You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Robert Crofts, a young Englishman, arrives in Australia in the 1950s, determined to inhabit the outback. After five years of life on the land, he makes his way to Melbourne where, living in a boarding house, working as a cleaner, he finds himself consumed by a burning need to read, write, draw, create. When he meets the enigmatic Lena, she instantly becomes his staunchest champion but as their tortured marriage evolves and gradually erodes she ultimately becomes an obstacle. This intensely autobiographical novel has much to say about the compulsion to create, and the fundamental unknowability of even our most intimate partners. As the reader sinks into the text of this singular book, the artifice of fiction gradually melts away, leaving nothing but truth on the page. In The Passage of Love Alex Miller has given us a masterful work which will come to define his career as one of the great writers of our time.
'The best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade' Sydney Morning Herald 'Astonishing, captivating ... a wild, beautiful, heart-exploding ride' Elizabeth Gilbert The bestselling novel that has taken Australia, and the world, by storm. Winner of Book of the Year at the 2019 Indie Book Awards, winner of a record four Australian Book Industry Awards in 2019, including the prestigious Book of the Year Award, and winner of the 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards Brisbane, 1985: A lost father, a mute brother, a junkie mum, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli Bell's life isn't complicated enough...
A novel of high adventure, great storytelling and moral purpose, based on an extraordinary true story of eight years in the Bombay underworld 'A literary masterpiece... at once erudite and intimate, reflective and funny... it has the grit and pace of a thriller' Daily Telegraph 'A publishing phenomenon' Sunday Times 'A gigantic, jaw-dropping, grittily authentic saga' Daily Mail 'In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan... Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions. It's a profound tribute to his willpower... At once a high-kicking, eye-gouging adventure, a love saga and a savage yet tenderly lyrical fugitive vision.' Time Out
Dreamer, Wisher, Liar is a heartwarming story about one girl's transformative summer full of friendship, secret magic, and family. Fans of Rebecca Stead will enjoy Charise Mericle Harper's funny and poignant novel. When her best friend is moving away and her mom has arranged for some strange little girl to come and stay with them, Ash—who is petrified of change and new people—is expecting the worst summer of her life. Then seven-year-old Claire shows up. Armed with a love of thrift-store clothes and an altogether too-sunny disposition, Claire proceeds to turn Ash's carefully constructed life upside down. While every part of Ash's life seems to be disrupted, she must protect a carefully hidden secret: She has discovered a magical jar in her basement. It's a wish jar, full of someone's old wishes—and it has the power to send her back in time and provide a window into another friendship between two girls. Discovering her own connection to the girls' story shows Ash that her life is full of surprises and friends she never saw coming.
Every year in England and Wales alone, one in twenty adults suffer domestic abuse, two thirds of them women. Every week, two men kill a woman they were intimate with. And still we ask the wrong question: Why didn't she leave? Instead, we should ask: Why did he do it? Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators - and the systems that enable them - in the spotlight. Her radical reframing of domestic abuse takes us beyond the home to explore how power, culture and gender intersect to both produce and normalise abuse. She boldly confronts uncomfortable questions about how and why society creates abusers, but can't seem to protect their victims, and shows how we can end this dark cycle of fear and control. See What You Made Me Do is a profound and bold confrontation of this urgent crisis and its deep roots. It will challenge everything you thought you knew about domestic abuse.
Looking at the views and experiences of three generations of indigenous Australians, this autobiography unearths political and societal issues contained within Australia's indigenous culture. Sally Morgan traveled to her grandmother's birthplace, starting a search for information about her family. She uncovers that she is not white but aborigine—information that was kept a secret because of the stigma of society. This moving account is a classic of Australian literature that finally frees the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.
Albert Facey’s story is the story of Australia.Born in 1894, and first sent to work at the age of eight, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a labourer and farmer and jackaroo, becoming lost and then rescued by Indigenous trackers, then gaining a hard-won literacy, surviving Gallipoli, raising a family through the Depression, losing a son in the Second World War, and meeting his beloved Evelyn with whom he shared nearly sixty years of marriage.Despite enduring unimaginable hardships, Facey always saw his life as a fortunate one.A true classic of Australian literature, Facey’s simply penned story offers a unique window onto the history of Australian life through the greater part of the twentieth century – the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.
The bestselling, laugh-out-loud, reach for your hanky story of one of Australia's best-loved comedians.
No Marketing Blurb
*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024* FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN’S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST Kate Grenville often takes inspiration for her fiction from her family history and this extraordinary memoir about the life of her own mother, Nance Russell, reveals why. Born to an unhappy marriage and into a deeply sexist society, Nance worked hard for everything she had, and while the world changed around her, she went on to university, opening businesses and raising a family. One Life is just as much a universal story as it is Nance’s. Beautifully captured by her daughter, it draws on the tales passed down by word of mouth, creating an evocative portrait of life in twentieth-century rural Australia and a deeply intimate and caring homage to a mother’s struggle.