Bestselling & Award Winning Books

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE 2009 "Warm and moving ... quirky and unsentimental" The Age As I resigned myself to the fact that the latest Household Guide I'd written would be my last, I conceived in a flash the best idea ever. I rang Nancy and left a message. 'Think of the title,' I said. 'How catchy does The Household Guide to Dying sound?' When Delia Bennet-author and domestic advice columnist-is diagnosed with cancer, she knows it's time to get her house in order. After all, she's got to secure the future for her husband, their two daughters and their...

For a long time I have been intending to write down earliest memories to discover how many I retain clear-cut before my memory is too moth-eaten. I meant to do this as a diary for myself alone, as sailors in the doldrums erect full-rigged ships in bottles just because the mind is an instrument that sanity cannot leave idle. I must find some kind of exercise for a mind unused except on chores or with the triffle-traffle of housewives.' Miles Franklin wrote this delightful autobiography in 1952-1953. She was unable to arrange for publication before her death in 1954 and...

Winterbloom is a heart-breaking and fey re-imagining of a classic story from the award-winning Kirstyn McDermott. Ideal for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Kate Bernheimer, and Danielle Wood. Several years into their marriage, Beauty and her once beastly husband are at a crossroads. Though they still love each other, they have not been able to have children nor talk about the problems that have beset them since the fairy curse was lifted. Instead, she devotes herself to the roses in their garden while he composes music to charm the most discerning Parisian audiences. But Beauty secretly longs for the Beast with...

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and Australian Book Industry Awards, Book of the Year. After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a whisper that freedom can be bought, an opportunity to start afresh. As Thornhill stakes his claim on a patch of ground by the Hawkesbury River, the battle lines...

The no 1. New York Times bestseller from the author of Big Little Lies and new novel Apples Never Fall. "A staggeringly brilliant novel. It is literally unputdownable." Mail on Sunday How well do you know your husband? Cecilia Fitzpatrick, devoted mother, successful Tupperware business owner and efficient P&C President, has found a letter from her husband. "For my wife, Cecilia Fitzpatrick, to be opened only in the event of my death" But Cecilia's husband isn't dead, he's on a business trip. And when she questions him about it on the phone, Cecilia senses something she hasn't experienced before. John-Paul is lying. What happens...

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 seizes the word and hides it in an old wooden trunk that belongs to her friend, Lizzie,...

Winner of the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. 'When Macha Connor came home from the war she walked into town as naked as the day she was born, except for well-worn and shining boots, a dusty slouch hat, and the .303 rifle she held across her waist.' Macha patrols Siddon Rock by night, watching over the town's inhabitants: Brigid, Granna, and all of the Aberline clan; Alistair in Meakin's Haberdashery, with his fine sense of style; Sybil, scrubbing away at the bloodstains in her father's butcher shop; Reverend Siggy, afraid of...

A SECRETARY LIKE NO OTHER IN AN EPIC SPANNING 40 YEARS All Hanna Fischer ever wanted to do was to study physics under the great Albert Einstein. But when, as a teenager in 1919, her life is suddenly turned upside-down, she is catapulted into a new and extraordinary life - as a secretary, a scientist, a sister and a spy. From racist gangs in Berlin to gangsters in New York City, Nazis in the 1930s and Hitler's inner circle during the Second World War, Hanna will encounter some of history's greatest minds and most terrible moments, all while desperately trying...

The latest stunning thriller from the bestselling author of Scrublands and The Tilt. Yuwonderie's seven founding families have lorded it over their district for a century, growing ever more rich and powerful. But now—in startling circumstances—one of their own is found dead in a ditch and homicide detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are sent to investigate. Could the murder be connected to the execution of the victim's friend thirty years ago—another member of The Seven—or even to the long-forgotten story of a servant girl on the brink of the Great War? What are the secrets The Seven are so desperate to keep...

Life is made up of three parts: in The First Third, you're embarrassed by your family; in the second, you make a family of your own; and in the end, you just embarrass the family you've made. That's how Billy's grandmother explains it, anyway. She's given him her bucket list (cue embarrassment), and now, it's his job to glue their family back together. No pressure or anything. Fixing his family's not going to be easy and Billy's not ready for change. But as he soon discovers, the first third has to end some time. And then what? It's a Greek...

David Foster is the most original, challenging, contradictory, risk-taking and infuriating Australian novelist of his generation. To date he has published twelve novels, three collections of novellas and short stories, two books of poetry, and a collection of essays, with several produced radio plays. Foster writes in an Australian tradition of idiosyncratic satire and comedy that may be traced through the work of Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Xavier Herbert and David Ireland. His novels are the most wide-ranging and fearless of the Australian novels that have contributed to the late twentieth-century re-examination of Western ideologies and the literary forms in...

Kate Grenville's Orange-Prize winning novel The Idea of Perfection is the story of the small town of Karakarook, and of Douglas Cheeseman and Harley Savage—two people who seem the least likely in the world to fall in love. Unlike Felicity Porcelline, a woman dangerously haunted by the idea of perfection, they come to understand that what looks like weakness can be the best kind of strength.   Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers. Her bestselling novel The Secret River has been published in more than twenty countries. It has received numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Man...

'Stepping nimbly among the liminal spaces and eerie real-world haunts of our heroine’s cipher-sister, this haunting modern fairytale will wrap you up like a glittering fog, before going for your throat.’ Melissa Albert, author of The Hazel Wood Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they’re changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. People...

'A rich inner life is not just the preserve of the arts. The joys, fears and profound self-discoveries of creativity - through making or building anything that wasn't there before, any imaginative exploration or attempt to invent - I believe to be the birthright of every person on this earth. If you live your life with curiosity and intention - or would like to - this book is for you.' Charlotte Wood, from the Preface to The Luminous Solution In this essential, illuminating book, award-winning writer Charlotte Wood shares the insights she has gained over a career paying close attention to...

The brilliant new novel from Charlotte Wood, acclaimed author of The Natural Way of Things. Shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now . . . Despite the three women knowing each other better than their own siblings, Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they...

Gabrielle Carey narrates a riveting journey through the life and work of one of last century's most successful - and almost forgotten - women novelists, Elizabeth von Arnim 'When I discovered Elizabeth von Arnim, I found, for the first time, a writer who wrote about being happy.' Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the early 20th century's most famous - and forgotten -authors. Born in Sydney in the mid 1800s, she went on to write many internationally bestselling novels, marry a Prussian Count and then an English Lord, nurture close friendships with H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster and raise five...

The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller from the author of the upcoming new novel Bridge of Clay. "Brilliant and hugely ambitious ... the kind of book that can be life changing" The New York Times NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So...

'Either Side of Midnight is a gripping, gritty thriller with an ingeniously shocking premise and twists and turns you’ll never see coming!' Liane Moriarty, bestselling author of Big Little Lies 'An exceptional new talent' Jane Harper, bestselling author of The Dry 'A complex and hugely original page-turner. Stevenson has officially made my auto-buy-author list.' Christian White, bestselling author of The Nowhere Child How can it be murder when the victim pulled the trigger? At 9.01 pm, TV presenter Sam Midford delivers the monologue for his popular current affairs show Midnight Tonight. He seems nervous and the crew are convinced he’s about to propose to his...

From the author of bestseller The Dressmaker and upcoming novel The Year of the Farmer. Phoeba Crupp is a young woman who lives with her parents and sister on a small farm near Geelong in the 1890s. Her father is an eccentric ex-accountant who moved his family from the city in order to establish a vineyard, a decision her mother bitterly - and loudly - resents. While her sister makes a play for the local squatter's son, Phoeba is content with her best friend Harriet, until circumstances push her towards the world of men and money. Like Ham's first novel, The Dressmaker, Summer at Mount...

Joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2016 - Fiction category Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize She hears her own thick voice deep inside her ears when she says, 'I need to know where I am.' The man stands there, tall and narrow, hand still on the doorknob, surprised. He says, almost in sympathy, 'Oh, sweetie. You need to know what you are.' Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of nowhere. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight...