Neither as pretty as cousin Alicia nor as domineering as mother Drusilla, she seems doomed to a quiet life of near poverty at Missalonghi, her family's pitifully small homestead in Australia's Blue Mountains. But it's a brand new century--the twentieth--a time for new thoughts and bold new actions. And Missy Wright is about to set every self-righteous tongue in the town of Byron wagging. Because she has just set her sights on a mysterious, mistrusted, and unsuspecting stranger... who just might be Prince Charming in disguise.

    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.

    Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girls, forced to wear strange uniforms, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious armed jailers and a 'nurse'. Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. They pray for rescue - but when the food starts running out it becomes clear that the jailers have also become the jailed. The girls can only rescue themselves.

    .Poppy's world has been tipped sideways: the husband who never wanted children has betrayed her with her broody best friend.At least Annalise is on her side. Her new friend is determined to celebrate their freedom from kids, so together they create a Facebook group to meet up with like-minded women, and perhaps vent just an little about smug mummies' privileges at work.Meanwhile, their colleague Frankie would love a night out, away from her darlings - she's not had one this decade and she's heartily sick of being judged by women at the office as well as stay-at-home mums.Then Poppy and Annalise's group takes on a life of its own and frustrated members start confronting mums like Frankie in the real world. Cafés become battlegrounds, playgrounds become war zones and offices have never been so divided.A rivalry that was once harmless fun is spiraling out of control.Because one of their members is a wolf in sheep's clothing. And she has an agenda of her own . . .

    First, her impromptu reply to the bosses has gone viral, published everywhere from Facebook to the Financial Times. Second, she has a non-refundable, same-day ticket to Melbourne thanks to a dangerous cocktail of Victorian pinot noir, broadband internet and a dash of melancholy.Landing in Australia, Ruby plans a quiet stay with her aunt in the Yarra Valley—but a party at the local winery results in an unexpected job offer: financial policy adviser to the Federal Leader of the Opposition.Intrigued, Ruby heads to Melbourne for morning coffee with the Chief of Staff—and finds herself in the middle of the Treasurer’s overthrow of the Prime Minister and the announcement of an early election.Rookie Ruby, dubbed ‘Roo’ by her Aussie colleagues, is thrown into the campaign and spends four weeks circumnavigating Australia while trying to stay afloat in the deep end of politics. Through trial and plenty of error (including wardrobe malfunctions, media mishaps and a palate for unsavoury men) she finds passion, not just a flair, for her new career.With its light touch and deft comic instincts, Campaign Ruby is a delightful combination of fashion, faux pas and the unexpected fun of federal politics.

    . . beautiful writing.' - Alice Sebold, author of the international bestseller The Lovely Bones'Astonishing. The writing is visceral and affecting, the sentences muscular and beating with a linguistic pulse which makes the book feel like a live creature. The Breeding Season is a creature that might, in turn, rip your heart out or blanket you in a comforting hug. Craft like this is rare and magical.' - Krissy Kneen, award-winning author of WinteringThe rains come to Brisbane just as Elise and Dan descend into grief. Elise, a scientist, believes that isolation and punishing fieldwork will heal her pain. Her husband Dan, a writer, questions the truths of his life, and looks to art for answers. Worlds apart, Elise and Dan must find a way to forgive themselves and each other before it's too late.An astounding debut novel that forensically and poetically explores the intersections of art and science, sex and death, and the heartbreaking complexity of love. The Breeding Season marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent in Australian literature.

    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.

    His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect. The police are investigating.None of it makes any sense. Martin sets off to Palermo in search of answers about his father’s activities, while Evie moves into Noah’s apartment, waiting to learn where her life might take her. Retracing their father’s steps in their own way, neither of his children can see the path ahead.Gail Jones’s mesmerising new novel tells a story about parents and children, and explores the overlapping patterns that life makes. The Death of Noah Glass is about love and art, about grief and happiness, about memory and the mystery of time.

    Lew McLeod has been travelling and working with Painter Hayes since he was a boy. Shearing, charcoal burning, whatever comes. Painter made him his first pair of shoes. It's a hard and uncertain life but it's the only one he knows. But Lew's a grown man now. And with this latest job, shearing for John Drysdale and his daughter Clara, everything will change. Stephen Daisley writes in lucid, rippling prose of how things work, and why; of the profound satisfaction in hard work done with care, of love and friendship and the damage that both contain. ‘Daisley’s reverence and knowledge of the outback transcends the cliché of heat, dust and flies, inviting readers into a mesmerising world of desert flora and fauna…He minutiae of the woolshed and animal behaviour are brought to life with skill and affection.’ Readings

    This year, Angela surprises herself—she tells the truth....The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping badly with retirement. Her thirty-two-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can’t stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when a bump on the head leaves Angela with temporary amnesia, the Gillespies pull together—and pull themselves together—in wonderfully surprising ways....

    A Puberty Blues for the digital age, a Lolita with a webcam, it’s what happens when young girls are forced to grow up too fast. Or never get the chance to grow up at all.Layla is only 14. She cruises online. She catches trains to meet strangers. Her mother, Margot, never suspects. Even when Layla brings a man into their home. Margot’s caught in her own web: an evangelical church and a charismatic pastor. Meanwhile, downtown, a man opens a suitcase and tenderly places his young lover inside.just_a_girl is a novel about being isolated and searching for a sense of connection, faith, friendship and healing, and explores what it’s like to grow up negotiating the digital world of facebook, webcams, internet porn, mobile phones and cyberbullying – a world where the line between public and private is increasingly being eroded.

    They came together only for the reading of their father's will - when Snow discovered, to her horror, that she was not the sole beneficiary of his large estate.Now Snow is in prison and Agnes is missing, disappeared in the eerie red dust that blanketed Sydney from dawn on September 23, 2009.With no other family left, Snow turns to crime journalist Jack Fawcett, protesting her innocence in a series of defiant letters from prison. Has she been unfairly judged? Or will Jack's own research reveal a story even more shocking than the one Snow wants to tell?With Sisters of Mercy Caroline Overington once again proves she is one of the most exciting new novelists of recent years.

    Eighteen-year-old Ruby leaves behind the family farm, her serious mother and roguish father, and heads for Adelaide. After a brief courtship, she enters into a hasty marriage with a soldier about to go to war – who returns a changed man.In this absorbing novel, Anna Goldsworthy recreates the world of Adelaide half a century ago, and portrays the phases of a woman’s life with intimacy and sly humour. We follow Ruby as she contends with her damaged husband and eccentric in-laws. We see her experience motherhood and changing social circumstances, until, in a moving twist, a figure from the past reappears, to kindle a late-life romance.In her captivating fiction debut, Goldsworthy evokes a woman’s life in a pre-feminist world. In this tender, funny book, she combines an Austenesque wit with Alice Munro’s feeling for human complexity.

    A frontier land where anything is possible - at least for the tourists.In Holiday in Cambodia Laura Jean McKay explores the electric zone where local and foreign lives meet.Three backpackers board a train, ignoring the danger signs - and find themselves in the hands of the Khmer Rouge.Elderly sisters are visited by their vampire niece from Australia and set out to cure her.A singer creates a sensation in swinging 1969, on the eve of an American bombing campaign.These are bold and haunting stories by a remarkable new talent.'Each of these stories is like catching a snippet of a conversation or looking into a lit window in a dark night, and loitering longer than you should to hear and see what characters inadvertently reveal about themselves. Holiday in Cambodia shows the ugly side of post-colonial tourism, as well as moments of great pathos and dignity, in a compelling and empathetic voice.'-Alice Pung'Polished, Hemingwayesque snapshots, vivid and atmospheric' - Steven CarrollAbout the author: Laura Jean McKay is the author of Holiday in Cambodia shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award 2014, the Queensland Literary Award 2014 and The Asher Award 2015 for women writing on an anti-war theme. Laura’s writing has been published in The Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing and Meanjin and is forthcoming in the U.S. in J Journal and The North American Review. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and the recipient of a Martin Bequest Traveling Scholarship.Her short story collection Holiday in Cambodia is out now with Black Inc. Go to blackincbooks.com

    She never imagined she’d have to campaign to save the local primary school. She certainly had no idea her best friend would turn out to be the crusty old junk man. All in all, she’s starting to wonder if she took a wrong turn somewhere. If only she could drop the kids at the orphanage and start over . . . But now, thanks to her protest letters, the education minister is coming to Gunapan, and she has to convince him to change his mind about the school closure. And as if facing down the government isn’t enough, it soon becomes clear that the school isn’t the only local spot in trouble. In the drought-stricken bushland on the outskirts of town, a luxury resort development is about to siphon off a newly discovered springwater supply. No one seems to know anything, no one seems to care.With a dream lover on a Harley unlikely to appear to save the day, Loretta needs to stir the citizens of Gunapan to action. She may be short of money, influence, and a fully functioning car, but she has good friends. Together they can organize chocolate drives, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the local slaughterhouse—whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home.