Here are the 12 most awarded books of 2019 - so far!

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. Eli Bell is just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way – not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But if Eli’s life is about to get a whole lot more serious. A story of brotherhood, first love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe is heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating.

Listed among these awards:

• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards: Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and People’s Choice Award
• ABIAs: Book of the Year and Literary Book of the Year
• Australian Booksellers Association Booksellers Choice Award
• Indie Book Awards: Book of the Year
• Russell Prize Humour (shortlist)
• Queensland Literary Awards: People’s Choice Award (shortlist)
• Colin Roderick Award (shortlist)
• Miles Franklin Literary Award (longlist)

Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko

Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things – her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley. Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people. Gritty and darkly hilarious, Too Much Lip offers redemption and forgiveness where none seems possible.

Listed among these awards:

• Miles Franklin Literary Award
• The Stella Prize (shortlist)
• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Queensland Literary Awards: People’s Choice Award (shortlist)
• ABIAs: Literary fiction book of the year (shortlist)

No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani

Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani’s astounding No Friend But the Mountains is the result of nearly six years documenting life in detention on Manus Island. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from Farsi by Omid Tofighian, it is a monumental work of literature defies easy categorisation: mixing poetry, critical theory, and memoir to create a lyrical first-hand account and a cry of resistance.

Listed among these awards:

• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards: Victorian Prize for Literature and prize for nonfiction
• National Biography Award
• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards: Special Award
• ABIAs: General Non-Fiction Book of the Year

Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee

Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Brisbane Magistrates Court as a bright-eyed judge’s associate. Eighteen months later she was back as the complainant in a sexual assault case. This is the story of Bri’s journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge’s associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland - where justice can look very different, especially for women.

Listed among these awards:

• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards: People’s Choice Award
• Davitt Awards: Debut
• Ned Kelly Awards: Best True Crime
• ABIAS: Biography Book of the Year
• Indie Book Awards (shortlist)
• The Stella Prize (longlist)

The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper

After Black Saturday, a February 2009 day marked by 47 degree heat and firestorms, arson squad detectives arrived at a plantation on the edge of a 26,000-hectare burn site. The Arsonist takes readers inside the hunt for a fire-lighter. It is at once a remarkable detective story, as the police close in on the offender; and a puzzling psychological story, as defence lawyers seek to understand the motives of a man who, they claimed, was a naïf that had accidentally dropped a cigarette.

Listed among these awards:

• Davitt Awards: Nonfiction
• Indie Book Awards: Nonfiction
• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Ned Kelly Awards (shortlist)
• The Stella Prize (longlist)

Flames by Robbie Arnott

A young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte - who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire. The answers to these riddles are to be found in this tale of grief and love and the bonds of family, tracing a journey across the southern island that takes us full circle.

Listed among these awards:

• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction (shortlist)
• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists
• Not the Booker Prize (shortlist)
• ALS Gold Medal (longlist)

Milkman by Anna Burns

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous…

Listed among these awards:

• National Book Critics Circle Awards: Fiction
• Orwell Prize for Fiction
• Rathbones Folio Prize (shortlist)
• Women’s Prize for Fiction (shortlist)
• 2018 Man Booker Prize

Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau

Teenager Monk and her father live in Chinatown, when a mysterious stranger – possible boyfriend, potential accomplice – appears in their lives, unleashing in both an intoxicating all-consuming hunger. In bursts of fizzing, staccato and claustrophobic prose, this modern Australian take on the classic hard-boiled novel depicts a heady world of art, casino resorts, drugs, pixelated tutorial videos, and senseless violence.

Listed among these awards:

• The Stella Prize (shortlist)
• Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction (shortlist)
• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists
• ALS Gold Medal (shortlist)

Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin

This boundary-shifting fusion of thinking, storytelling, and meditation takes as its starting point five axioms. These beliefs - or intuitions - about the role the past plays in our present are often evoked as if they are timeless and self-evident truths. It is precisely because they are neither, yet still we are persuaded by them, that they tell us a great deal about the forces that shape our culture and the way we live.

Listed among these awards:

• The Stella Prize (shortlist)
• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Melbourne Prize for Literature 2018: Best Writing Award

The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones

When art historian Noah Glass is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block, his adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect, and both Martin and Evie must reassess their relationships with their father. In this superb novel full of grief and mystery, Jones explores the ways in which we can remain hidden – from even those with whom we share our lives.

Listed among these awards:

• Miles Franklin Literary Award (shortlist)
• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• ALS Gold Medal (shortlist)
• Colin Roderick Award (shortlist)
• The Stella Prize (longlist)

The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife…But as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less. Not just the compelling story of a fascinating life among lives of desperation, but an affirmation that, as isolated as we may feel, we are all in this together.

Listed among these awards:

• NSW Premier’s Literary Awards: Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction
• National Biography Award (shortlist)
• Wellcome Prize (shortlist)

Blakwork by Alison Whittaker

A stunning mix of memoir, reportage, fiction, satire, and critique composed by a powerful new voice in poetry. Alison Whittaker’s Blakwork is an original and unapologetic collection from which two things emerge; an incomprehensible loss, and the poet’s fearless examination of the present. Whittaker is unsparing in the interrogation of familiar ideas – identifying and dissolving them with idiosyncratic imagery, layering them to form new connections, and reinterpreting what we know.

Listed among these awards:

• Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (shortlist)
• Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (shortlist)