Modern Fiction (post 1945)

The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted - cars, guns, computers, and airplanes,...

In A Ballet of Lepers Leonard Cohen explores themes that would come to permeate his later works - shame stemming from feelings of unworthiness; sexual desire, in all its sacred...

Taro is divorced, unhappy in his job, and living in a half-empty building that is about to be torn down. One summer morning, he sees a fellow resident climbing over...

Two brilliant,multi-layered stories from the winner of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize: the best contemporary Japanese writing 'Nothing short of superb... This book gives me hope for the future of Japanese...

A startling novella from the heir to Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez'I've never made it out of Tokyo. I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself if...

Shiori knows at heart that she's a troubadour. She may be completely tone-deaf, but she won't let that stop her living a life dedicated to music. Even when her dominant...

For artist Glory Hopkins, inheriting her aunt's Harlem brownstone feels more like a curse than a blessing. But when she stumbles into Parkie de Groot, a savvy auction house appraiser,...

'Like Daisy Jones soaked in Britney Spears' Curious' Holly Bourne 'A sexy swagger of a debut' Emma Straub 'Full of drama, heartbreak, ambition and desire' Katherine Webber Tsang _________________ I...

A tale of passion and romance between a Japanese schoolteacher and a doglike man, from the prize-winning author of The Last Children of Tokyo Mitsuko, a schoolteacher at the Kitamura...

"I am not asking you to agree with me. In fact, I'd be happier if you didn't. I am afraid of self-censorship in a place of supposed radicalism like a...

A novel of seduction and madness, animated by the spirits of Wittgenstein, Rousseau, Nabokov and Bolao.Buenos Aires. The mysterious narrator, who is a student at the School of Philosophy stalks...

Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate, and their children Hal and Charlotte. And Prince, their black Labrador. Prince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the...

Terence Cave, owner of Cave Antiques, has already experienced the tragedies of his mother's suicide and his wife's murder when his teenage son, Reuben, is killed in a grotesque accident....

A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency and power. The publicity seems to turn every act into a performance...

Under strange circumstances, a young girl loses her mother, and her father blindly invites his girlfriend into the home to care for her. On shaky new ground, the girl struggles,...

Vacuum cleaner bitch.When Jina sees this anonymous comment on a forum it forces her out of her stupor. It is posted on a website dissecting her public allegations of workplace...

Spark is a story about art and friendship, about countless bizarre drunken conversations and how far it's acceptable to go for a laugh. A novel about comedy that's as moving...

One morning, a woman treads on a snake. She comes home that evening and realises the snake has moved into her house and is saying she is her mother... So...

When former journalist-turned-caf-owner Kate Jackson abandons her six-month-old baby and disappears without a word, the quirky boat-access community of Cook's Basin quickly steps in to salvage a delicate and difficult...

'Lukins' prose is supple and elegant ... his doomed and flailing Gulch family are a stunning comic creation. But even as they writhe and scheme under the law's heel, Lukins...

'More than one ghost haunts this tender novel about love in its many guises, condoned and illicit. In his deceptively simple, lucid prose, Alex Miller examines the emotional contradictions inherent...

Art is not only about rage and justice and politics. It is also about pleasure and joy; it is also about beauty ... In a time of rage and confusion,...

'Bold, furious, unapologetic and deeply insightful.' Sofie Laguna, author of Infinite Splendours 'A stunning, immersive novel that will change the conversation about class and about what possessions mean. It's important...

Shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize Three women. Three secrets. One weekend. Alison is an actress who no longer acts, Patrick a musician past his prime. The eccentric couple live...

' The Family Doctor is a compelling thriller - fast-paced, gripping and frightening. But is more than that because it is a story that draws desperately needed attention to domestic...

'Utterly absorbing, astonishingly inventive, and richly imagined. Dominic Smith is a wizard.' Andrea Barrett, National Book Award Winner and author of Archangel From the award-winning author of the acclaimed New...

In the freezing Antarctic waters south of Tasmania, a mountain was discovered in 1642 by the seafaring explorer Gerrit Jansz. Not just any mountain but one that Jansz estimated was...

When Vonita opened the doors of the Center that morning, she had no idea that it would be for the last time. Wren has missed school to come to the...

'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,...

'. . . 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.'...

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...

'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...

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...

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 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...

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,...

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. '...