Book picks similar to
The Bone House by Beverley Farmer


intertidal
nature-writing
oz-books
australian

Beneath a Stormy Sky


AnneMarie Brear - 2019
     Louisa Reynolds loses her brother when their ship goes down in a storm off the west coast of Australia. Stranded and alone on a deserted beach she is rescued by a young aboriginal girl, who keeps her alive, and teaches her the ways of the native people. When eventually Louisa stumbles into the nearest town of Albany, she must gather her strength to start again. Befriended by two men, old gentleman George and the dashing Connor, she finds that life is worth living. The unexpected friendship with both Connor and George gives her new joy. She’s invited to stay at George’s sheep station. However, as a single woman in the company of men, she is soon the talk of gossips. Her feelings for Connor intensify, but when she learns more about him, she is shattered by a revelation and it is gentle George who she suddenly marries. Only, settling into station life comes with its own problems when Louisa realises that George has money problems and is close to losing everything. Confronted by a devastating fire and a gang of bushrangers, Louisa feels as though her world is spinning out of control. Can she save the sheep station, and how long can she deny the love she feels for Connor?

Blaze


Di Morrissey - 2000
    Now Nina wants to return to Australia and re-launch an Australian edition of Blaze.Alisson Gruber, not yet 30, is unimpressed by Nina's decision to appoint her as editor of the Australian Blaze. Larissa Kelly, the 30-something chief-of-staff of Blaze New York, is sent out as Ali's deputy. Joining Ali and Larissa on Blaze; is Miche Bannister, a young woman coming to terms with the suicide of her mother, the editor of the New York edition of Blaze.Four women whose paths are entwined are facing the same demons – coming to terms with their past and the present before embracing their future. The men they love, the men they find, the men they never knew, all play a role in a private dance on a very public stage.

The Watch Tower


Elizabeth Harrower - 1966
    Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control.Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940's, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power.

Skylarking


Kate Mildenhall - 2016
    As daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. But one moment in McPhail’s hut will change the course of their lives forever. Inspired by a true story, Skylarking is a stunning debut novel about friendship, love and loss, one that questions what it is to remember and how tempting it can be to forget.‘Kate Mildenhall’s impressive debut novel takes an historical case and re-imagines it with such sensitivity and insight that we feel this must be how it truly happened.’ —Emily Bitto

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

Me of the Never Never


Fiona O'Loughlin - 2011
    Fiona has also had successful shows at the Edinburgh and Adelaide fringe festivals, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.This book contains her stories - funny and sometimes sad stories about her upbringing as part of a large Irish-Catholic family on a wheat farm in South Australia, her chaotic and disorganised family life ever since, living in Alice Springs and making it as a stand-up comedian. She also talks of a darker side of the life of many performers - alcohol.This book is for anyone who likes to laugh (and cry), who wants to read about a woman living her life on her terms.

I Built No Schools in Kenya: A Year of Unmitigated Madness


Kirsten Drysdale - 2019
    Her friend called with a job offer too curious to refuse: a cruisey-gig as a dementia carer for a rich old man in Kenya. All expenses-paid, plenty of free time to travel or do some freelance reporting. There seemed no good reason to say no... so she got on a plane.Only Kirsten's friend hadn't given her the full story. It was only on arrival in Nairobi that she discovered the rich old man's family was fighting a war around him, and that she would be on the frontline. Caught in the crossfire of all kinds of wild accusations, she also had to spy on his wife, keep his daughter placated, rebuff his marriage proposals, hide the car keys and clip his toenails all while trying to retain her own sanity in the colonial time warp of his home.Meanwhile, the Kenyan army was invading Somalia, Al-Shabaab was threatening terror attacks, the East African bodybuilding scene beckoned, and Kirsten discovered she had long-lost cousins running a bar on the other side of the city.I Built No Schools in Kenya is a travelogue-tragedy-farce about race, wealth, love, death, family, nationhood, sanity, benzodiazepines, monkeys and whisky.It is almost entirely true.

Coyote's Canyon


Terry Tempest Williams - 1989
    This is Coyote's country--a landscape of the imagination, where nothing is as it appears.

Sutherland Downs


Peter McKelvie - 2020
    She finds herself both loving and being terrified by all the Australian outback has to offer, the country, the wildlife, but mostly the people. She meets the love of her life, but she must fight against an undercurrent of evil just to survive, let alone live happily ever after.Tom's a young jackeroo and heir to a large station. His first love was mysteriously murdered, and he's spent two years rebuilding his life and relationships, after spiralling into depression, drinking, fighting and risking being locked up for good. Could Maysa be his saviour?Tom and Maysa's romance is haunted by their recent past. When old demons re-emerge for Tom after a violent assault at the shearers camp, can he keep it together long enough to stay out of jail, to protect the woman he loves, and be the man he knows he can be.This is a dramatic outback romance in a real setting with colourful characters.

A Look into the the Life and Love of Severus Snape: An Essay


Amber Vilate - 2013
    Rowling's popular character, Severus Snape, and the roles he played in the Harry Potter series.

Return To The Outback


Suzanne Brandyn - 2021
    They set up operations at River Glen, his mother’s property, not far from the Hardy property, Avonlea.Fourteen years earlier, an accident tore them apart, and she blames Grant for the tragedy. When she meets up with him, her mind is determined to replay the past as though it were a new release.As they work together, their love is rekindled until another incident tears them apart. With the case concluded, Ella hands in her resignation with intentions to help her parents’ out at Avonlea but wealthy grazier, Dylan Burns offers a new romance.As Ella faces danger and disaster, it’s up to her to save herself but can she still hope for a future with Grant or any future at all?

Love Objects


Emily Maguire - 2021
    Nic is a forty-five-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. She'd put her theory to the test, if only the pen buckets weren't currently blocked in by the crates of Happy Meal toys and the towers of Vegemite jars, take-away containers and cat food tins.Nic's closest relationship is with her niece Lena. The two of them meet for lunch every Sunday to gossip about the rest of the family and bitch about work (they're both checkout chicks: Lena just for now, Nic until they prise her staff discount card from her cold, dead hands).One Sunday, Nic fails to turn up to lunch and when Lena calls she gets a disconnection message. Arriving at the house she hasn't visited in years ('Too far for you to come, hon. Let's meet in the middle.') she finds her aunt unconscious under an avalanche of stuff.Lena is devastated that her beloved aunt has been living in such squalor all this time. While Nic is in hospital, she gets to work cleaning things up for her. Her first impulse is to call in the bulldozers and start searching Gumtree for a roomy caravan. But with the help of her reluctantly recruited brother, Will, she gets the job done.This heroic effort is not appreciated by the plastered up, crutch-wielding Nic. She returns to an empty, alien place unrecognisable as her home and the unbearable pity of her family who have no idea what they've destroyed. How can she live in this place without safety and peace? And how can she ever forgive the niece who has betrayed her?

A Room Made of Leaves


Kate Grenville - 2020
    What follows 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.

A Fig at the Gate


Kate Llewellyn - 2014
    Delight and enrichment come with the learning of new skills, being close to family and old friends, long companionable beach walks, rediscovering old recipes, food and wine.Wise and joyful, accepting what she cannot change while relishing what she has, Kate shares the beauties and frailties of the human condition and shows us what the gifts of ageing can bring.

Night Street


Kristel Thornell - 2010
    With her extraordinary talent for making simple city and seascapes haunting and mysteriously revelatory, Clarice paints prolifically and lives largely, overcoming the seemingly confined existence.Inspired by the art and life of the Victorian artist Clarice Beckett (1887-1935), Night Street is the story of a painter who, having remained unmarried by choice, continues to live with her ageing parents. Hers is an existence which, from the outside, appears both restrictive and monotonous. In fact, it masks a vibrant and passionate hidden life. With a mobile painting trolley in lieu of a studio, Clarice makes her way through the streets and coastline of Melbourne at dawn and dusk where she creates sombre, enigmatic landscapes. Through her art, she enters into a world of sensuality and freedom, away from the constraints of a conservative and disapproving society.Thornell is a beautiful writer. Her evocation of the painter Clarice, who fights against societal conventions whilst being pushed, to outwardly adhere to them, is powerful, eloquent and moving. The clarity and simplicity of Thornell's writing resonates through the book, highlighting its undercurrent of fervour and passion, as it propels the narrative forward with a masterful sense of poetic urgency.Night Street began with Thornell's first encounter with the paintings of Clarice Beckett at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The subtle power of Beckett's enigmatic landscapes enabled her to imagine Clarice's inner life and shape an extraordinary novel.