Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

An utterly wonderful debut novel of love, crime, magic, fate and a boy's coming of age, set in 1980s Australia and infused with the originality, charm, pathos, and heart of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The mind can take you anywhere you want to go. Eli Bell's life is complicated. His father is lost, his mother is in jail, and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The most steadfast adult in Eli's life is Slim--a notorious felon and national record-holder for successful prison escapes--who watches over Eli and August, his silent genius of an older brother. Exiled far from the rest of the world in Darra, a seedy suburb populated by Polish and Vietnamese refugees, this twelve-year-old boy with an old soul and an adult mind is just trying to follow his heart, learn what it takes to be a good man, and train for a glamorous career in journalism. Life, however, insists on throwing obstacles in Eli's path--most notably Tytus Broz, Brisbane's legendary drug dealer. But the real trouble lies ahead. Eli is about to fall in love, face off against truly bad guys, and fight to save his mother from a certain doom--all before starting high school. A story of brotherhood, true love, family, and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe is the tale of an adolescent boy on the cusp of discovering the man he will be. Powerful and kinetic, Trent Dalton's debut is sure to be one of the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novels you will experience. ...Show more

Bruny by Heather Rose

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

How far would your government go? A right-wing US president has withdrawn America from the Middle East and the UN. Daesh has a thoroughfare to the sea and China is Australia's newest ally. When a bomb goes off in remote Tasmania, Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcomi ng election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go. Bruny is a searing, subversive, brilliant novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order.   ...Show more

Octet by James Wieland

$29.95 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

  ‘Michael O’Connell is dead!’  Spanning the week of his burial, from his obituary to the wake, eight characters whose lives – some intimately, some more obliquely – have intersected his, slowly open up the carefully constructed compartments of his very private, very financially successful, life, even as they reveal themselves.  A luminous story of disclosure and concealment, of love and its opposites explored in their various tones and shades, and of those who embrace life’s alternatives and those who deny them, Octet’s canvas is broad, spreading from the Wicklow Stud in the southern hinterland of New South Wales to the battlefields of New  Guinea, from the ballet stages of Europe to the Business world in London, from Edinburgh to Sydney, in a timespan which reaches from the Second World War to the turn of the century. Why did Michael make the gift of the cello?   ...Show more

The Turning by Tim Winton

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

From the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of Dirt Music comes an outstanding work of fiction that will resonate with readers everywhere.Here are turnings of all kinds €" changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours €" where people struggle against the terr ible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves. Beautifully crafted, and as tender as they are confronting, these elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through. €ŒAs a collection of short stories [The Turning] is magnificent, but it also transcends its form and makes a breathtakingly beautiful and challenging novel.€¥ €" Australian Bookseller & Publisher €ŒPlot and prose combine to create what might just come close to being the perfect Australian novel.€¥ €" Herald Sun ...Show more

Dirt Music (Film Tie-In) by Tim Winton

$22.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

Tim Winton's classic love song to land and place, full of unforgettable characters, is now a feature film starring Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Macdonald and David Wenham.   Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doe sn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Leached of all confidence, she spends her days in isolated tedium and her nights in a blur of vodka self-recrimination. One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she sees, a shadow drifting up the beach below - a loner called Luther Fox, with danger in his wake. ...Show more

The Lucky Galah by Tracy Sorensen

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

"Subtle, disarming and insightful" Rosalie HamA magnificent novel about fate, Australia and what it means to be human... it just happens to be narrated by a galah called Lucky. It's 1969 and a remote coastal town in Western Australia is poised to play a pivotal part in the moon landing. Perched on the r ed dunes of its outskirts looms the great Dish: a relay for messages between Apollo 11 and Houston, Texas.Radar technician Evan Johnson and his colleagues stare, transfixed, at the moving images on the console -although his glossy young wife, Linda, seems distracted. Meanwhile the people of Port Badminton have gathered to watch Armstrong's small step on a single television sitting centre stage in the old theatre. The Kelly family, a crop of redheads, sit in rare silence. Roo shooters at the back of the hall squint through their rifles to see the tiny screen. I'm in my cage on the Kelly's back verandah. I sit here, unheard, underestimated, biscuit crumbs on my beak. But fate is a curious thing. For just as Evan Johnson's story is about to end (and perhaps with a giant leap), my story prepares to take flight...SHORTLISTED FOR THE READINGS PRIZE FOR NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION 2018PRAISE FOR THE LUCKY GALAH"A fresh and surprising novel - thoroughly Australian, joyful and magnificently original" Charlotte Wood, author The Natural Way of Things"This book is a bundle of Australian kook ready to disarm, charm and move its readers. Embrace it." Booktopia"This clever and enjoyable book will appeal to a broad range of readers." Books + Publishing"The Lucky Galah is a bold and astoundingly brave novel..." The Newtown Review of Books"It is a book that is at once humorous and heartfelt, and evokes a specific era in Australian history very well." Readings ...Show more

The Earth Does Not Get Fat by Julia Prendergast

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

"A tale of dark family secrets, yet also a tale imbued with awe and wonder at life's mysteries. Prendergast vests her traumatised characters with dignity, and writes them with deep affection and understanding. Poetic, yet earthed, driven by a raw intensity, this impressive debut novel burns with love."- -Arnold Zable *** "A lyrical portrait of love among the ruins."--Amanda Lohrey *** She looked like someone who has had a hard life and no money to take care of herself, like a broken woman at the end of the world, dead on her feet, skin slapped over her bones like white paint, old white paint, slightly yellow. Her shoulders and collarbones were sticking out of her skin like ... like nothing. There is nothing I know that is as awful as her bones poking out of her dirty yellow chicken-skin. Chelsea doesn't attend school much any more. She is carer for her mother who is sinking further into depression after a trauma, and her Grandad who has slipped into full-blown dementia. Her father is long gone; others are shadowy memories-intangible like dreams. Barely known ghosts make for strange company. Then a parcel arrives, and in it are questions-about her mother and her past self, their shared histories, and the people and place from which they've run. "The Earth Does Not Get Fat" is a powerful and gut-wrenching debut about intense suffering and love-fierce, searing love. Subject: Fiction] ...Show more

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

RICHARD GLOVER REVIEWS: ''I love writers who break their own mould with each book. Charlotte’s last book, The Natural Way of Things, was darkly compelling; this has more sunshine plus wonderfully flawed characters in whom you may find reflections of yourself.'' People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now. They knew each other better than their own siblings, but Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them. Four older women with a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house - not for festivities, but to clean the place out before it is sold. Without Sylvie to maintain the group's delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface - and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good. The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we're forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book, a celebration of tenderness and friendship that is nothing short of a masterpiece.   ...Show more

The Yield by Tara June Winch

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

Winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2020. Winner of the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 2020. Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020. Just tell the truth and someone will hear it eventually. The Yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the langu age of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things. Knowing that he will soon die, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind. August Gondiwindi has been living on the other side of the world for ten years when she learns of her grandfather’s death. She returns home for his burial, wracked with grief and burdened with all she tried to leave behind. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Profoundly moving and exquisitely written, Tara June Winch’s The Yield is the story of a people and a culture dispossessed. But it is as much a celebration of what was and what endures, and a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity.   ...Show more

The Good Teacher by Kelly, P.J.

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

$23.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

A 2012 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie's help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress , Charlie follows him into the night. Jasper takes him to his secret glade, where Charlie witnesses Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion. He locks horns with his tempestuous mother, falls nervously in love, and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart. ...Show more

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Literature

A compulsive, note-perfect debut for fans of The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock 'We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn't the one we were trying to recall to begin with.' Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, growing up in an isolated suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters - Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth - mysteriously disappeared during the school's Showstopper concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river.  Did they run away? Were they taken?  While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved. Now, years later, Tikka has returned home and is beginning to make sense of that strange moment in time. The summer that shaped her.  The girls that she never forgot. Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is part mystery, part coming-of-age story - with a dark shimmering unexplained absence at its heart.       ...Show more