Australian fiction
Dreams They Forgot by Emma Ashmere
Emma Ashmere’s debut collection contains stories that have been published and won awards over the last twenty years. Generally, an author’s work improves with time, but all twenty-three stories in Dreams They Forgot are of equal quality. In some collections…
The Burning Island by Jock Serong
You may have read Jock Serong’s gripping 2018 novel, Preservation, based on real events surrounding a shipwreck’s survivors and their doomed walk along the south east coast of Australia to Sydney in the late 1790s. If you did, you…
The Mother Fault by Kate Mildenhall
Kate Mildenhall’s debut novel, Skylarking, found many fans at Readings. With her second novel, The Mother Fault, Mildenhall is sure to cement herself as a reader favourite. While the two novels are very different, both are memorable for…
Kokomo by Victoria Hannan
The anguish of living with unfulfilled desire pulses through Victoria Hannan’s debut novel, Kokomo. Its characters, each in their own way, are trying to work out how to live when they cannot get what they need, or when the…
The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy
While The Last Migration is the author’s debut work of literary fiction, Charlotte McConaghy’s considerable experience writing speculative fiction is evident in the pacing and plot of this novel. McConaghy is clearly as adept at catching readers as her enigmatic…
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey
What to do with a mother’s guilt? Where does a mother’s shame lead? What does love make us do? Amanda Lohrey asks these questions of her readers in her latest breathtaking novel.
Erica Marsden’s son Daniel – an eccentric, driven…
Loner by Georgina Young
Loner won the Text Prize in 2019. It is the universal story of becoming an adult and all the uncertainty, drifting and questioning that entails. Some lucky young people know who they are and what they want – and then…
Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings
Nineteen-year-old Bettina hasn’t been the same since her father and brothers disappeared. She lives with her mother, Nerida, in the family home, spending her days running errands and taking care of the garden. But when a mysterious note arrives, Bettina…
Rise & Shine by Patrick Allington
Patrick Allington’s second novel is a quick-moving and lively tale set some thirty years after an ecological collapse has rendered the earth almost uninhabitable. Those who remain of the human race live in either Rise or Shine, two city–states that…
A Lonely Girl Is A Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu
Jessie Tu has worked as a classical violinist, teacher and journalist. This is her first work of fiction and it is an astonishing debut. The lonely girl at the heart of this novel is Jena Lin. Jena’s grandfather was a…
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