The Mother Fault by Kate Mildenhall

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian author

You will not recognise me, she thinks, when I find you. Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him – especially The Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe ’. But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. And Mim is questioned, made to surrender her passport and threatened with the unthinkable – her two children being taken into care at the notorious BestLife. Cornered, Mim risks everything to go on the run to find her husband – and a part of herself, long gone, that is brave enough to tackle the journey ahead. From the stark backroads of the Australian outback to a terrifying sea voyage, Mim is forced to shuck off who she was – mother, daughter, wife, sister – and become the woman she needs to be to save her family and herself.   ‘A shattering lightning bolt of a book.’ Karen Viggers, author of The Lightkeeper’s Wife‘A clarion call, wrapped in vivid prose, inside a truly thrilling read’ Angela Savage, author of Mother of Pearl and Behind the Night Bazaar ‘Shook me to my core. I could not put it down’ Alice Robinson, author of Anchor Point and The Glad Shout ‘Mildenhall has imagined a world as terrifying and visionary as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, with the pace of the best thrillers – and characters I’ll never forget’ J.P. Pomare, author of Call Me Evie and In the Clearing ‘With The Mother Fault Mildenhall has achieved that rare thing – a book that at once tackles the big issues and is an addictive page-turner.’ Melanie Cheng, author of Australia Day and Room for a Stranger 'Compelling and deeply human. The Mother Fault is an urgent call from a future which is at once terrifying and familiar.' Kristina Olsson, award-winning author of Shell and Boy, Lost ‘Brilliant. A raw, urgent, white-knuckle ride through a world only a heartbeat away’ James Bradley, author of Clade and Ghost Species ‘Clever, political, pacy and exciting. The Mother Fault is pure diamond-edged propulsive power. Book of the year.’ Chris Flynn, author of Mammoth   ...Show more

I Give My Marriage a Year by Holly Wainwright

$32.99 AUD

Category: Contemporary

How far would you go to save your marriage? Lou and Josh have been together for 14 years. They share two kids, a mortgage, careers and plenty of history. Now, after a particularly fraught Christmas, Lou is ready to ask herself: is this marriage worth hanging on to? Every month for a year, Lou sets a dif ferent test for their relationship - from daily sex to brutal honesty - to help her decide if she should stay or go. Secrets are exposed, old wounds reopened and a true-to-life suburban love story unfolds. I Give My Marriage a Year paints a sharply accurate, often hilarious picture of a modern Australian marriage. Lou and Josh are a couple on the edge, and their efforts to bring their relationship back from the brink will resonate with anyone who has ever asked themselves: is this enough? Whose side will you take? Who deserves a second chance? And will Josh and Lou stay together or split for good?   ...Show more

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

$20.00 AUD

$32.99 (39% off)

Category: Contemporary | Reading Level: good-very good

Spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark and tender, full of pathos, fury and wit, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a dazzling, distinctive novel from a boldly talented writer. For fans of Sally Rooney, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Fleabag. This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wro ng with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.   ...Show more

Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home by Joanna Nell

$32.99 AUD

Category: Feel Good Fiction

The joyous, charming and utterly irresistible new novel from the author of mega-bestseller The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village At nearly ninety, retired nature writer Hattie Bloom prefers the company of birds to people, but when a fall lands her in a nursing home she struggles to cope with the loss of independence and privacy. From the confines of her 'room with a view' of the carpark, she dreams of escape. Fellow 'inmate', the gregarious, would-be comedian Walter Clements also plans on returning home as soon as he is fit and able to take charge of his mobility scooter. When Hattie and Walter officially meet at The Night Owls, a clandestine club run by Sister Bronwyn and her dog, Queenie, they seem at odds. But when Sister Bronwyn is dismissed over her unconventional approach to aged care, they must join forces -- and very slowly an unlikely, unexpected friendship begins to grow. Full of wisdom and warmth, The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home is a gorgeously poignant, hilarious story showing that it is never too late to laugh -- or to love. ...Show more

The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte

$32.99 AUD

Category: Historical

In the first year of the doomed German invasion of Russia in WWII, a German military doctor, Paul Bauer, is assigned to establish a field hospital at Yasnaya Polyana - the former grand estate of Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of the classic War and Peace. There he encounters a hostile aristocratic Russia n woman, Katerina Trusbetzkaya, a writer who has been left in charge of the estate. But even as a tentative friendship develops between them, Bauer's hostile and arrogant commanding officer, Julius Metz, starts becoming steadily more preoccupied and unhinged as the war turns against the Germans. Over the course of six weeks, in the terrible winter of 1941, everything starts to unravel ... From the critically acclaimed and award-winning author, Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate is ambitious, accomplished and astonishingly good: an engrossing, intense and compelling exploration of the horror and brutality of conflict, and the moral, emotional, physical and intellectual limits that people reach in war time. It is also a poignant, bittersweet love story - and, most movingly, a novel that explores the notion that literature can still be a potent force for good in our world. ...Show more

Kokomo by Victoria Hannan

$32.99 AUD

Category: Contemporary

A stunning debut novel from the winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. 'Hannan's Kokomo is a sharply observed novel of one woman's facade and how it falls; an undoing that is both ordinary and compelling. This debut heralds an exciting new Australian voice with a story of estrangement from kin, friendship, love, self and country - one that will be familiar to many, and surprising, for it is often a shock to see one's reflection.' - Anna Krien, author of NIGHT GAMES and ACT OF GRACE When Mina receives an urgent call from her best friend back in Melbourne, her world is turned upside down. Her reclusive mother, Elaine, has left the house for the first time in twelve years. Mina drops everything to fly home, only to discover that Elaine will not talk about her sudden return to the world, nor why she's spent so much time hiding from it. Their reunion leaves Mina raking through pieces of their painful past in a bid to uncover the truth. Both tender and fierce, heartbreaking and funny, Kokomo is a story about how secrets and love have the power to bring us together and tear us apart. ...Show more

State Highway One by Sam Coley

$32.99 AUD

Category: Crime & Mystery | Reading Level: very good

This is what I want to do. I want to go home. I want you to come with me. 'I want to go from here . . .' Finger on Cape Reinga. '. . . to here.' Finger at the bottom of Stewart Island, right at the bottom of the map. It's been years since Alex was in New Zealand, and years since he spent any one-on-one time with his twin sister, Amy. When they lose their parents in a shock accident it seems like the perfect time to reconnect as siblings. To reconnect with this country they call 'home'. As they journey the length of State Highway One, they will scratch at wounds that have never healed - and Alex will be forced to reckon with what coming home really means. ...Show more

The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy

$32.99 AUD

Category: Contemporary

For readers of Station Eleven and Everything I Never Told You, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds – and her own final chance for redemption. A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive. How far you would you go for love? Franny St one is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica. As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny’s life begin to unspool. A daughter’s yearning search for her mother. An impulsive, passionate marriage. A shocking crime. Haunted by love and violence, Franny must confront what she is really running towards – and from. The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and deeply moving novel from a brilliant young writer. From the west coast of Ireland to Australia and remote Greenland, through crashing Atlantic swells to the bottom of the world, this is an ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened, and an epic story of the possibility of hope against all odds.   ...Show more

Loner by Georgina Young

$24.99 AUD

Category: Australian author | Reading Level: very good

Staff notes: Loner is a book about drifting. About having been good at school and seemingly destined for great things but, once thrust into the structureless maelstrom of the adult world, simply... stalling. Stalling, and waiting, and doing not much of anything except feeling a lot of things. And then m aybe watching some TV. In the hands of a less skilled writer this could make for a dull and self-indulgent novel, but, mercifully, Loner is anything but. In short: it's good. It's really, really good. And it rings so true. Readers approaching the cliff-face of young adulthood will, I believe, take great comfort in this book, and readers who've doggy-paddled to the other side will recognise themselves at that achingly uncomfortable time of their lives. Georgina Young is also super funny. Trust us, you'll love it.  Set in Melbourne, Loner is a humorous and heartfelt exploration of new adulthood. Lona kills her days by sneaking into the dark room at her old art school to develop photographs. She kills her nights DJ-ing the roller disco at Planet Skate. She is in inexplicably, debilitatingly love with a bespectacled Doctor Who-obsessed former classmate, and in comfortable, platonic love with her best friend Tab. Lona works hard to portray a permanent attitude of cynicism and ennui but will her carefully constructed persona be enough to protect her from the inevitable sorrows and unexpected joys of adult life? Loner re-examines notions of social isolation experienced by young people, suggesting sometimes our own company can be a choice and not a failing. Read it? We also recommend It Sounded Better in My Head by Nina Kenwood and The Long-Distance Playlist by Tara Eglington. ...Show more

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville

$39.99 AUD

Category: Australian author

Do not believe too quickly... What if Elizabeth Macarthur - wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in early Sydney - had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? In her introduction Kate Grenville tells, tongue firmly in cheek, of discovering a long-hidden box containing that memoir. What fol lows is a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented. Grenville's Elizabeth Macarthur is a passionate woman managing her complicated life-marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her own heart, the search for power in a society that gave her none-with spirit, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir reveals the dark underbelly of the polite world of Jane Austen. It explodes the stereotype of the women of the past- devoted and docile, accepting of their narrow choices. That was their public face-here's what one of them really thought. At the heart of this book is one of the most toxic issues of our times- the seductive appeal of false stories. Beneath the surface of Elizabeth Macarthur's life and the violent colonial world she navigated are secrets and lies with the dangerous power to shape reality. A Room Made of Leaves is the internationally acclaimed author Kate Grenville's first novel in almost a decade. It is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand that gives the past the piercing immediacy of the present.   ...Show more

Broken Rules and Other Stories by Barry Lee Thompson

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories (Anthologies)

These awards-listed, interlinked stories vividly capture the small, rarely spoken moments of our lives that reverberate with meaning, with darkness and with light. An adolescent son and his parents on their annual holiday at a Bournemouth guesthouse become intrigued with the glamour and otherness of an American family from Boston. An adult son and his mother navigate an unnerving relationship based on dependence and ritual. A woman transgresses her husband's rules and his distaste for parties. A sex-worker empathises with the life of an elderly client. From derelict industrial districts, to a lonely highway diner, to the faded charm of a British seaside resort, these are stories of growing up marginalised and living in working-class England and Australia. Thompson's writing is so clear and deep and lucid you can see every crumb on the tablecloth, every drop of water on a person's hair. Broken Rules and Other Stories' nuanced play of character, psychology and language, and its focus on the mysteries we are all involved in when we are out of our depth, exposed to our emotions, our wonders and our longings, marks the emergence of a remarkable new talent. 'A voice in your head, full of texture and truth. Slices of life spliced to yours. Suddenly the stories in Broken Rules are happening to you, finding their way into your brain and heart. You feel as if you were walking with phantom limbs - those of Barry Lee Thompson. Magnificent writing - literature at its strongest, at its gentlest.'Catherine de Saint Phalle, author of Poum and Alexandre and The Sea & Us ...Show more

Ordinary Matter by Laura Elvery

$29.99 AUD

Category: Short Stories (Anthologies)

In 1895 Alfred Nobel rewrote his will and left his fortune made in dynamite and munitions to generations of thinkers. Since 1901 women have been honoured with Nobel Prizes for their scientific research twenty times, including Marie Curie twice. Spanning more than a century and ranging across the world, this inventive story collection is inspired by these women whose work has altered history and saved millions of lives. From a transformative visit to the Grand Canyon to a baby washing up on a Queensland beach, a climate protest during a Paris heatwave to Stockholm on the eve of the 1977 Nobel Prize ceremony, these stories interrogate the nature of inspiration and discovery, motherhood and sacrifice, illness and legacy. Sometimes the extraordinary pivots on the ordinary. ...Show more