Australian fiction
The Breeding Season by Amanda Niehaus
Debut novelist Amanda Niehaus is both a scientist and a writer, and she brings these passions to The Breeding Season. Elise and Dan, a couple in their thirties, experience a late-term pregnancy loss and are plunged into despair. Both…
The Trespassers by Meg Mundell
The Trespassers shifts between the points of view of three migrants travelling from overcrowded, disease-ridden countries to a better future – Billie, a Scottish healthcare worker; Cleary, a young Irish boy who lost his hearing to a serious illness; and…
The Pillars by Peter Polites
This is Peter Polites’ second novel; his first, Down the Hume, was shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s Literary Award in 2018. We know, therefore, that he is an author who can tell an Australian story. Polites’ power as a…
The Returns by Philip Salom
Bookselling day in and day out is not what he expected. It is more like dreaming of love andwaking on the wrong side of the road.
The Returns centres on Trevor, a quiet, elderly bookseller with a failed marriage, and…
From Here On, Monsters by Elizabeth Bryer
The craft of accurately translating another’s work, of getting inside the head of the creator and being as faithful to the original piece as possible, is where this book by debut author Elizabeth Bryer starts. And Bryer knows what she’s…
Dolores by Lauren Aimee Curtis
This very short novel from Lauren Aimee Curtis follows the titular character, Dolores, as she arrives at a remote convent of nuns. She’s sixteen years old, dehydrated, pregnant, and has a lace tablecloth, taken from a restaurant, pinned to her…
Shepherd by Catherine Jinks
Back in England, fourteen-year-old Tom Clay was a talented poacher. In 1840, in the British colony of New South Wales, Tom finds himself convicted and sentenced to work as a shepherd. Surrounded by violent and dangerous men, Tom must use…
Fortune by Lenny Bartulin
An extraordinary performance by Lenny Bartulin, this thrilling historical novel jumps, skitters and clatters across the page under your eyes. A vaudevillian juggling act of entertainment, history and intrigue, the story is as much declaimed as written. The action begins…
Minotaur by Peter Goldsworthy
‘Minotaur (def) – Trapped in a labyrinth, he is a symbol of power and a tool for death and torture.’ This gritty, action-packed cop drama unfolds as we see our hero at his lowest point. Rick Zadow, angry, tattooed, separated…
A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop
‘I learned pretty quickly that people don’t like talking about my work,’ a character says midway through Alice Bishop’s debut, A Constant Hum. The character continues, ‘Unless there’s an unusually gruesome or TV-worthy happy story: the more regular gory…
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