Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

$22.99 AUD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: Adult

#1 New York Times Bestseller A Reese Witherspoon Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick "I can't even express how much I love this book I didn't want this story to end " - Reese Witherspoon "Painfully beautiful." - The New York Times Book Review "Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver." - Bustle For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens. Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. ...Show more

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

$32.99 AUD

Category: Drama

In this blinding debut, Robert Jones Jr. blends the lyricism of Toni Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality threatens the purest form of serenity. The Halifax plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. Two young enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. But the barn is their haven, a space of radiance and love - away from the blistering sun and the cruelty of the toubabs - where they can be alone together. But, Amos - a fellow slave - has begun to direct suspicion towards the two men and their refusal to bend. Their flickering glances, unspoken words and wilful intention, revealing a truth that threatens to rock the stability of the plantation. And preaching the words of Massa Paul's gospel, he betrays them. The culminating pages of The Prophets summon a choral voice of those who have suffered in silence, with blistering humanity, as the day of reckoning arrives at the Halifax plantation. Love, in all its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of Robert Jones Jr's breathtaking debut, The Prophets.   ...Show more

Being Black 'n Chicken, and Chips by Matt Okine

$19.99 AUD

$26.95 (25% off)

Category: Australian authors | Reading Level: near fine

A heartbreaking and often hilarious story about trying to grow up when everything is falling apart from one of Australia's leading comic talents. Mike Amon is a regular teenager. All he wants is to fit in. He wants to sit at the cool bench. He wants to be a star athlete. He wants his first kiss.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

$19.99 AUD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: good

A universal story of love, friendship, and growing up. At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marian ne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers-one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship. Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards Winner of the Costa Novel Award " Rooney] has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism... she writes] some of the best dialogue I've read."--The New Yorker   ...Show more

Infinite Splendours by Sofie Laguna

$25.99 AUD

$32.99 (21% off)

Category: Australian authors | Reading Level: very good

A bold new literary novel from the author of the award-winning The Eye of the Sheep and The Choke. Lawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, a n experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the devastating aftermath. As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be condemned to repeat it? Lawrence finds meaning in the best way he knows. By surrendering himself to art and nature, he creates beauty - beauty made all the more astonishing and soulful for the deprivation that gives rise to it. Infinite Splendours is an extraordinary novel, incandescent with love and compassion, rich in colour and character. The power and virtuosity of Laguna's writing make it impossible for us to look away; and by being seen, Lawrence is redeemed. And we, as readers, have had our minds and hearts opened in ways we can't forget.   ...Show more

The Muse by Jessie Burton

$13.00 AUD

Category: Chick novels | Reading Level: very good

A picture hides a thousand words ...On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a j ob as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. But though Quick takes Odelle into her confidence, and unlocks a potential she didn't know she had, she remains a mystery - no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery. The truth about the painting lies in 1936 and a large house in rural Spain, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of a renowned art dealer, is harbouring ambitions of her own. Into this fragile paradise come artist and revolutionary Isaac Robles and his half-sister Teresa, who immediately insinuate themselves into the Schloss family, with explosive and devastating consequences ...Seductive, exhilarating and suspenseful, The Muse is an unforgettable novel about aspiration and identity, love and obsession, authenticity and deception - a masterpiece from the million-copy bestselling author of The Miniaturist. ...Show more

The Mirror and the Light (#3 Thomas Cromwell) by Hilary Mantel

$45.00 AUD

Category: Drama | Series: The Wolf Hall Trilogy | Reading Level: very good

The long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies; the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning Thomas Cromwell trilogy. ‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’. England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.     ...Show more

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

$23.99 AUD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: near fine

RUNNER UP PULITZER PRIZE 2019 WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL 2019 FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS A New York Times Top Ten Best Book of 2018 'I loved this book' Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to p ull off an amazing coup: bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDs epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, he finds his partner is infected, and that he might even have the virus himself. The only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona's stories unfold in incredibly moving and sometimes surprising ways, as both struggle to find goodness in the face of disaster. WINNER OF THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK A BUZZFEED BOOK OF THE YEAR ...Show more

The History of Mischief (PB) by Rebecca Higgie

$21.99 AUD

Category: Australian authors

When Jessie and her older sister Kay find a book called The History of Mischief,hidden beneath the floorboards in their grandmother's house, they uncover asecret world. The History chronicles how, since antiquity, mischief-makers haveclandestinely shaped the past - from an Athenian slave to a Polish sal t miner andfrom an advisor to the Ethiopian Queen to a girl escaping the Siege of Paris. Jessiebecomes enthralled by the book and by her own mission to determine its accuracy.Soon the History inspires Jessie to perform her own acts of mischief, unofficiallybecoming mischief-maker number 202 in an effort to cheer up her eccentricneighbour, Mrs Moran, and to comfort her new schoolfriend, Theodore. However, noteverything is as it seems. As Jessie delves deeper into the real story behind theHistory, she becomes convinced her grandmother holds the key to a long-held familysecret.The History of Mischief is about the many things we do to try to escape ...Show more

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

$32.99 AUD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: near fine

También de este lado hay sueños - On this side too, there are dreams. Already being hailed as "a Grapes of Wrath for our times" and "a new American classic", American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope. If it's only a better l ife you seek, seek it elsewhere...This path is only for people who have no choice, no other option, only violence and misery behind you. And your journey will grow even more treacherous from here. Everything is working against you. Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy--two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia--trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier's reach doesn't extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times. ...Show more

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

$10.00 AUD

Category: Young Adult 13 + years

Fifteen-year-old Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands science. What he can't understand are other human beings.When he finds his neighbour's dog, Wellington, lying dead on the lawn, he decides to track down the killer and write a murder mystery about it. But in doi ng so, he uncovers other mysteries that threaten to bring his whole world crashing down around him. ...Show more

Lucky's by Andrew Pippos

$32.99 AUD

Category: Drama

Lucky's is a story of family. It is also about a man called Lucky. His restaurant chain. A fire that changed everything. A New Yorker article which might save a career. The mystery of a missing father. An impostor who got the girl. An unthinkable tragedy. A roll of the dice. And a story of love, lost, s ought and won again, (at last). PRAISE FOR LUCKY'S 'Andrew Pippos has written an unforgettable epic with Australian humour and Greek tragedian turns on every page. Such skill and heart and love pulses through this debut!' Alice Pung 'A sweeping, sprawling family epic of heartbreak, hope, and redemption. This is the debut of a born storyteller.' Liam Pieper 'Affecting, authentic and tender, Lucky's reminds us that serendipity and salvation can be found in the best kinds of fiction.' Rebecca Starford 'A gorgeous novel of wonderful characters, Lucky's is the real deal and I didn't want it to stop. I was so caught up in the casual charm of this book that I kept being sideswiped by the excellent turns of its plot, and the wise, sometimes disturbing things it has to say about fate, luck and family over the sweep of decades.' Ronnie Scott 'From the first pages of this debut novel, it is clear that we are in the hands of a wise, perceptive, and highly-skilled storyteller. Pippos brilliantly distills multiple stories to those pure moments of love, despair, passion and folly that make up the essence of a life, and his fierce and fragile characters will remain in your heart long after the final page. The writing is fresh and fairly crackles with energy. Lucky's is one of the best Australian novels I've read in years!' Emily Bitto ...Show more