Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

$9.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors | Reading Level: very good

The no 1. New York Times bestseller from the author of The Husband's Secret and new novel Nine Perfect Strangers.NOW AN EMMY AWARD WINNING HBO TELEVISION SERIES STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON & NICOLE KIDMANParents behaving badly ... a tragic accident ... or murder? What isn't in doubt is that someone i s dead. Madeline is a force to be reckoned with: witty, noisy and passionate. She remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. But perfection is often an illusion. Jane is a single mum with a mysterious past who carries a sadness beyond her years. These three women, all with children starting at the same school, are about to tell the little lies that can turn lethal ...WINNER OF THE ABIA GENERAL FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR PRAISE FOR BIG LITTLE LIES"Irresistible ... Moriarty's sly humor and razor-sharp insights will keep you turning the pages to find out." People Magazine "Liane Moriarty produces novels that are miracles of structure as well as human insight" Sydney Morning Herald"Ms. Moriarty's long-parched fans have something new to dig into....in ways that may give Big Little Lies even more staying power than The Husband's Secret." The New York Times"A novel that will turn you into a compulsive book-finisher ... Moriarty has produced another gripping, satirical hit." Huffington Post"She is the mistress of the razor-sharp observation ... my favourite so far" Kate Morton ...Show more

Gang of Four by Liz Byrski

$9.99 AUD

$18.99 (47% off)

Category: Australian Authors

She had a husband, children and grandchildren who loved her, a beautiful home, enough money. What sort of person was she to feel so overwhelmed with gloom and resentment on Christmas morning?They have been close friends for almost two decades, supporting each other through personal and professional cris es–parents dying, children leaving home, house moves, job changes, political activism, diets and really bad haircuts. Now the 'gang of four', Isabel, Sally, Robin and Grace, are all fifty-something, successful ...and restless. It is Isabel who makes the first move, taking a year away from her family to follow in her mother's footsteps across Europe. Soon Sally is on her way to San Francisco, to come face to face with a guilty secret. Robin, in the wake of a clandestine relationship, heads for isolation in the country. And Grace? Well, Grace would never go away for an entire year, but, lonely in the others' absence, she thinks she might take a short holiday in England. Once there, she bumps into someone she hardly knows–herself.Gang of Four is a story of four very different journeys and a celebration of women in the prime of life. ...Show more

Ripping Tree by Nikki Gemmell

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

An illustrious family. A beautiful home. A shipwrecked young woman left on its doorstep. Don'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 ne ver 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.   ...Show more

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

$19.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day, she sees a slip containing the word bondmaid flutter to the floor unclaimed. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others - that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. Set when the women's suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.   ...Show more

The Yield by Tara June Winch

$19.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

Winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Award. Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. 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 eve r 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. ...Show more

All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

The bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton, returns with All Our Shimmering Skies - a glorious novel destined to become another Australian classic. Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain overhead, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger's daughter, turns once again to the sky for gui dance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. 'Run, Molly, run,' says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia's wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber's coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run. All Our Shimmering Skies is a story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves. It is an odyssey of true love and grave danger; of darkness and light; of bones and blue skies. A buoyant, beautiful and magical novel abrim with warmth, wit and wonder, a love letter to Australia and the art of looking up.     ...Show more

Infinite Splendours by Sofie Laguna

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors | Reading Level: very good

A bold new literary novel from the author of the award-winning The Eye of the Sheep and The Choke. Lawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, a n experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the devastating aftermath. As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be condemned to repeat it? Lawrence finds meaning in the best way he knows. By surrendering himself to art and nature, he creates beauty - beauty made all the more astonishing and soulful for the deprivation that gives rise to it. Infinite Splendours is an extraordinary novel, incandescent with love and compassion, rich in colour and character. The power and virtuosity of Laguna's writing make it impossible for us to look away; and by being seen, Lawrence is redeemed. And we, as readers, have had our minds and hearts opened in ways we can't forget.   ...Show more

Love Objects by Emily Maguire

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

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. The person she's closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt's house to see if Nic's all right, she gets the shock of her life, and sets in train a series of events that will prove cataclysmic for them both. By the acclaimed author of An Isolated Incident, Love Objects is a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching and deeply compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces. ...Show more

The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks. Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She's never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu - its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals - first mammals, then birds and insects, too. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals In That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.   ...Show more

The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman (PB) by Julietta Henderson

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

It will make you laugh, it will make you cry - definitely one of the best books we've read! What do you get when you cross a painfully awkward son, lofty comedic ambition and a dead best friend? Norman. Norman and Jax are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a five-year plan to perform at the Edinbu rgh Fringe by the time they're fifteen. But when Jax dies before they turn twelve, Norman decides paying tribute to his best friend just can't wait... so he rewrites their plan: 1. Look after mum 2. Find Dad 3. Get to the Edinburgh Fringe Sadie knows she's never going to win Mother of the Year, and not knowing exactly who her son's father is doesn't help. But when she finds Norman's new plan, all she wants is to see her son smile again... So they set off on a pilgrimage to Edinburgh, making a few stops to find Norman's dad along the way.   ...Show more

Bad Behaviour by Liz Byrski

$9.99 AUD

$18.99 (47% off)

Category: Australian Authors

One mistake can change a life forever. Zoe is living a conventional suburban life in Fremantle. She works, she gardens, and she loves her supportive husband Archie and their three children. But the arrival of a new woman into her son Daniel's life unsettles Zoe. Suddenly she is feeling angry and hurt, and is lashing out at those closest to her. In Sussex, England, Julia is feeling nostalgic as she nurses her best friend through the last painful stages of cancer. Her enthusiastic but dithering husband Tom is trying to convince Julia to slow down. Although she knows Tom means well, Julia cannot help but feel frustrated that he is pushing her into old age before she is ready. But she knows she is lucky to have him. She so nearly didn't.... These two women's lives have been shaped by the decisions they made back in 1968--when they were young, idealistic, and naive. In a world that was a whirl of politics and protest, consciousness raising and sexual liberation, Zoe and Julia were looking for love, truth, and their own happy endings. They soon discover that life is rarely that simple, as their bad behaviour leads them down paths that they can never turn back from.   ...Show more

Driving Stevie Fracasso by Barry Divola

$32.99 AUD

Category: Australian Authors

Two estranged brothers, one stolen car and a road trip from Texas to New York. What could possibly go wrong? For fans of Nick Hornby, David Nicholls and Jonathan Tropper. Jaded music journo Rick McLennan knows his life is going south when he loses his job, his apartment and his long-term girlfriend al l on the same day. But then he is thrown a lifeline: a paying gig to drive his ex-rock star brother, Stevie, from Austin, Texas, to New York to get his story and play one final gig. One small problem: the brothers have history; they haven't spoken in thirty years.Rick knows it's a bad idea. But he's out of choices. So he gets behind the wheel of a beaten-up Datsun 180B and drives towards his destiny. He's about to find everything he didn't know he was missing. It's September 2001.From high-profile, award-winning journalist and author Barry Divola comes a glorious, music-infused, rollicking road-trip novel - think High Fidelity meets The Big Lebowski meets The Darjeeling Limited. A smart, funny and wholly endearing story about how, though we may at times lose ourselves along the way, the road always leads back to family and the things that bring us joy.   ...Show more