Modern Fiction (post 1945)

'Capacious, wise, and startlingly honest about human frailty and the permutations of love over time. Frankly autobiographical, it is also a work of fully achieved fiction, ripe with experience, double-voiced,...

' . . . a brilliant story of courage in the face of adversity; of fighting for what you believe is right; and the way some some small rural communities...

'An enthralling read with surprising twists and merging stories.' Talking Books Blog 'Fleur McDonald always tells rural stories in a special way; the mystery made this a stellar read.' Sam...

'. . . worthy of comparison to Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch . . . A masterly, multilayered story that will dazzle readers.'...

When Ashleigh decides to flee her controlling husband, Dominic, she knows he'll hunt her down. The only way to escape is to disappear and reinvent herself. Changing her name to...

When Erin Macalister leaves the city to take care of her beloved grandmother, she's relieved to be escaping the remnants of her broken marriage. Arriving in the small rural community...

Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians , is back with a wickedly funny new novel of social climbing, secret emails, art-world scandal, lovesick billionaires, and the outrageous story...

After finishing university, Amelia Bennett returns to her home town. Determined to lose her old reputation for being scatty, she works hard to prove herself as the treasurer of the...

1961: On a sweltering summer's day, while her family picnics by the stream on their Suffolk farm, sixteen-year-old Laurel hides out in her childhood tree house, dreaming of a boy...

In 1930, at her twenty-first birthday party, Nell O'Connor learns the devastating story of an abandoned little girl, found alone on a passenger ship bound for Australia on the eve...

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, bestselling author of The Slap and Barracuda , takes...

He asked the water to lift him, to carry him, to avenge him. He made his muscles shape his fury, made every stroke declare his hate. And the water obeyed;...

Since inheriting Nambina, the property that's been in her family for generations, Laura Murphy has worked wonders. Rather than just focus on farming she has set up a successful school...

Poppy Abbott seems to have it all. Bright, successful and attractive, she lives in a beautiful apartment with sweeping views of Sydney. However, since the recent death of her beloved...

'Me and Ben had been mates since we was boys and if it come to it I knew I would have to be on his side.' Bobby Blue is caught...

Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the...

Sitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn't want to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The...

Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award A mesmerising literary novel, Questions of Travel charts two very different lives. Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works...

When Sarah Murphy returns to Australia she desperately needs a break from her high-powered London life. And though mystified by her grandmother's dying wish for her ashes to be scattered...

Anna and Matt Butler were childhood sweethearts with a dream of owning their own land, a dream they achieved through hard work and determination. But as the seasons conspire against...

Why I can't review Animal People 'I read Charlotte Wood's novel Animal People twice. I think it's one of the best contemporary novels I have read. But I cannot review...

Red Dust opens with Gemma Sinclair grieving the death of her husband, Adam, in a horrific plane crash and learning she's inherited the 10,000 hectare station his family has worked...

At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. It is a single act, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses...

Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote bush shack trying to finish his book on Henry James when his beloved dog goes missing. What follows is a triumph of...

You bring your children up to escape sorrow. You spend your best years trying to stop them witnessing it on television, in you, in your neighbours' faces. Then you realise,...

Winner of the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award One spring day in late 1992, when William was halfway between his eighth birthday and his ninth, he looked out from the...

The devastating Phryne Fisher is under fire again in her fourth mystery. A very young man with muddied hair, a pierced ear and a blue tattoo lies cradled in Phryne's...

The glorious Phryne Fisher returns to the spotlight in her seventh adventure. Running late to the Hinkler gala performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore , Phryne Fisher meets some thugs...

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award A terrific tale of love and redemption that captivates from the first line.' Nicholas Shakespeare, author of The Dancer Upstairs Betrayed by her...

In the deep winter snows of a Swedish hamlet, a strange young woman fakes a break-in at the house of an elderly artist in order to persuade her that she...

Walker is at a party where he meets Rachel. Two days later she turns up at his apartment. However it's not Walker she wants , but her husband Malory who...

'In the race to be first in describing the lost generation of the 1980s, Geoff Dyer in The Colour of Memory leads past the winning post. 'We're not lost,' one...

In a quiet Wiltshire village, Larch Tree Lane winds slowly up a gentle hill.Among the residents is Maggie Hatherall, full of life despite her advancingyears, who worries what she is...

Abigail Beadle has given two decades of her life to caring for her late father and preserving the family home, Ashgrove House in Wiltshire. When her loathed stepmother, Edwina, dies,...

Meet the Corrigans. Childless Maeve, though rich and successful, is dying of cancer. She wants to leave her business empire to one of the offspring of her two estranged brothers,...

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'A masterwork of the form . . . mesmerizing.' New York Times 'A fun, sexy, dangerous, dark thriller about corruption.' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 'A dazzling...

'Yoshimoto's novels are like jewel boxes.' - Vanity Fair The new novel from the bestselling author of the beloved classic, Kitchen . I had a melancholy premonition of reaching the...

A path-breaking novel of art, womanhood and violence, from the author of the Outline trilogy. Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. In Paris, a woman...

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024 Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another's arms. The Earth rotates beneath us and all is...

'A complex literary comedy from an extraordinarily powerful writer,.' Malcolm Bradbury 'The great unbreakable wild horse of the 1960s British literary stable.' Rose Tremain 'Rich as a compost heap. '...

Eighteen is a good time for suffering Welcome to the country town of Stillbourne. Restless teenage resident Oliver wants to enjoy himself before going to university, beginning with his pursuit...

When eighteen-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. Years later, when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is secretly hoping to...

Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party....

Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house, happy-enough daughter and an eerie sense that life might be happening elsewhere....

Arlington Park is an ordinary English suburb. Over the course of a single day, the novel moves from one household to another, revealing its characters: Juliet, enraged at the victory...

Stella Benson sets off for Hilltop, a tiny Sussex village housing a family that is somewhat larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station...

Kitchen juxtaposes two tales about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy in contemporary Japan. It is a startlingly original first work by Japan's brightest young literary star and is...

Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote religious Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and raped, often repeatedly, by what many thought were ghosts or...