Australian fiction
Fear is the Rider by Kenneth Cook
Kenneth Cook doesn’t beat around the bush – from the opening lines of Fear is the Rider, the reader is thrust headlong into the baking heat and choking dust of the outback, and into the terror and thrill of…
The Women’s Pages by Debra Adelaide
The Women’s Pages is a novel that pays homage to words, pages and books written by women and about women. The main character, Dove, nurses her ill mother and at her request, re-reads Wuthering Heights to her. After her mother’s…
Tom Houghton by Todd Alexander
If you’re not familiar with the tragic death of actress Katharine Hepburn’s brother Tom Houghton Hepburn, or can’t visualise her in that amazing Walter Plunkett moth costume from the film Christopher Strong, I can almost guarantee you will look…
The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks would have to be one of my all time favourite authors. I’ve read all four of her previous novels and thoroughly enjoyed each of them. When I started reading her latest novel, The Secret Chord, however, I…
Hope Farm by Peggy Frew
Those of us who encountered Peggy Frew’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award-winning debut novel, House of Sticks, in 2010 will have been waiting with bated breath for this, her second book. Hope Farm does not disappoint.
When the novel opens…
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
I read The Natural Way of Things in one sitting several weeks ago and it kicked up a lot of dust that is only now settling. It has been compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, rightly so, and returning to…
Ghost River by Tony Birch
Ren is a bit of loner in his early teens. Not lonely, but a boy who makes the time go past without the help of others. Ren’s outlook for summer takes a turn for the better when the new kid…
Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett
Mary Davidson is the eldest daughter of a whaling family living in Eden on the rugged south coast of New South Wales. In Rush Oh!, she narrates her family’s tumultuous experiences during the whaling season of 1908. It comes…
The Secret Son by Jenny Ackland
The Secret Son weaves two stories that continue to shape the Australian psyche with an underbelly of rebellion and republicanism. What if Ned Kelly had a son who fought at Gallipoli and remained after the war? Does it matter if…
The Promise Seed by Cass Moriarty
When his ten-year-old neighbour starts visiting him, an old man begins to reflect on his life. As the two bond tentatively over gardening, chess and chickens, their alternative narratives slowly entwine, unlocking both painful and happy memories, forcing each to…
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