Short-listed twice for the Booker Prize and the winner of a record four Miles Franklin Literary Awards for Best Australian Novel, he has a gift for language virtually unrivaled among writers in English. His work is both tough and tender, primordial and new - always revealing the raw, instinctual drives that lure us together and rend us apart. In The Shepherd's Hut, Winton crafts the story of Jaxie Clackton, a brutalized rural youth who flees from the scene of his father's violent death and strikes out for the vast wilds of Western Australia. All he carries with him is a rifle and a waterjug. All he wants is peace and freedom. But surviving in the harsh saltlands alone is a savage business. And once he discovers he's not alone out there, all Jaxie's plans go awry. He meets a fellow exile, the ruined priest Fintan MacGillis, a man he's never certain he can trust, but on whom his life will soon depend. The Shepherd's Hut is a thrilling tale of unlikely friendship and yearning, at once brutal and lyrical, from one of our finest storytellers.

    As she tries to navigate her new body through the world, she develops a deep fascination with the local octopuses, and in doing so finds herself drawn towards the friendship of an old woman and her son. As the story unfolds, the octopuses come to shape Lucy's body and her sense of self in ways even she can't quite understand.The Octopus and I is a stunning debut novel that explores the wild, beating heart at the intersection of human and animal, love and loss, fear and hope.

    She’s transformed her rundown outback property, The Springs, into a successful artists’ retreat; she’s won a distinguished art prize, and she’s living with her soulmate, trail-blazing grazier Heath Blackett.But the chance discovery of a portrait of her father, renowned artist Jim Larkin, makes her question everything. How could it have been drawn just weeks ago when Jim has been dead for years . . . Or so she thought.Could her father still be alive? Can she track down the man in the picture? And is this connected to the missing gold buried by her ancestor over a century ago?Her search for answers will draw Nina into a maze of family secrets – just as the man who stepped out of a portrait arrives at her door . . .Alice Campion is the pseudonym for four members of a Sydney book club. Their first novel, The Painted Sky, also features Nina, Heath and the captivating landscape of outback Wangalla.

    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 upcoming 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.

    Entwhistle may look like your sweet, old granny...but things happen to her: she's caught up in the witness protection program, stuck in an elevator with an assortment of strangers, her house is burglarized and her dog is kidnapped. But Mrs. Entwhistle is dauntless; she didn't get to be a fesity seventy-eight by wimping out. Come join her on her porch swing, meet her best friend, Maxine, and her dog, Roger. Maxine will probably offer you a bowl of her homemade soup. Sit a while. Come back when you can.

    Bojan's wife abandons him to care for their three-year-old daughter Sonja alone. Sonja returns to Tasmania 35 years later, and to a father haunted by memories of the war and other recent horrors.

    Sara’s grandmother, Nina Barsova, a Russian post-war immigrant, lovingly raised Sara in the cottage at the foot of Mt Wellington but without ever explaining why Sara’s own mother, Helena, abandoned her as a baby. Sara, a geneticist, also longs to know the identity of her father, and Helena won’t tell her. Now, estranged not only from her mother but also from her husband, Sara raises her daughter, Ellie, with a central wish to spare her the same feeling of abandonment that she experienced as a child. When Sara meets an Afghani refugee separated from his beloved wife and family, she decides to try to repair relations with Helena – but when a lie told by her grandmother years before begins to unravel, a darker truth than she could ever imagine is revealed.Matryoshka is a haunting and beautifully written story about the power of maternal love, and the danger of secrets passed down through generations.

    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. Determined to make amends she endeavours to save their land – a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.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.

     After a shipwrecked Spanish Manila galleon is discovered off the coast of Acapulco the investigators are stunned when its newly found treasure is stolen from under their noses. Alicia Myles and the Gold team are asked to investigate. Through the Swiss and Italian Alps and Mexico, they confront, chase and capture the ruthless thieves who are, in turn, being hunted by a far deadlier criminal kingpin. They are told that, to find the galleon’s principal treasure, they must follow a series of clues set down in ancient diaries, shadowing the poignant journey of one of the shipwreck’s few survivors. With intense danger looming on all sides, Alicia and her team end up tracking the treasure across a vast enemy encampment, through a highly dangerous and menacing ship-graveyard, surrounded by adversaries and finally forced into a decisive, deadly sea battle. . .

    Now, twenty-five years later, they have both settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age - although they've gone about it in very different ways. About the only thing they have in common is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie.When the perennially restless Rich decides to take Sophie, whom he hardly knows, on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, his overconfidence and her growing disillusion with him set off a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Instead of respect, Rich finds antagonism in his relationship with Sophie; and in the vast landscape he once felt an affinity for, he encounters nothing but disorientation and fear. Ultimately all three characters will learn that if they are to survive, each must traverse not only the secret territories that lie between them but also those within themselves.

    

    Jillian Sayles saw the concept one random night where insomnia was present while strolling Pinterest. She asked her friends to fly in for dinner and surprisingly, everyone obliged. This short story by National Best-Selling Author, Nako is pleasantly sweet and to the point. NAKO sheds light and emphasis on the importance of friendship centered around black women. If reading short stories are not your thing, please pass over this story. Happy Thanksgiving!

    Meeting her new employer, the cranky and bossy owner of Kilcoy Station reinforces her belief that no man can be trusted, but to Callie’s dismay that doesn’t stop the growing attraction to this difficult man.Braden is unimpressed with the glamorous woman the city employment agency sends in response to his desperate ad for a nanny. She’s never been out of the city, barely knows the difference between a bull and a milking cow, and drives a luxury sedan. But she makes him feel things he’d thought were gone for good. Will his sad past, and a guilty secret, protect his heart and ensure Braden denies his growing feelings for Callie?

    They are the best of the best, the Navy SEALs, the world’s most elite fighting force. When a vital kill-mission inside Afghanistan uncovers an unexpected and deadly plot to use a nuclear weapon that could cost thousands of American lives, they are called upon once more. SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops - Raid on AfghanistanBravo Platoon, SEAL Team 7, parachutes into action, but a question mark hangs over their Chief Petty Officer, Kyle Nolan. Can he still cut it? Nolan is the glue that holds the platoon together. That is, until the murder of his wife started to tear him apart. If he comes unstuck during the mission, the lives of them all are in danger. There is no time to make changes, they have to press forward, the mission must continue no matter what. They have to succeed against a vicious and clever enemy. As they get closer, they face a succession of daunting and overwhelming obstacles to uncover the truth. Yet even their commanders refuse to believe the damning evidence that Bravo sends back. Almost alone and unaided, they must hunt down and pursue their enemy to the snowy wastes of the Hindu Kush and stop a catastrophic terrorist attack. SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops - Cartel NightmareThe death of DEA agent in a squalid Mexican town forces the world’s most elite fighting force to take action. This time, the brutal and callous drug traffickers who haunt the dark underbelly of Ciudad Juarez have gone too far. For the dead agent was the nephew of US Marine Corps Major General Hicks. With links to the SEALs, he insists on nothing but the best to avenge his nephew. A mission is planned to hunt down and destroy the drug cartel, led by Chief Kyle Nolan. Yet the Mexican end of the operation is only the first part of the mission. When they discover the traffickers have a fortified facility close to Medellin, Colombia, the mission brief must change.SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops - Strike on IranWhen the US learns of a planned genocidal attack by Middle East terrorists, Bravo Platoon is called in. They must fight their way through to a besieged Syrian town to bring out the Israeli agent who first flagged the threat. Leaving behind a long, bloody trail of Syrian bodies, they battle their way out to carry the data back for analysis by NSA. The recovered decrypts show a rogue element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, is building a dirty bomb, to be used on Israel and the US. Bravo Platoon is sent back into action, this time to Iran, the terror capital of the world and America’s sworn enemy. They must locate and destroy the bomb making facility before the weapons can be deployed.

    A woman's adopted mother dies, reawakening childhood memories and grief. A couple's decision to move to an isolated location may just be their undoing. A young woman forms an unexpected connection at a summer school in Hungary.Set in southern Tasmania, these interlinked stories bring into focus the inhabitants of small communities, and capture the moments when life turns and one person becomes another. With insight and empathy, Melissa Manning interrogates how the people we meet and the places we live shape the person we become.