Australian fiction
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
I have sold hundreds of Liane Moriarty books in my time at Readings, but I hadn’t read one myself until a friend suggested I read Truly, Madly, Guilty. I was instantly hooked! Like all Moriarty fans, I was very…
Man Out of Time by Stephanie Bishop
Stephanie Bishop took themes of nostalgia, memory and migration and made them her own in her stunning 2015 Readings Prize-winning novel, The Other Side of the World. Bishop’s third novel, Man Out of Time, is another triumph. It…
The Helpline by Katherine Collette
Earlier this year I attended a bookseller’s conference, where, in one session, two authors had to present a Gruen-like pitch for their forthcoming novels. The winner was Melbourne-based author Katherine Collette. She had us all in stitches with her hilarious…
Wintering by Krissy Kneen
Jessica is a PhD candidate living in southernmost Tasmania, studying the activity of the glow worms that inhabit Winter Cave, an untouched haven she discovered herself. Aside from study and work, Jessica spends most of her time with her controlling…
Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman
Ziggy Klein is fifteen years old, and has just left her comfortable, Jewish high school for the chaos of the uber prestigious Kandara Girls School, where Sydney’s elite send their teenagers. Surrounded by cliques and confusing new social pecking orders…
The Book of Ordinary People by Claire Varley
Set in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, The Book of Ordinary People by Claire Varley is simply, as the title suggests, a book about ordinary people. It follows the separate stories of five strangers, whose lives occasionally intersect, as they…
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko’s last novel, Mullumbimby, opened me up to a conversation about feminism, culture and land rights that has stayed with me for years, so I was excited to read her new book. Too Much Lip returns readers to…
The Biographer's Lover by Ruby J. Murray
If you enjoyed the recent work of Gail Jones, this novel about the worth of art, set in Melbourne’s north and Geelong, will also delight you. I loved to read about the brick terrace in Carlton, the attic bedroom in…
Beautiful Revolutionary by Laura Elizabeth Woollett
It is hard to imagine a society so disillusioned it could be seduced by a character like Jim Jones – and hard to believe someone could be as charismatic as he obviously was. In order to write Beautiful Revolutionary…
A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer
In the near future, Jeff is dying. Haunted by his dark past and current deterioration, he abandons Melbourne, and his long-suffering partner Faye, for the relative remoteness of Scotland. Once there, he abuses a technology that allows him to enter…
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