List
ABC Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books (2026)
100 books Numbered Discoverable by Booko Admin
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4
Burial Rites
Hannah Kent · 2013
Based on a true story, tells the tale of a young woman in Iceland in 1829 who was accused of murder and sent to an isolated farm to await execution and tells the farmer's family her side of the story.
from £7.74 4 shopsCompare prices -
7
The Dictionary of Lost Words
Pip Williams · 2020
In 1901, the word 'Bondmaid' was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it. Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the 'Scriptorium', a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word 'bondmaid' flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world. Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, 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. It's a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.
from £12.26 7 shopsCompare prices -
10
The Dry
Jane Harper · 2016
Who really killed the Hadler family? Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend's crime.
from £13.20 7 shopsCompare prices -
12
Dark Emu
Bruce Pascoe · 2014
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviors inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
from £13.59 7 shopsCompare prices -
13
Looking For Alibrandi
Melina Marchetta · 1992
Melina Marchetta's stunning debut novel Looking for Alibrandi is one girl's story of her final year at school, a year she sets herself free. Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and in her final year at a wealthy girls' school. This is the year she meets her father, the year she falls in love, the year she searches for Alibrandi and finds the real truth about her family – and the identity she has been searching for. A moving and revealing book, unusual for its honesty and its insight into the life of a young person on the brink of adulthood. Multi-award-winning, a bestseller and made into an award-winning feature film, Looking for Alibrandi has become a modern classic.
from £10.58 7 shopsCompare prices -
14
Year of Wonders
Geraldine Brooks · 2001
A young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the most extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly visited a small Derbyshire village and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, elected to quarantine themselves to limit the contagion.
from £10.23 9 shopsCompare prices -
16
Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy · 2025
From the New York Times bestselling author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves, a novel about a family living alone on a remote island, when a mysterious woman washes up on shore. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can't stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place. Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn't telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realises Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it's too late-and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together. A novel of heartstopping twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is a story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.
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17
Storm Boy
Colin Thiele · 1964
Storm boy and his father live alone in a humpy among the sandhills between the Southern Ocean and the Coorong - a lonely, narrow waterway that runs parallel to a long stretch of the South Australian coast. Among the teeming birdlife of the Coorong, Storm Boy finds an injured young pelican whose life he saves. From then on, Storm boy and Mr Percival the pelican become inseparable friends and spend their days exploring the wave-beaten shore and the drifting sandhills. Mr Percival learns to help Storm Boy's father with his fishing and warn the other birdlife whenever poachers are coming, but his part in rescuing a shipwrecked crew leads to great changes in Storm Boy's life.
from £9.14 7 shopsCompare prices -
18
My Brilliant Career
Miles Franklin · 1901
"This is not a romance—I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn—a real yarn. Oh!" Written with all the high spirits of youth, My Brilliant Career is the unforgettable tale of Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl—passionate, endearing, stubborn, honest—and her fraught journey from rags to riches to rags. Miles Franklin was born in central New South Wales, in 1879. By the age of twenty, Franklin had completed her first novel, My Brilliant Career. After it was rejected by local publishers, she sent it to Henry Lawson, who called it ‘the first great Australian novel’. He helped her to get it published in Britain in 1901. Miles Franklin published nineteen novels and provided for the creation of the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s premier literary award.
from £7.99 4 shopsCompare prices -
19
Magic Beach
Alison Lester · 1990
Imagine a perfect beach where you can swim, surf, splash through the waves, build sandcastles, beachcomb, explore rock pools, muck about in boats, fish from the jetty, and build a bonfire under the stars. Imagine a beach where adventure begins...
from £15.58 4 shopsCompare prices -
20
Wifedom
Anna Funder · 2022
A blazing, genre-bending masterpiece from one of the most inventive writers of our time. Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own... When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife. Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. 'So, she will live writing the letters she did - six to her best friend, and three to her husband. I know where she was when she wrote them. I know that the dishes were frozen in the sink, that she was bleeding, that he was in bed with another woman - and she knew it. . . .I supply only what a film director would, directing an actor on set - the wiping of spectacles, the ash on the carpet, the sweet dog's chin on her knee.'
from £14.57 6 shopsCompare prices -
21
My Place
Sally Morgan · 1982
My Place begins with Sally Morgan tracing the experiences of her own life, growing up in suburban Perth in the fifties and sixties. Through the memories and images of her childhood and adolescence, vague hints and echoes begin to emerge, hidden knowledge is uncovered, and a fascinating story unfolds - a mystery of identity, complete with clues and suggested solutions. Sally Morgan's My Place is a deeply moving account of a search for truth, into which a whole family is gradually drawn; finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.
from £17.97 3 shopsCompare prices -
22
Children's Birthday Cake Book
Maryanne Blacker · 1998
A generation of Australian children have grown up with the cakes from the Australian Women's Weekly. From the duck cake with it's beak of potato chips, to the jelly-filled pool cake and cover-worthy train cake, there are decades of treasured memories between the page of the Children's Birthday Cake Book. Celebrate it's 40th anniversary with this special hardcover edition.
from £11.00 7 shopsCompare prices -
24
The Power of One
Bryce Courtenay · 1989
Born in a South Africa divided by racism and hatred, little six-year-old Peekay learns that small can beat big. Armed with this knowledge, he resolves to take on the injustices of his country, and sets his heart on becoming the welterweight champion of the world.
from £10.74 6 shopsCompare prices -
25
Seven Little Australians
Ethel Turner · 1962
'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.
from £8.31 6 shopsCompare prices -
27
The Harp in the South
Ruth Park · 1951
The hills are full of Irish people. When their grandfathers and great-grandfathers arrived in Sydney they went naturally to Shanty Town, not because they were dirty or lazy, though many of them were that, but because they were poor.
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28
Mad Mabel
Sally Hepworth · 2025
WINNER OF THE ABIA AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR 2026 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate and Darling Girls comes the story of Mad Mabel. They called it murder. She called it justice.In 1959, at just fifteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.In 2025, on a quiet Melbourne lane, an elderly man is found dead by his neighbour, 81-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick. No one suspects any foul play.Until they discover Elsie's past.In the 1950s, her name was not Elsie. It was Mabel.She is known around the world as Mad Mabel. But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty?When the police open a new investigation and the media descend upon her, the elderly Mabel decides it's time to set the record straight.In a world first, at the age of 81, Mabel Waller is speaking.New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth is at her finest in this twisty, compulsive thriller of friendship, family and murder. Or is it justice . . . ?Praise for Sally Hepworth: 'She is one of my favourite Australian writers' - Liane Moriarty'Sally Hepworth is a born storyteller' - Trent Dalton'The queen of suburban noir' - Sunday Telegraph
from £18.25 5 shopsCompare prices -
32
Animalia
Graeme Base · 1986
Within the pages of this book You may discover, if you look Beyond the spell of written words, A hidden land of beasts and birds. For many things are 'of a kind,' And those with keenest eyes will find A thousand things, or maybe more - It's up to you to keep the score . . . Visit Animalia on Facebook
from £12.09 7 shopsCompare prices -
34
The Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion · 2013
'Marvellous' John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'Adorable... A gem of a book' Marian KeyesThe Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion is a story about love, life and lobsters...Meet Don Tillman.Don is getting married.He just doesn't know who to yet.But he has designed a very detailed questionnaire to help him find the perfect woman.One thing he already knows, though, is that it's not Rosie.Absolutely, completely, definitely not.Telling the story of Rosie and Don, Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project is an international phenomenon, sold in over thirty countries - and counting.Don Tillman is a socially challenged genetics professor who's decided the time has come to find a wife. His questionnaire is intended to weed out anyone who's unsuitable. The trouble is, Don has rather high standards and doesn't really do flexible so, despite lots of takers - he looks like Gregory Peck - he's not having much success in identifying The One.When Rosie Jarman comes to his office, Don assumes it's to apply for the Wife Project - and duly discounts her on the grounds she smokes, drinks, doesn't eat meat, and is incapable of punctuality. However, Rosie has no interest in becoming Mrs Tillman and is actually there to enlist Don's assistance in a professional capacity: to help her find her biological father.Sometimes, though, you don't find love: love finds you...Like The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion is a truly distinctive debut. With the charm of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the romance of David Nicholls' One Day, it's both funny and endearing - and is set to become the feel-good novel of 2013...Graeme Simsion is a full-time writer. Previously an IT consultant and educator, he wrote his first book in 1994 (the standard reference on data modelling, now entering its fourth edition), and is married to Anne, a professor of psychiatry who writes erotic fiction. They have two children.
from £10.60 8 shopsCompare prices -
36
Limberlost
Robbie Arnott · 2022
The much-anticipated third novel by award-winning Australian author Robbie Arnott, Limberlost is a story of family and land, loss and hope, fate and the unknown, and love and kindness. In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost. Desperate to ignore it all-to avoid the future rushing towards him-Ned dreams of open water. As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned's choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth. The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, Limberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land- of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.
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38
Joe Cinque's Consolation
Helen Garner · 2004
A TRUE STORY OF DEATH, GRIEF AND THE LAWIn October 1997, a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests – most of them university students – had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of Rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as "evil"; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care. It is a masterwork from one of Australia's greatest writers.
from £13.18 6 shopsCompare prices -
39
Big Little Lies
Liane Moriarty · 2013
Follows three mothers, each at a crossroads, and their potential involvement in a riot at a school trivia night that leaves one parent dead in what appears to be a tragic accident, but which evidence shows might have been premeditated.
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40
Oscar and Lucinda
Peter Carey · 1988
Peter Carey's novel of the undeclared love between clergyman Oscar Hopkins and the heiress Lucinda Leplastrier is both a moving and beautiful love story and a historical tour de force set in Victorian times. Made for each other, the two are gamblers - one obsessive, the other compulsive - incapable of winning at the game of love.Oscar and Lucinda is now available as a Faber Modern Classics edition.
from £8.70 8 shopsCompare prices -
42
The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (May Gibbs)
May Gibbs · 2020
The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie combines May Gibbs much loved classics, The Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and its two sequels, Little Ragged Blossom and Little Obelia. First published over 100 years ago in 1918, these delightful tales of iconic Australian folklore have never been out of print. This new paperback edition of Australias best loved childrens book includes the original, hand drawn illustrations, bringing alive the enchanting world of the gumnut babies and other bush characters for todays generation.
from £19.33 7 shopsCompare prices -
43
People of the Book
Geraldine Brooks · 2007
In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime - analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding - an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair - she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries.
from £11.56 9 shopsCompare prices -
45
All That I Am
Anna Funder · 2011
When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days in Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten.'A gripping story of love and betrayal. Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time.' New Statesman'[Funder's] political and moral intelligence shine even more brightly than in Stasiland; the compassionate but unsentimental truthfulness towards her characters even more moving for being interwoven into a narrative of such complexity.' Raimond Gaita, Books of the Year, The Weekend Australian'A sweeping first novel that cover love and war, friendship and betrayal, and the bonds that define a life. It is a moving and ambitious work.' Ann Patchett
from £10.64 8 shopsCompare prices -
46
The Thorn Birds
Colleen McCullough · 1977
Now, 25 years after it first took the world by storm, Colleen McCullough's sweeping family saga of dreams, titanic struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback returns to enthrall a new generation. As powerful, moving, and unforgettable as when it originally appeared, it remains a monumental literary achievement—a landmark novel to be read . . . and read again!
from £17.17 2 shopsCompare prices -
48
Where is the green sheep?
Mem Fox · 2004
Here is the blue sheep, and here is the red sheep. Here is the bath sheep, and here is the bed sheep. But where is the green sheep? Find your very own green sheep with a copy of Mem Fox and Judy Horacek's internationally acclaimed book in this gorgeous box set.
from £7.85 6 shopsCompare prices -
49
The Female Eunuch
Germaine Greer · 1970
The publication of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch in 1970 was a landmark event, raising eyebrows and ire while creating a shock wave of recognition in women around the world with its steadfast assertion that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation. Today, Greer's searing examination of the oppression of women in contemporary society is both an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.
from £9.99 9 shopsCompare prices -
50
Mao's Last Dancer
Cunxin Li · 2003
This is the true story of how that one moment in time, by the thinnest thread of chance, changed the course of a small boy's life in ways beyond description. One day he would dance with some of the greatest ballet companies of the world. One day he would be a friend to a president and first lady, movie stars, and some of the most influential people in America. One day he would himself become a star: Mao's last dancer and the darling of the West."--BOOK JACKET.
from £12.20 6 shopsCompare prices -
51
The Light Between Oceans: A Novel
ML Stedman · 2012
Richard and Judy summer bookclub read 2013, Goodreads category winner, and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013, stunning story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who face a life-changing moral dilemma. A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper's island. It holds a dead man - and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision. They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens next will break yours.
from £9.76 8 shopsCompare prices -
53
Stone Yard Devotional
Charlotte Wood · 2023
A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from the Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.
from £15.64 6 shopsCompare prices -
54
Schindler's list
Thomas Keneally · 1982
REISSUED AS A SCEPTRE 30TH CLASSIC, with a new afterword by the author.In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.
from £8.38 8 shopsCompare prices -
55
The Magic Pudding
Norman Lindsay · 1965
Bunyip Bluegum would never have met Bill Barnacle, the sailor, his friend Sam Sawnoff, the penguin bold, and Albert, the magic pudding, if it had not been for his Uncle Wattleberry's whiskers. For it was on account of these whiskers that Bunyip decided to leave home and become a travelling gentleman of leisure.
from £17.23 2 shopsCompare prices -
57
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
Holly Ringland · 1996
An enchanting and captivating novel, about how our untold stories haunt us - and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family's story. In her early twenties, Alice's life is thrown into upheaval again when she suffers devastating betrayal and loss. Desperate to outrun grief, Alice flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man. Spanning two decades, set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows Alice's unforgettable journey, as she learns that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.
from £11.77 7 shopsCompare prices -
59
The Happiest Man on Earth
Eddie Jaku · 2020
Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you. Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed on 9 November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on the Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the 'happiest man on earth'. Published as Eddie turns 100, this is a powerful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.
from £16.02 8 shopsCompare prices -
61
Too Much Lip
Melissa Lucashenko · 2018
Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger. Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things - her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she's an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley. Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people. Old family wounds open as the Salters fight to stop the development of their beloved river. And the unexpected arrival on the scene of a good-looking dugai fella intent on loving her up only adds more trouble - but then trouble is Kerry's middle name. Gritty and darkly hilarious, Too Much Lip offers redemption and forgiveness where none seems possible.
from £12.15 7 shopsCompare prices -
62
Are We There Yet?
Alison Lester · 2004
The year I turned eight, Mum and Dad took us on a trip around Australia. Luke, Billy and I missed school for the whole winter term. Join Grace and her family on their adventurous and sometimes funny expedition. A warm, heartfelt story based on an actual journey undertaken by the much-loved, award-winning author and illustrator, Alison Lester.
from £12.79 8 shopsCompare prices -
63
Question 7
Richard Flanagan · 2024
Beginning at a love hotel by Japan's Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this genre-defying daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, literature, place and memory is about how reality is never made by realists and how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
from £11.96 6 shopsCompare prices -
65
Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens
Shankari Chandran · 2022
Welcome to Cinnamon Gardens, a home for those who are lost and the stories they treasure. Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home is nestled in the quiet suburb of Westgrove, Sydney gdash; populated with residents with colourful histories, each with their own secrets, triumphs and failings. This is their safe place, an oasis of familiar delights wdash; a beautiful garden, a busy kitchen and a bountiful recreation schedule. But this ordinary neighbourhood is not without its prejudices. The serenity of Cinnamon Gardens is threatened by malignant forces more interested in what makes this refuge different rather than embracing the calm companionship that makes this place home to so many. As those who challenge the residents squo; existence make their stand against the nursing home with devastating consequences, our characters are forced to reckon with a country divided. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to storytelling and how our stories shape who we are.
from £7.77 7 shopsCompare prices -
70
Diary of a Wombat
Jackie French · 2002
This diary reveals the hectic schedule of a wombat's life. Our heroine has a lot of sleeping and eating to fit into the hours of the day, with food supply a constant concern. There are always new holes to be dug and when her territory is invaded she must defend it at all costs
from £8.13 6 shopsCompare prices -
71
The Tree Of Man
Patrick White · 1955
Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.
from £12.16 7 shopsCompare prices -
74
The Fatal Shore
Robert Hughes · 1987
An award-winning epic on the birth of AustraliaIn 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonise Australia.Documenting the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia, The Fatal Shore is the definitive, masterfully written narrative that has given its true history to Australia.'A unique phantasmagoria of crime and punishment, which combines the shadowy terrors of Goya with the tumescent life of Dickens' Times
from £14.13 8 shopsCompare prices -
77
The Broken Shore
Peter Temple · 2005
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING, CWA GOLD DAGGER-WINNING AND NED KELLY AWARD-RECEIVING CRIME POWERHOUSE: read The Broken Shore and become hooked on Peter Temple.'A masterpiece' John Lanchester'Read page one and I challenge you not to finish it' Independent on SundayHaunted by his last case, homicide detective Joe Cashin has fled Melbourne and returned to his hometown, running its one-man police station while his wounds heal and his nightmares fade.But when a local man is attacked and left for dead, Cashin's recovery is put on hold. And in a small town where everyone knows everyone, he finds himself standing alone fighting a battle against corruption and prejudice.Loved The Broken Shore? Then move straight to its award-winning sequel, Truth: 'The Broken Shore was good; Truth is better' Independent
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78
Power Without Glory
Frank Hardy · 1962
In the history of Australian literature few books have been so controversial than Frank Hardy's Power Without Glory.This is a tale of corruption stretching from street corner SP bookmaking to the most influential men in the land - and the terrible personal cost of the power such corruption brings.John West rose from a Melbourne slum to dominate Australian politics with bribery, brutality and fear. His attractive wife and their children turned away from him in horror. Friends dropped away. At the peak of his power, surrounded by bootlickers, West faced a hate-filled nation - and the terrible loneliness of his life.Was John West a real figure? For months during the post-war years, an Australian court heard evidence in a sensational libel action brought by businessman John Wren's wife. After a national uproar which rocked the very foundations of the Commonwealth, Frank Hardy was acquitted.This is the novel which provoked such intense uproar and debate across the nation. The questions it poses remain unanswered...Here are a few of the many and varied reactions it's received over the past 50 years:'"This is the foulest libel that was ever written' Mr Galbally, Counsel for the Prosecution against Frank Hardy as quoted by DAILY TELEGRAPH 1950'We have been consulted by Mr and Mrs John Wren and members of their family, and we note that you are selling copies of the book Power Without Glory by Frank Hardy. 'The book is grossly libelous of our clients. 'At this stage we hereby give you notice that our clients will be exercising their legal rights, and to warn you of the consequences of the sale of this book.'LETTER TO MELBOURNE BOOKSELLERS FROM CORR AND CORR SOLICITORS 1951'We will continue selling it'BOOKSELLER REACTION 1951'Lies, lies, lies'JOHN FRANCIS WREN JNR 1951'More than 100 of Australia's best known writers, artists, scientists and members of the professions are petitioning the Victorian Attorney-General for the withdrawl of the case against Power Without Glory author Frank Hardy (in) defence of Australian traditions'DAILY TELEGRAPH 1951'[witnesses in the case against Hardy] today identified distinguished Australians with the characters in the book: Among them were: Field Marshall Sir Thomas Blamey (Blaire in the book); James Scullin, a former Prime Minister (Jim Somers); Sir High Devine, eminent surgeon (Dr Devlin); Archbishop Carr (Archbishop Conn); T.J.Ryan, a former Premier of Queensland (T.J.Real); Mr W.P.C.Kennelly, M.L.C. Federal Secretary for the ALP (Teddy Kelleher); and Mr W Barry, MLA, former State Labor Minister for Housing (Bill Brady).'DAILY TELEGRAPH 1951'It's Communist propaganda'Bernard Nolan, witness for the prosecution, solicitor and friend of the Wren family, DAILY TELEGRAPH 1951'"It was published with intent to cause a breach of the peace," Mr Galbally [counsel for the prosecution] said... "This charge of criminal libel is a rare one - it happens only once every 500 years when you get a case as bad as this one..."SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 1951'I would like to be locked up with the author for 10 minutes. There wouldn't be a man here today answering this charge...I would probably have kicked Hardy to piecesBernard Nolan DAILY TELEGRAPH 1951'Any novel which more than a handful of people remember as much as a year or so after its first publication is a rarity. Yet after ten years hundreds of thousands of Australians still remember Power Without Glory.'THE AGE, 1960'A truly epic work, both in conception and execution...Power Without Glory gives us a picture both of a whole Australian epoch and of a man. It has coherence and unflagging interest, not merely because of the vitality of the incidents, but because West is realised as an individual, caught up in circumstances, fighting to shape them his own way, succeeding and yet defeated. He is depicted as a ruthless man, corrupted and corrupting; and yet we feel sympathy for him...Power Without Glory has a secure place in the pol
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79
Johnno
David Malouf · 1978
Dante and Johnno are unlikely childhood friends, growing up in the bustle of steamy, wartime Brisbane. Later, as teenagers, they learn about love and life amidst the city's pubs and public libraries, backyards and brothels, Moreton Bay figs and tennis parties. As adults, they make the great pilgrimage overseas and maintain an uneasy friendship as they seek to build their lives.An affectionate and bittersweet portrait, Johnno brilliantly recreates the sleazy, tropical half-city that was Brisbane and captures a generation locked in combat with the elusive Australian dream.
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80
For the Term of His Natural Life
Marcus Clarke · 1952
Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.
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81
We of the Never-Never
Jeannie Gunn · 2004
To begin somewhere near the beginning, the Maluka—better known at that time as the new Boss for the Elsey—and I, his "missus," were at Darwin, in the Northern Territory, waiting for the train that was to take us just as far as it could—one hundred and fifty miles—on our way to the Never-Never. It was out of town just then, up-country somewhere, billabonging in true bush-whacker style, but was expected to return in a day or two, when it would be at our service. Jack, the Quiet Stockman, was out at the homestead, "seeing to things" there. The Sanguine Scot, the Head Stockman, and the Dandy, were in at the Katherine, marking time, as it were, awaiting instructions by wire from the Maluka, while some of the Company "put finishing touches" to their New Year celebrations. And every one, with, of course, the exception of those in Darwin, was blissfully unconscious of even the existence of the Maluka's missus. Knowing the Maluka by repute, however, every one was agreed that the "Elsey had struck it lucky," until the telegraph wire, whispering the gossip of Darwin to the Katherine, whispered that the "new Boss for the Elsey had been and gone and married a missus just before leaving the South, and was bringing her along with him." Then the Sanguine Scot was filled with wrath, the Company with compassion, while the Dandy's consternation found relief in a dismayed "Heavens above!" (The Dandy, by the way, was only a dandy in his love of sweet, clean clothes and orderly surroundings. The heart of the man had not a touch of dandyism in it.) The Head Stockman was absent in his camp. Had he been present, much might have been said on the "advantages of having a woman about the place." The Wag, however, retained his usual flow of speech and spirits.
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82
Eucalyptus
Murray Bail · 1995
In a touching modern fairy tale, a farmer in Australia's New South Wales announces that his daughter may only wed the man who can correctly name the species of each and every eucalyptus tree on his property, a decision that is complicated when Ellen chances upon a mysterious young man. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.
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84
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts · 2003
Gregory David Roberts is now a full-time writer, film producer, and international public speaker. In Bombay he has established a charitable trust to care for the poorest of the poor slum-dwellers. He divides his time between Geneva and Bombay.
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