Australian fiction
The White Girl by Tony Birch
In post-World War II Deane, a rural Australian town, Odette Brown cares for her granddaughter Sissy. They live on Deane’s fringes, in a run-down mining area called Quarrytown, where the local police officer, soon to retire, often fails to enforce…
Little Stones by Elizabeth Kuiper
Set in the last decades of Mugabe-era Zimbabwe, Elizabeth Kuiper’s debut novel Little Stones is about grappling with identity. Hannah Reynolds is a precocious eleven-year-old energetically passing her days at private school with her best friend Diana, her financier parents’…
Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng
Melanie Cheng arrived on the Australian literary scene in style. Her debut story collection, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript; then, upon publication, it was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian…
A Lovely and Terrible Thing by Chris Womersley
It is a testament to the quality of Chris Womersley’s short fiction that sixteen of the stories in this collection have already been published in journals such as Meanjin and Kill Your Darlings. These stories, published between 2006 and…
Daughter of Bad Times by Rohan Wilson
Daughter of Bad Times is set in the not-so-distant future, where rising sea levels have begun to swallow entire islands. Levee walls are built around cities that can afford it – those that can’t are relocated as refugees. Rin Braden…
Bodies of Men by Nigel Featherstone
We all know that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but how often do we find ourselves doing exactly that? When I first saw Bodies of Men, I thought it looked like a blokey war story, which…
The Artist's Portrait by Julie Keys
Suffering from late night nausea, nurse and aspiring writer Jane Cooper starts pacing suburban streets, trying to exhaust herself. Walking one morning at sunrise she is unceremoniously sprayed by a garden hose as she passes a house. This is how…
The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean
Felicity McLean creates a wonderful eleven-year-old narrator, Tikka, in her debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone. It is through Tikka’s eyes the reader sees the events of the long, hot summer of 1992. The Van Apfel girls…
Simpsons Returns: A Novella by Wayne Macauley
Ninety years after his death in World War I, Jack Simpson is still alive, still donning his uniform, still helping the sick and still trudging alongside his donkey, Murphy. In Wayne Macauley’s novella he’s a ghost-like wisp, sustaining himself with…
The Place on Dalhousie by Melina Marchetta
A generation has grown up with Melina Marchetta’s writing since she debuted with her impeccable young adult novel Looking for Alibrandi in 1992. As one of that generation, it’s a joy to read The Place on Dalhousie and witness Marchetta…
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