The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori’s regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.


For a book club of different ages…

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Anita Heiss

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia is a powerful collection of short memoir from Indigenous writers of all ages. This anthology features high-profile identities, such as author Tony Birch, activist Celeste Liddle and footballer Adam Goodes, alongside newly discovered voices. We are also pleased to share that Readings will donate $2 from every sale of theis book to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, until 31 May 2018.


For a smart and sprawling conversation about literature…

Collected Short Fiction by Gerald Murnane

Gerald Murnane is one of Australia’s most eminent writers. He is a recipient of the Patrick White Literary Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature, the Adelaide Festival Literature Award for Innovation and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and he is also a widely rumoured contender for a Nobel Prize in Literature. This lovely hardback book brings together a collection of his short fiction, most of which have been out of print for the past 25 years.


For a juicy literary gossip…

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

In New York, Alice, a young editor, begins an affair with Ezra Blazer, a world-famous, much older writer. At Heathrow airport, Amar, an Iraqi-American economist en route to Kurdistan, finds himself detained for the weekend. What draws these characters together, and how do their lives connect, if at all? Playful and inventive, tender and humane, Asymmetry is a novel which illuminates the power plays and imbalances of contemporary life – between young and old, West and Middle East, fairness and injustice, talent and luck, and the personal and the political.


For Shakespeare aficionados…

Macbeth by Jo Nesbø (translated by Don Bartlett)

Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø takes Shakespeare’s famed tragedy and transports it to a run-down, rainy industrial town of the 1970s. Duncan, chief of police, is idealistic and visionary, a dream to the townspeople but a nightmare for criminals. The drug trade is ruled by two drug lords, including the scheming, Hecate. Hecate’s plot to gain control hinges on steadily and insidiously manipulating Inspector Macbeth: the head of SWAT and a man already susceptible to violent and paranoid tendencies. What follows is an unputdownable story of love and guilt, political ambition, and greed.


For a discussion on class and race…

A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

This evocative debut novel follows three generations of a family living in New Orleans. In 1944, Evelyn falls in love with a man of whom her respectable parents don’t approve. In 1982, single mother Jackie must contend with the return of a husband who grapples with drug addiction. And in 2010, T.C. is fresh off a four-month stint for drug charges, when an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal. A Kind of Freedom powerfully explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South.

Cover image for Gerald Murnane: Collected Short Fiction

Gerald Murnane: Collected Short Fiction

Gerald Murnane

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