Book picks similar to
The Agonist by Shastra Deo


poetry
australian
australia
australian-authors

Salvation Creek


Susan Duncan - 2006
    Editor of two top-selling women's magazines, a happy marriage, a jetsetting lifestyle covering stories from New York to Greenland, the world was her oyster. But when her beloved husband and brother die within three days of each other, her glittering life shatters. In shock, she zips on her work face, climbs back into her high heels and soldiers on - until one morning eighteen months later, when she simply can't get out of bed. Heartbreaking, funny and searingly honest, Salvation Creek is the story of a woman who found the courage not only to begin again but to beat the odds in her own battle for survival and find a new life - and love - in a tiny waterside idyll cut off from the outside world.Combining all the sweeping, rollercoaster style of a bestselling novel with the very best - and most inspiring - human interest story, Salvation Creek is a tour-de-force that will stay with the reader long after she has turned the last page.

Your Own Kind of Girl


Clare Bowditch - 2019
    Through her music and performing, this beloved Australian artist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. But what of the stories she used to tell herself? That 'real life' only begins once you're thin or beautiful, that good things only happen to other people.YOUR OWN KIND OF GIRL reveals a childhood punctuated by grief, anxiety and compulsion, and tells how these forces shaped Clare's life for better and for worse. This is a heartbreaking, wise and at times playful memoir. Clare's own story told raw and as it happened. A reminder that even on the darkest of nights, victory is closer than it seems.With startling candour, Clare lays bare her truth in the hope that doing so will inspire anyone who's ever done battle with their inner critic. This is the work of a woman who has found her true power - and wants to pass it on. Happiness, we discover, is only possible when we take charge of the stories we tell ourselves.

The Mint Lawn


Gillian Mears - 1991
    Clementine is twenty-five and still living in the place where she grew up, rooted there by memories and her own inability to make changes until she has understood her past.That past is dominated by memories of her mother, and her mother's attempts to dramatise and enrich small-town life and the perceptions of her three, clever, receptive daughters.But only Clementine has stayed. Is this out of loyalty to her mother's memory? Or to comfort her father? Perhaps she wants to find peace with Hugh, the earnest husband in whose house she most uncomfortably lives? Or is Thomas the lure, who alone can appreciate Clementine's own sensuality, and her humour, but who must remain another of her secrets.Already widely known and praised for her short stories, Gillian Mears has written a wonderful debut novel which will be read with pleasure and remembered with joy.

Burning Eddy


Scot Gardner - 2003
    Looking for something that will make tomorrow seem worth the effort. Something that will fix the rot in his family tree.He works in the Dutch woman's garden. Eddy's eighty-six. She can read Daniel's mind. She has a tattoo, a history, and can make music with her farts.In a shady corner of Eddy's garden, Daniel finds something growing. . .Hope.But something is burning.

Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers


Ryan O'Neill - 2016
    Meet Rachel Deverall, who discovers the secret female source of the great literature of our time – and pays a terrible price for her discovery. Meet Rand Washington, hugely popular sci-fi author (of Whiteman of Cor) and holder of extreme views on race and gender. Meet Addison Tiller, the master of the bush yarn, “The Chekhov of Coolabah”, who has never travelled outside Sydney.Their Brilliant Careers is a playful set of stories, linked in many ways, which together form a memorable whole. It is a wonderful comic tapestry of the writing life, and a large-scale parody in which every detail adds to the humour of the overall picture.Unpredictable and intriguing, Their Brilliant Careers takes Australian writing in a whole new direction.

The Intern


Gabrielle Tozer - 2014
    A stellar academic record, an amazing career in journalism - and for her current crush to realise she actually exists. The only problem? Josie can’t get through twenty-four hours without embarrassing her sister Kat or her best friend Angel, let alone herself.Josie’s luck changes though when she lands an internship at the glossy fashion magazine Sash. A coveted columnist job is up for grabs, but Josie’s got some tough competition in the form of two other interns. Battle lines are drawn and Josie quickly learns that the magazine industry is far from easy, especially under the reign of powerful editor, Rae Swanson. From the lows of coffee-fetching and working 10-hour days, to the highs of mingling with celebrities, scoring endless free beauty products (plus falling for her cousin’s seriously gorgeous flatmate James) this is one year Josie will never forget.Totally fresh and funny, this debut novel from industry insider Gabrielle Tozer reveals just what is behind the seeming glamour and sparkle of the magazine industry.

The Yellow House


Emily O'Grady - 2018
    Their lives are shadowed by the infamous actions of her Granddad Les in his yellow weatherboard house, just over the fence.Although Les died twelve years ago, his notoriety has grown in Cub’s lifetime and the local community have ostracised the whole family. When Cub’s estranged aunt Helena and cousin Tilly move next door into the yellow house, the secrets the family want to keep buried begin to bubble to the surface. And having been kept in the dark about her grandfather’s crimes, Cub is now forced to come to terms with her family’s murky history.The Yellow House is a powerful novel about loyalty and betrayal; about the legacies of violence and the possibilities of redemption."Such energy and precision in the writing, not to mention originality." - Tegan Bennett Daylight

Secrets of Silvergum


Mandy Magro - 2019
     Can dark family secrets ever truly be buried? When a horrible twist of fate leaves teenage friends Emma Kensington and Zane Wolfe reeling in the wake of a fatal accident, the two are driven apart for decades. As a professional bull rider in America for the past sixteen years, Zane has stayed a sensible distance from the one woman he's always loved but could never have - Emma, his childhood friend, and his brother's wife. But a phone call revealing his stepfather's sudden death means keeping half a world between them is no longer an option. Returning to Silvergum, how will he keep his long-held feelings under control?For Emma, along with the death of her father-in-law, Peter, is the shadow of the secrets he'd been blackmailing her with. She's finally free to tell the truth to the man she's covertly loved from afar all this time. But Peter's hand stretches beyond the grave, and all too soon Emma discovers she's not the only one who has been keeping secrets. And to make peace with her past, she could very likely lose everything she loves most...

The Gathering


Isobelle Carmody - 1993
    However there is something wrong with the town, someone is controlling the population. Nat and his new friends feel compelled to oppose the strange power that dominates the place.

A Room Called Earth


Madeleine Ryan - 2020
    And what appears to be an ordinary night out is--through the prism of her singular perspective--extraordinary. As the evening unfolds, each encounter she has reveals the vast discrepancies between what she is thinking and feeling, and what she is able to say. And there's so much she'd like to say. So when she meets a man and a genuine connection occurs, it's nothing short of a miracle. However, it isn't until she invites him home that we come to appreciate the humanity beneath the labels we cling to, and we can grasp the pleasure of what it means to be alive.The debut novel from the inimitable Madeleine Ryan, A Room Called Earth is a humorous and heartwarming adventure inside the mind of a bright and dynamic woman. This hyper-saturated celebration of love and acceptance, from a neurodiverse writer, is a testament to moving through life without fear, and to opening ourselves up to a new way of relating to one another.

We Were Never Friends


Margaret Bearman - 2020
    What is art? What’s true courage? I could not put it down.’ —Melissa Ashley,bestselling author of THE BIRDMAN’S WIFELotti lives under the shadow of a genius: her father George Coates is a brilliant and celebrated Australian painter.When Lotti meets the outcast waif Kyla at a suburban Canberra school, two worlds are set to collide. Slowly Kyla is drawn into the orbit of the Coates family. Or is it the other way around?As Lotti and Kyla navigate their way towards adulthood, dark secrets start to unravel, with devastating consequences …WE WERE NEVER FRIENDS is unforgettable novel about friendship, the pursuit of a creative life and the legacies we leave behind.‘Margaret Bearman’s intimate, unsettling novel of family dysfunction perfectly captures the ambivalent passions of girlhood while offering an incisive critiqueof the cult of artistic genius. Sharp and subtle at the same time, refusing any easy certainties, WE WERE NEVER FRIENDS is a haunting portrait of the humancapacity for cruelty and love in equal measure.’ —Kirsten Tranter, bestselling author of THE LEGACY

You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead


Marieke Hardy - 2011
    Welcome to a chronicle of broken hearts, fervid pursuits, passionate friendships, deranged letter-writing, the allure of the bottle, the singular charms of musicians, the lost song of youth, and three very awkward evenings with varying prostitutes--exactly zero percent of which the author's parents will want to read. Add to that a slightly misguided attempt to give real-life friends and ex-lovers a 'right of reply' to the stories they appear in and it's fair to say an extended stint in the Witness Protection Program beckons.Confessional, voyeuristic, painful, hilarious and heartfelt, You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead reveals the acerbic wit, unflinching gaze and razor-sharp insight of a writer at the height of her powers-or the unhinged fantasies of a dangerous mind with not enough to do.

Being Black 'n Chicken, and Chips


Matt Okine - 2019
    All he wants is to fit in. He wants to sit at the cool bench. He wants to be a star athlete. He wants his first kiss.He also wants his mum to survive.When his mum is suddenly diagnosed with advanced breast and brain cancer, Mike knows it's a long shot, but if he manages to achieve his dreams, maybe it'll give his mum enough strength to beat an incurable disease.In the meantime, he has to live with his African dad whom he doesn't really know, a man who has strange foreign ways - and who Mike doesn't really feel comfortable sharing his teenage desires and deepest fears with. He doesn't even want to think about what it might mean if his mum never comes home from the hospital.Based on his award-winning stand-up show, and the loss of his own mother when he was 12, Matt Okine's coming-of-age novel, Being Black n Chicken and Chips, is a funny, heart-warming, and sometimes surreal look at how young people deal with grief, the loss of loved ones, and becoming an adult - all whilst desperately trying to fit in with the other kids.

Purple Threads


Jeanine Leane - 2011
    From Aunty Boo’s surveillance of the local farmers’ sheep dip alliance to Aunty Bubby’s fireside tales of the Punic Wars, the women in this book offer sage advice to their nieces about growing up as Aboriginal girls in a white country town. Farming is not an easy pursuit for anyone, but the Aunties take all the challenges in stride, facing torrential rain, violent neighbors, and injured dogs with an equal mix of humor and courage.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith


Thomas Keneally - 1972
    Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney Australia in 1935. He studied to be a Catholic priest but abandoned his vocation to take up teaching and writing. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction including "Schindlers Ark" which won the Booker Prize in 1982 and was made into a successful film.