List
ABC Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books (2026)
100 books Numbered Discoverable by Booko Admin
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1
Cloudstreet
Tim Winton · 1991
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award and recognised as one of the greatest works of Australian literature, Cloudstreet is Tim Winton's sprawling, comic epic about luck and love, fortitude and forgiveness, and the magic of the everyday.
from £33.35 3 shopsCompare prices -
2
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 2000
HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall. SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH It's a small story, about: a girl an accordionist some fanatical Germans a Jewish fist fighter and quite a lot of thievery. ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW - DEATH WILL VISIT THE BOOK THIEF THREE TIMES
from £56.82 2 shopsCompare prices -
3
Boy Swallows Universe
Trent Dalton · 2018
An utterly wonderful novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane's violent working class suburban fringe - from one of Australia's most exciting new writers. Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But if Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum. A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.
from £20.93 3 shopsCompare prices -
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 -
5
A Fortunate Life
A.B. Facey · 1981
The remarkable story of an 'ordinary' man. Bert Facey's childhood ended when he was eight years old. That was when his grandmother had to send him away to work for his keep. Bert grew up tough in the vast, wild outback of Western Australia. He lived to eighty-seven, and wrote down his extraordinary story for his grandchildren. In spite of its difficulties and sufferings, he always believed he had had...
from £61.66 5 shopsCompare prices -
6
Tomorrow, When the War Began
John Marsden · 1993
When their country is invaded and their families are taken, eight high school teenagers band together to fight. Seventeen-year-old Ellie Linton wants one final adventure with her friends before the school holidays are over. Packed in Ellie's parents' land rover they drive to the famously isolated rock pool Eden dubbed 'Hell' by the locals. Returning to their home town of Wirrawee, the seven teenagers realize that something is seriously wrong. Power to the houses has been cut, pets and livestock have been left dead or dying, and most alarmingly of all, everyone's family has vanished. When the hostile armed forces discover that the teenagers are lying low in the vicinity, Ellie and her friends must band together to escape, outwit and strike back against the mysterious enemy that has seized control of their town and imprisoned their friends and loved ones...
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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 -
8
The Narrow Road To The Deep North
Richard Flanagan · 2013
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014. A novel of the cruelty of war, tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love. August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost. 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a big, magnificent novel of passion and horror and tragic irony. Its scope, its themes and its people all seem to grow richer and deeper in significance with the progress of the story, as it moves to its extraordinary resolution. It's by far the best new novel I've read in ages.' - Patrick McGrath 'Beyond comparison . . . an immense achievement . . . Wilfred Owen wrote of his Great War verse: "My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity." Flanagan's triumph is to find poetry without any pity at all.' - Geordie Williamson, The Australian 'A story of war and star-crossed lovers, the novel is also a profound meditation on life and time, memory and forgetting . . . a magnificent achievement.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser 'A masterpiece . . . The Narrow Road is an extraordinary piece of writing and a high point in an already distinguished career.' - Michael Williams, The Guardian
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9
The Secret River
Kate Grenville · 2005
London, 1807.William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life.The Thornhills arrive in this harsh and alien land that they cannot understand and which feels like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a rumour that freedom can be bought, that 'unclaimed' land up the Hawkesbury offers an opportunity to start afresh, far away from the township of Sydney. When William takes a hundred acres for himself he is shocked to find Aboriginal people already living on the river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.Soon Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.
from £43.35 2 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 -
11
Possum magic
Mem Fox · 1983
For 25 years Possum Magic has captivated and enchanted children and adults alike. Mem Fox's lovable characters, little Hush and Grandma Poss, and Julie Vivas' exquisite illustrations weave a story of pure magic. Continuously in print since it was first published by Omnibus Books on 31 March 1983, Possum Magic has been embraced as a timeless Australian tale and as Australia's most-loved children's picture book.
from £27.13 2 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 -
15
The Slap
Christos Tsiolkas · 2008
To smack or not to smack is the question that reverberates through the interconnected lives dissected in Christos Tsiolkas' award-winning novel, now a prime time ABC TV series, starring Melissa George and Alex Dimitriades.
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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.
from £14.56 7 shopsCompare prices -
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 -
23
Stasiland
Anna Funder · 1987
Truth can be stranger – and more fascinating – than fiction. Anna Funder tells extraordinary stories from the underbelly of the most perfected surveillance state of all time, the former East Germany. Funder meets Miriam, the sixteen-year-old who might have started World War III. She visits the regime's cartographer, obsessed to this day with the Berlin Wall, then gets drunk with the legendary...
from £40.67 4 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 -
26
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Joan Weigall Lindsay · 1975
'Don't worry about us, Mam'selle dear,' smiled Miranda. 'We shall only be gone a very little while.' Every so often, there comes a story so brilliant and lively and moving that it cannot be left in the past.Rediscover the magic of our country's most memorable children's books in the Penguin Australia Children's Classics series of stories too precious to leave behind.
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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.
from £8.32 7 shopsCompare prices -
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 -
29
The Happiest Refugee
Anh Do · 2010
Anh Do nearly didn't make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives on the sea as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. But nothing - not murderous pirates, nor the imminent threat of death by hunger, disease or dehydration as they drifted for days - could quench their desire to make a better life in the country they had dreamed about. Life in Australia was hard, an endless succession of back-breaking work, crowded rooms, ruthless landlords and make-do everything. But there was a loving extended family, and always friends and play and something to laugh about for Anh, his brother Khoa and their sister Tram. Things got harder when their father left home when Anh was only nine - they felt his loss very deeply and their mother struggled to support the family on her own. His mother's sacrifice was an inspiration to Anh and he worked hard during his teenage years to help her make ends meet, also managing to graduate high school and then university. Another inspiration was the comedian Anh met when he was about to sign on for a 60-hour a week corporate job. Anh asked how many hours he worked. 'Four, ' the answer came back, and that was it. He was going to be a comedian! The Happiest Refugee tells the incredible, uplifting and inspiring life story of one of our favourite personalities. Tragedy, humour, heartache and unswerving determination - a big life with big dreams. Anh's story will move and amuse all who read it
from £21.64 7 shopsCompare prices -
30
My Brother Jack
George Johnston · 1964
David and Jack Meredith grow up in a patriotic suburban Melbourne household during the First World War, and go on to lead lives that could not be more different. Through the story of the two brothers 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 off the tough, honest, Aussie battler, whose greatest ambition is to serve his country during the war. Acknowledged as one of the true Australian classics, MY BROTHER JACK is a deeply satisfying, complex and moving literary masterpiece.
from £28.33 1 shopCompare prices -
31
Monkey grip
Helen Garner · 1977
Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living, drugs, music and love. Nora falls in love with Javo the junkie, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.
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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 -
33
Breath
Tim Winton · 2008
When paramedic Bruce Pike is called out to deal with another teenage adventure gone wrong, he knows better than his colleague, better than the kid's parents, what happened and how. Thirty years before, that dead boy could have been him.A relentlessly gripping and deeply moving novel about the damage you do to yourself when you're young and think you're immortal.
from £86.83 1 shopCompare 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 -
35
Lola In The Mirror
Trent Dalton · 2023
Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, Lola in the Mirror is the irresistible new novel from international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies, Trent Dalton. 'Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's my past?'A girl and her mother are on the lam. They've been running for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in the kitchen with the knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River - just two of the 100,000 Australians sleeping rough every night. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. Visions in black ink and living colour. A vision of a life as a groundbreaking artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy in the brown suit who's waiting for her in the middle of the bridge that stretches across a flooding and deadly river. A life far beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person's name is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can sometimes ever do. She must look in the mirror.A big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death and all the things we see when we look in the mirror. All of the past, all of the present, and all of our possible futures.'Mirror, mirror, please don't lie. Tell me who you are. Tell me who am I.'
from £31.56 3 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.
from £14.40 7 shopsCompare prices -
37
I Can Jump Puddles
Alan Marshall · 1971
I Can Jump Puddles is Alan Marshall's story of his childhood – a happy world in which, despite his crippling poliomyelitis, he plays, climbs, fights, swims, rides and laughs. His world was the Australian countryside early last century: rough-riders, bushmen, farmers and tellers of tall stories – a world held precious by the young Alan Marshall.
from £22.79 1 shopCompare prices -
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.
from £12.15 6 shopsCompare prices -
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 -
41
Dirt Music
Tim Winton · 2001
âe~Generous, earthy and raw . . . Mysteries donâe(tm)t come more heartfelt than thisâe(tm) Independent Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded with a fisherman she doesnâe(tm)t love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast. So begins an unlikely alliance. Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds of breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by grief or regret, whose dreams are lost, whose hopes have dried up. Itâe(tm)s a journey across landscapes within and without, about the music that sometimes arises from the dust. âe~Winton keeps writing fiction that makes the novel feel alive to a continent of possibilitiesâe(tm) Evening Standard âe~Winton is not a great Australian novelist; he is a great novelist, full stopâe(tm) The Times
from £68.07 2 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.
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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.
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44
True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey · 2000
Ned Kelly, the legendary nineteenth-century Australian folk-hero, describes how he, his brother, and two friends led authorities on a twenty-month manhunt, marked by widespread populist support, before his capture and execution.
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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
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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!
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47
Playing Beatie Bow
Ruth Park · 1980
A thrilling adventure story for children and young adults by Park Ruth, Playing Beatie Bow follows Abigail as she suddenly finds herself in the Sydney of a hundred years ago as the result of a scary game.
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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.
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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
