Tabitha Bird has gifted us this wonder’ Cass MoriartyMeet Willa Waters, aged 8 . . . 33 . . . and 93.On one impossible day in 1965, eight-year-old Willa receives a mysterious box containing a jar of water and the instruction: ‘One ocean: plant in the backyard.’ So she does - and somehow creates an extraordinary time slip that allows her to visit her future selves.On one impossible day in 1990, Willa is 33 and a mother-of-two when her childhood self magically appears in her backyard. But she’s also a woman haunted by memories of her dark past – and is on the brink of a decision that will have tragic repercussions . . .On one impossible day in 2050, Willa is a silver-haired, gumboot-loving 93-year-old whose memory is fading fast. Yet she knows there’s something she has to remember, a warning she must give her past selves about a terrible event in 1990. If only she could recall what it was.Can the three Willas come together, to heal their past and save their future, before it’s too late?'A courageous and magical debut novel that reminds us that while we can’t change events from our past, we do have the power to change the story we tell ourselves about them.' Sally Piper

    

    It also marked the starting point of Kathy Lette's writing career, which sees her now as an author at the forefront of her field.Puberty Blues is about top chicks and surfie spunks and the kids who don't quite make the cut: it recreates with fascinating honesty a world where only the gang and the surf count. It's a hilarious and horrifying account of the way many teenagers live and some of them die. Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey's insightful novel is as painfully true today as it ever was.

    In the Iraq of a decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father’s dementia and the family silences that may never find voice, tests boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey’s tyranny and heal its wounds.These characters' worlds intertwine across time and place, in a brilliant story of fear and sacrifice, trauma and survival, and what people will do to outrun the shadows. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and cultural reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation bestows upon the next, and the potential for transformation.This is a searing, powerful and utterly original work by an exceptional Australian writer. It will leave you changed.

    A beautiful home. A shipwrecked young woman left on its doorstep. D on't think they're going to save her. A new novel from international bestselling author, Nikki Gemmell.Early 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. Her fate: to be married to a clergyman she's never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship and leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She's saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae.Tom is now free to be whoever she wants to be and a whole new life opens up to her. But as she's drawn deeper into the intriguing life of this grand estate, she discovers that things aren't quite as they seem. She stumbles across a horrifying secret at the heart of this world of colonial decorum - and realises she may have exchanged one kind of prison for another.The Ripping Tree is an intense, sharp shiver of a novel, which brings to mind such diverse influences as The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca and the film Get Out as much as it evokes The Secret River. A powerful and gripping tale of survival written in Nikki Gemmell's signature lyrical and evocative prose, it examines the darkness at the heart of early colonisation. Unsettling, audacious, thrilling and unputdownable.

    This is the story of Dame Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, junkie.Lena is Music’s Most Modern Musician; the first theremin player of the twentieth century.From the obscurity of a Perth boarding school to a glittering career on the world stage, Lena Gaunt’s life will be made and torn apart by those she gives her heart to.Through it all her relationship with music and with her extraordinary instrument – the theremin – endures, in this novel about how our lives are shaped by love, loss and the stories we tell.

    He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest, and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy's Complaint.

    Choices were made without thinking. Young lives came together and would never be the same again. Years on, as Ursula confronts decisions that are not so easy to make, revelations collide with memories of Candelo - and some breathtaking secrets come to light.

    Before Biff and her younger brother, Mark, there was baby Alison, who drowned in her bath because, it was said, her mother was distracted. Biff too, lives in fear of her mother's irrational behaviour and paranoia, and she is always on guard and fears for the safety of her brother. As Biff grows into teenage hood, there develops a conspiratorial relationship between her and her father, who is a famous and gregarious man, trying to keep his wife's problems a family secret. This was a time when the insane were committed and locked up in Dickensian institutions; whatever his problems her father was desperate to save his wife from that fate. But also to protect his children from the effects of living with a tragically disturbed mother.In My Mother's Hands is a beautifully written and emotionally perplexing coming-of-age true story about growing up in an unusual family.

    Two photographers document a nation’s guilt in pictures of its people’s hands. An underground club in Western Australia plays jazz to nostalgic patrons dreaming of America’s Deep South. A young woman struggles to define herself among the litter of objects an ex-lover has left behind. In short vignettes and longer stories, Josephine Rowe explores the idea of things that are left behind: souvenirs, scars, and prejudice. Rowe captures everyday life in restrained poetic prose, merging themes of collective memory and guilt, permanence and impermanence, and inherited beliefs. These beautifully wrought, bittersweet stories announce the arrival of an exciting new talent in Australian fiction.

    . . veteran of the Iraq conflict who has suffered such extensive bodily trauma that he can only really survive by means of a mechanical skeleton.Marianna's has been ruined by men . . . A woman who has had to flee the country after her husband lied to the wrong people.John Philip's by too much money . . . Until he receives a surprise inheritance in the evening of his own life.Rodney Hall, two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, presents the story of three people experiencing a period of life they never thought possible, and, perhaps, should never have been granted at all...PRAISE FOR RODNEY HALL"Reminiscent of both Joyce and Garcia Marquez" Washington Post"Magnificent. So good that you wish you had written it yourself" Salman Rushdie"A wondrous blend of the fabulous and the surreal" The Australian"Brilliant" David Mitchell

    Through the story of two brothers who grew up in patriotic, suburban Melbourne, George Johnston created an enduring exploration of two Australian myths - that of the man who loses his soul as he gains worldly success, and that of the tough, honest, Aussie battler.

    I cannot recommend this book highly enough.' Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of AuschwitzI have wished so many times that I had acted differently.I wish that I had been more worthy of you...Eventually the war will end, and then we will find each other.Until then, remember me.Budapest, 1938. In a city park, five young Jewish mathematicians gather to share ideas, trade proofs and whisper sedition.Sydney, 2007. Illy has just buried her father, a violent, unpredictable man whose bitterness she never understood. And now Illy's mother has gifted her a curious notebook, its pages a mix of personal story and mathematical discovery, recounted by a woman full of hopes and regrets.Inspired by a true story, Miriam Sved's beautifully crafted novel charts a course through both the light and dark of human relationships: a vivid recreation of 1930s Hungary, a decades-old mystery locked in the story of one enduring friendship, a tribute to the selfless power of the heart.LONGLISTED FOR THE COLIN RODERICK AWARD 2020PRAISE FOR A UNIVERSE OF SUFFICIENT SIZE'A fascinating, compelling, beautifully written novel.' Liane Moriarty, author of Big Little Lies and The Husband's Secret 'A taut, tender novel about family, secrets, genius and survival. Sved shows great insight into the complicated emotional architecture of family created in the aftermath of trauma.' Emily Maguire, author of An Isolated Incident'A superbly structured novel of family, history, secrets, trauma, and mathematics, stretching from 1930s Budapest to Sydney in the 2000s' Andrea Goldsmith'Sved's prose is as sinewy and powerful as her characters - beautifully controlled and full of revealing moments that... glow in the memory.' Cate Kennedy'A beautifully imagined inter-generational portrait of friendship, love and loss, set across three continents.' Julienne van LoonPRAISE FOR MIRIAM SVED'The best kind of storyteller... hypnotic, startling almost.' Clementine Ford, author of Fight Like a Girl and Boys Will Be Boys'At times I found myself being reminded of the American author Jennifer Egan. Both authors share the ability to surprise with character insights, something so traditional yet so mentally refreshing. The prose is limpid yet razor sharp. Highly recommended.' The Australian

    In a mountain-locked valley, Jessie is on the run.Born wild and brave, by twenty-six she has already lived life as a circus rider, horse and cattle rustler, and convict. But on this fateful night she is just a woman wanting to survive though there is barely any life left in her.Two men crash through the bushland, desperate to claim the reward on her head: one her lover, the other the law.But as it has always been for Jessie, it is death, not a man, who is her closest pursuer and companion. And while all odds are stacked against her, there is one who will never give up on her—her own child, who awaits her.

    But it is. And it is nothing like I expected.'There was a short time in Australia's European history when two women wielded extraordinary power and influence behind the scenes of the fledgling colony.One was Elizabeth Macquarie, the wife of the new governor Lachlan Macquarie, nudging him towards social reform and magnificent buildings and town planning. The other was Elizabeth Macarthur, credited with creating Australia's wool industry and married to John Macarthur, a dangerous enemy of the establishment.These women came from strikingly different backgrounds with husbands who held sharply conflicting views. They should have been bitter foes. Elizabeth & Elizabeth is about two courageous women thrown together in impossible times.Borne out of an overriding admiration for the women of early colonial Australian history, Sue Williams has written a novel of enduring fascination.