Book picks similar to
Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard
australian
australia
fiction
australian-women-writers
The Last Bookshop
Emma Young - 2021
After a tough decade for retail, Book Fiend is the last bookshop in the CBD, and the last independent retailer on a street given over to high-end labels. Profits are small, but clients are loyal. When James breezes into Book Fiend, Cait realises life might hold more than her shop and her cat, but while the new romance distracts her, luxury chain stores are circling Book Fiend’s prime location, and a more personal tragedy is looming.
People in Glass Houses
Shirley Hazzard - 1967
As in our world itself, humanity prevails in the courage, love, and laughter of singular spirits--of men and women for whom life is an adventure no Organization can quell, and whose souls remain their own.
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Sax Rohmer - 1913
A time of shadows, secret societies, and dens filled with opium addicts. Into this world comes the most fantastic emissary of evil society has ever known… Dr. Fu-Manchu. Denis Nayland Smith pursues his quarry across continents and through the back alleys of London. As victim after victim disappears at the hands of the Devil Doctor, Smith must unravel his murderous plot before it is too late. Includes a special feature by Leslie S. Kilnger
Cafe Scheherazade
Arnold Zable - 2003
At once fable and history, it takes the reader on a journey which ranges from Kobe to Paris, from Vilna and back to Melbourne.
The Farm at Peppertree Crossing
Leonie Kelsall - 2020
But, out of options, she and Scritches leave Sydney behind, bound for the 800-acre property on the edge of the wheat fields of South Australia.However, this is no simple inheritance: Marian seeks to control her legacy from beyond the grave by setting tasks that Roni must complete before she can claim the property and a life that could change her future. With everything at stake, Roni must learn to trust in the truth of Marian's most important lesson: everyone deserves love.A captivating story of family, friendship and forgiveness."'Everything you want in rural romance - heart, humour and hope' Sandie Docker, author of the much-loved The Kookaburra Creek Cafe"
Journey to the Stone Country
Alex Miller - 2002
Intrigued by Bo's claim that he holds the key to her future, Annabelle sets out with him on a path of recovery that leads back to her childhood and into the Jangga's ancient heartland, where their grandparents's lives begin to yield secrets that will challenge the possibility of their happiness together. With the consummate artistry of a novelist working at the height of his powers, Miller convinces us that the stone country is not only a remote and exotic location in North Queensland, but is also an unvisited place within each of us. Journey to the Stone Country confirms Miller's reputation as one of Australia's most intelligent and uncompromising writers."The most impressive and satisfying novel of recent years. It gave me all the kinds of pleasure a reader can hope for" - Tim Winton"A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line." - Nicholas Shakespeare"Miller's fiction has a mystifying power that is always far more than the sum of its parts...his footsteps - softly, deftly, steadily - take you places you may not have been, and their sound resonates for a long time." - Andrea Stretton, Sydney Morning HeraldFirst Paragraph: The moment she opened the front door and stepped into the passage she knew he was gone. She stood in the silence, her heavy briefcase hanging from her hand, staring at her reflection in the bevelled mirrorglass on the hallstand. The passage smelled of fish from next door's cooking. It was raining again and the tyres going past in the road outside were making a swishing sound. A week earlier they had celebrated her forty-second birthday together at her favorite Italian restaurant in Carlton. That evening with their meal they shared a bottle of wine and then went home and made love. After making love she slept soundly and woke next morning refreshed. That day, which was a Saturday, they began planning a trip to Europe, to be undertaken in the autumn. There were conferences they would each attend, hers at Kent on Globalising History and his at Leeds on Biography as Fiction. After her conference she was to look up family connections in Somerset and they would then meet in Frankfurt and spend a week there together with his brother's family before flying home.
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding
Robert Hughes - 1986
With 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps.One of the greatest non-fiction books I've ever read . . . Hughes brings us an entire world. --Los Angeles Times
The Lucky Country
Donald Horne - 1964
Horne took Australian society to task for its philistinism, provincialism and dependence. The book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past.
The Borough Treasurer
J.S. Fletcher - 1921
'What those buildings had been used for in other days was not obvious to the casual and careless observer, but to the least observant their present use was obvious enough. Here were piles of timber from Norway; there were stacks of slate from Wales; here was marble from Aberdeen, and there cement from Portland: the old chambers of the grey buildings were filled to overflowing with all the things that go towards making a house-ironwork, zinc, lead, tiles, great coils of piping, stores of domestic appliances. And on a shining brass plate, set into the wall, just within the gateway, were deeply engraven the words: Mallalieu and Cotherstone, Builders and Contractors ...'
One Hundred Days
Alice Pung - 2021
So Karuna returns the favour. Eventually, Karuna can’t ignore the reality: she is pregnant. Incensed, her mother, already over-protective, confines her to their fourteenth-storey housing-commission flat for one hundred days, to protect her from the outside world – and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her. One Hundred Days is a fractured fairytale exploring the fault lines between love and control. At times tense and claustrophobic, it also brims with humour, warmth and character. It is a magnificent new work from one of Australia’s most celebrated writers.
The Choke
Sofie Laguna - 2017
Justine finds sanctuary in Pop's chooks and The Choke, where the banks of the Murray River are so narrow they can almost touch—a place of staggering natural beauty that is both a source of peace and danger. Although Justine doesn't know it, her father is a menacing criminal and the world she is exposed to is one of great peril to her. She has to make sense of it on her own—and when she eventually does, she knows what she has to do. A brilliant, haunting novel about a child navigating an often dark and uncaring world of male power, guns and violence, in which grown-ups can't be trusted and comfort can only be found in nature, The Choke is a compassionate and claustrophobic vision of a child in danger and a society in deep trouble. It once again showcases the Miles Franklin Award-winning author as a writer of rare empathy, originality and blazing talent.
Zigzag Street
Nick Earls - 1996
Richard Derrington's doing it tough.Since Anna trashed him his job seems pointles, Tuesday seems moderately fucked by ten, his tennis appalling.....long periods of complete crap, punctuated by flashes of very random glory and the future bleka.This is a hiatus? There I was thinking I was sinking and it's just a hiatus.Apart from his friens, the only thing keeping Richard going is his wicked sense of humour.Then things look up.
Night Blue
Angela O'Keeffe - 2021
It is a truly original and absorbing approach to revisiting Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner as artists and people, as well as realigning our ideas around the cultural legacy of Whitlam’s purchase of Blue Poles in 1973.It is also the story of Alyssa, and a contemporary relationship, in which Angela O’Keeffe immerses us in the essential power of art to change our personal lives and, by turns, a nation.Moving between New York and Australia with fluid ease, Night Blue is intimate and tender, yet surprisingly dramatic. It is a glorious exploration of how art must never be undervalued.
In Falling Snow
Mary-Rose MacColl - 2012
'In the beginning, it was the summers I remembered - long warm days under the palest blue skies, the cornflowers and forget-me-nots lining the road through the Lys forest, the buzz of insects going about their work, Violet telling me lies.' Iris is getting old. A widow, her days are spent living quietly and worrying about her granddaughter, Grace, a headstrong young doctor. It's a small sort of life. But one day an invitation comes for Iris through the post to a reunion in France, where she served in a hospital during WWI. Determined to go, Iris is overcome by the memories of the past, when as a shy, naive young woman she followed her fifteen-year-old brother, Tom, to France in 1914 intending to bring him home. On her way to find Tom, Iris comes across the charismatic Miss Ivens, who is setting up a field hospital in the old abbey of Royaumont, north of Paris. Putting her fears aside, Iris decides to stay at Royaumont, and it is there that she truly comes of age, finding her capability and her strength, discovering her passion for medicine, making friends with the vivacious Violet and falling in love. But war is a brutal thing, and when the ultimate tragedy happens, there is a terrible price that Iris has to pay, a price that will echo down the generations. A moving and uplifting novel about the small, unsung acts of heroism of which love makes us capable.
Union Belle
Deborah Challinor - 2005
Times were tough and when the Government implemented harsh and heavy-handed emergency regulations, families were divided along political lines, and bitter accusations of sabotage and treachery began to tear small mining communities apart. Against this emotive backdrop, in the tiny mining village of Pukemiro, a story of love and treachery is also being played out in the personal lives of some of those intimately connected with the strike. Ellen McCabe, wife of the local union secretary and hero, Thomas McCabe, and a life-long Union woman, finds herself caught up the passion of the fight and a new found passion of her own - when a charismatic war veteran, Jack Vaughan comes to Pukemiro and befriends her husband. In a powerful tale of love and conflict Ellen is forced to examine her loyalties and make heart shattering choices, as the country and community around her is pulled apart. A full-blooded romance set in times of conflict, Union will do for the Waikato what Denniston Rose did for the West Coast - and much more.