Secondhand Australian Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2704

A wide-ranging Australian collection with a Miles Franklin Award winner at its centre and real depth across fiction, poetry, and short stories. A.S. Patrić's Black Rock White City — praised by Christos Tsiolkas as impossible to put down — took the 2016 Miles Franklin; Brooke Davis' Lost & Found was one of the most loved Australian debuts of recent years; Judith Wright's selected poems represent one of the country's greatest literary voices; and three titles by Sara Dowse give a substantial window into her distinctive Canberra-focused fiction. Two Kenneth Cook novels and Vance Palmer's Golconda add further historical and literary weight.

1. She Is Haunted — Paige Clark. A debut short story collection that announced Clark as a genuinely original voice — Emily Maguire praised her for "wit, warmth and nuance," and Robert Lukins called her "like nothing else." Stories about women at moments of rupture and revelation, written with a precise, wry intelligence. One of the most talked-about Australian debuts of its year.
2. Gathering Storm — Rosie Dub. Katherine Scholes called this "a great road movie of a novel" — a journey of self-discovery played out across Australian landscape, with all the clarity and strangeness that road narratives at their best can achieve. A moving, propulsive debut.
3. Archipelago of Souls — Gregory Day. Day is one of the most quietly distinctive voices in contemporary Australian fiction, rooted in the landscapes of southwest Victoria and alive to the deep connections between place, memory, and identity. Archipelago of Souls is characteristic Day — lyrical, unhurried, and rewarding.
4. Sweet One — Peter Docker. "The best place to hide an icepick is in a truckload of icepicks." A dark, sharp novel from an important West Australian writer — funny and unsettling in equal measure, with a voice that stays with you long after the last page.
5. Little Exiles — Robert Dinsdale. Jim Loach — director of Orange & Sunshine, the film about Britain's child migrant scandal — called this "knockout — beautifully written — I really, really loved it." Dinsdale's novel follows the children shipped from Britain to Australia in the postwar decades, and the lives built in the shadow of that displacement. Deeply affecting.
6. Black Rock White City — A.S. Patrić. Winner of the 2016 Miles Franklin Award. A Bosnian refugee doctor and his wife, both carrying the trauma of war, navigate life in suburban Melbourne — and then a vandal begins leaving disturbing messages across the city. Christos Tsiolkas called it "bold, mature and compassionate. I couldn't put it down." One of the most important Australian novels of the decade.
7. Lost & Found — Brooke Davis. The debut novel that became a word-of-mouth sensation — the story of Millie Bird, seven years old, left in a department store by her grief-stricken mother, and the two elderly strangers who find her. "A story to make you laugh, cry and feel a little wiser." Warm, funny, and genuinely moving without ever tipping into sentiment.
8. The Pepper Gate — Genna de Bont. "A novel about truth and denial — and who we choose to love." De Bont writes about the complex intersections of family, desire, and self-deception with considerable psychological insight. An understated, carefully crafted novel.
9. The Wine God's Anger — Kenneth Cook. Cook is best known for the terrifying Wake in Fright, and The Wine God's Anger shows the same sharp eye for Australian self-delusion and the darkness beneath the surface. A satirical, uncomfortable novel from one of Australian fiction's most uncompromising voices.
10. Golconda — Vance Palmer. Palmer is one of the foundational figures of Australian literary culture, and Golconda — set in the Queensland mining industry — is one of his most ambitious novels: a portrait of labour, power, and the moral complexities of the Australian working class. An important historical document as much as a novel.
11. West Block: The Hidden World of Canberra's Mandarins — Sara Dowse. Dowse's landmark satirical novel of the Canberra public service — the first in her Canberra sequence — follows a group of women navigating the corridors of power in the 1970s. Praised as "the most comic yet reflective in the dazzling meaning of Australian literature," it remains one of the sharpest anatomies of how Australian power actually works.
12. Two Ways Meet: Stories of Migrants in Australia — edited by Louise E. Rorabacher. An anthology gathering short fiction about the migrant experience in Australia — essential reading for anyone interested in how Australian literature has grappled with the country's multicultural reality, and a valuable historical document of voices often marginalised in the literary mainstream.
13. An Afternoon of Time: Tales of the Great Ocean Road and Country Victoria — Don Charlwood. Charlwood is best known for No Moon Tonight, his harrowing memoir of Bomber Command, but here he turns to the Victorian landscape he loved — short fiction rooted in the rhythms of country life, written with warmth and an eye for the telling detail.
14. The Wells of Beersheba and Other Stories — F.D. Davison. Frank Dalby Davison — author of Man-Shy and Dusty — was one of the most gifted Australian short story writers of the twentieth century, and this Sirius Quality Paperbacks edition gathers some of his finest work. The title story, about Australian Light Horsemen in the First World War, is particularly celebrated.
15. Digging — Sara Dowse. The second of Dowse's Canberra novels, continuing her exploration of women's lives, politics, and the particular texture of life in Australia's capital. Dowse writes with intelligence, humour, and a feminist consciousness that never becomes didactic — essential for anyone interested in Australian women's fiction.
16. Judith Wright: Selected Poems — selection and introduction by the author. Wright was arguably Australia's greatest poet — a passionate voice for conservation, Indigenous rights, and the spiritual life of the Australian landscape. This selected volume, chosen and introduced by Wright herself, is the ideal introduction to a body of work of lasting importance.
17. Silver City — Sara Dowse. Based on the screenplay by Sophia Turkiewicz and Thomas Keneally, Silver City novelises the story of Polish migrants in postwar Australia — a narrative of displacement, reinvention, and the longing for home that resonates across generations. The Keneally connection adds considerable interest.
18. Pig — Kenneth Cook. A second Cook title, from the author of Wake in Fright — and those who know that novel will approach Pig with appropriate wariness. Cook had an unflinching eye for human weakness and the violence lurking beneath Australian ordinariness. Dark, sharp, and not for the faint-hearted.