I’m Australian and there’s a big place in my heart for Australian-set stories. I read mostly for escapism, but there’s a deeper connection with tales from my own backyard. I’ve also always loved speculative fiction and I’m excited when my favourite genres and setting come together. I’m the author of five speculative fiction novels with Australian settings: the four novels in The Rephaim series (urban fantasy) and The Undercurrent (slightly futuristic/pre-apocalyptic). With The Rephaim series, I wanted to put angels, half-angels, and demons in a sunny coastal Australia setting, rather than the gloomy European forests we’re mostly used to for those types of stories. It was a lot of fun.
Australian author Kirsty Eagar’s love of surfing and the ocean comes through in every book she writes.
Here, she combines quintessential Aussie surf culture with vampires. Not sexy, heart-throb vamps, but soulless killers with an unquenchable thirst and increasingly disturbing plans for themselves and humanity. This novel is equal parts edgy contemporary Aussie coming-of-age story and skin-crawling horror. It’s no mean feat, and Kirsty hits it tone-perfect.
As always, there are well-written, believable characters (teen protagonists, unhinged vamps, and dodgy adults), plus a tense plot that builds to a frenetic pace with high stakes. Kirsty gives us classic mythology, refreshed and transplanted into a sun-drenched beach setting, underpinned by a reimagining of the brutal real-life story of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629.
I first read this over a decade ago and I loved it even more the second time around.
A fast-paced thriller about surfing, the supernatural, and one of history's bloodiest maritime incidents. Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Young Adult fiction.
Holidays in the coastal village of Rocky Head should mean surfing, dodging tourists, and partying at the local music festival. But when Jamie Mackie is savagely bitten in the surf by a friend, he realises things are going to be different this summer. The Mutineers are in town, a coven of brutal vampires created in the shipwreck of the Batavia, four hundred years ago. If their plans succeed, nobody in Rocky Head will survive to…
This is one of my all-time favourite novels. It’s a deeply moving coming-of-age story, set in a future Australia ruled by vampires known as The Masters.
It’s the story of Mark, and the monster who teaches him to be a man. Mark’s voice is perfect and the world building is totally original. The plot, with its dark undertones, moves at a measured pace towards a series of life-changing, violent moments.
I love how Australian this book is, and the fact Trent never once uses the 'v' word.
Day Boy is gentle and wild. It offers a rare and surprisingly moving study of manhood and masculinity, and the relationships between boys and father figures. The writing is sublime. This is a novel to be savoured.
Winner of the Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy and Best Horror Novel
With brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a coming-of-age, elevated horror story about a headstrong boy-and the monstrous vampire who taught him to be a man.
The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will.
Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master,…
This witty young adult novel cleverly up-ends the traditional vampire mythology.
These Australian urban vamps are sickly, socially isolated, and barely able to defend themselves. Fifteen-year-old Nina has been a vampire since 1973. She’s part of a group of vamps who meet once a week for therapy sessions to help them refrain from attacking humans.
When one of their members is murdered, they decide to track their enemy, assuming that once the slayer sees how pathetic and harmless they are they’ll be left alone. Ill-equipped for danger, Nina and her fellow vamps stumble into a world of guns, thugs, werewolves, and vicious humans.
This is a fun read, packed with plenty of suspense, a clever plot, and a nice sprinkle of understated romance.
The trouble with being a vampire is . . . You can't get a decent haircut. You live on guinea-pig blood. And even worse, most of the world's population wants to kill you. For no good reason. Nina Harrison became a vampire in 1973, when she was fifteen. Since then, life's been one big drag - mostly because she spends all her time with a bunch of vampires, in a vampire therapy group. Then one of them gets staked by an anonymous vampire slayer, and things become even worse: while tracking down the culprit, Nina and her fellow vampires end…
This is a great read. It’s fast-paced, has interesting characters, and plenty of action and intrigue.
It features an Australian teen (Sadie) who finds herself caught in the middle of an ancient conflict nearing its final battle. I enjoyed the Perth setting, the dynamic between Sadie and the people she cares about, and the brilliant way Myke brings a fresh twist to some creepy ancient mariner myths.
There's a great sense of menace and mystery as this story unfolds, and the last third book is hard to put down as Sadie races to save her city—and the world.
Sadie is sixteen and bored with life. It's summer, and lazing on the beach in the stifling heat with her cousins and Tom is a drag. Then something comes out of the sea.
Sadie soon finds herself caught in the middle of an ancient conflict that is nearing its final battle, a showdown that threatens to engulf her city and all those she loves in a furious tsunami.
A rollicking, fast-paced adventure with a feisty heroine, Fire in the Sea will appeal to fans of Garth Nix and Doctor Who. Great reading for ages fourteen and up.
I enjoyed The Opposite of Life (which preceded this book) for its wit, originality, unexpected poignancy, and Australian urban setting. I think Walking Shadows is even better.
Librarian Lissa and her very uncool, but lovable, vampire buddy Gary return, and Lissa is drawn further into Melbourne's vampire underworld to protect Gary (the first of many wonderful ironies).
Someone is hunting vampires and Gary's on the hitlist, despite the fact he doesn't bite people or drink blood. (In Harris’s mythology, vampires don't need human blood to survive, it simply enables them to feel alive.)
There are still themes of death, grief, and consequences of choices, but these are balanced by moments where simple joys in life are celebrated and relished. I loved the deepening friendship between Lissa and Gary—theirs is a unique relationship in the world of vamp-based stories.
It’s almost a year since Gaby Winters watched her twin brother die. In the sunshine of a coastal Australian town, her body has healed, but her grief is raw, and her nights filled with dreams of killing hell-beasts. And then Rafa comes to town and tells her things about her brother and her life that can’t be true. Not only does he look like the guy from her violent nightmares, Rafa claims to have a history with Gaby and her brother that makes no sense. Then more strangers turn up, blaming her for something she doesn’t remember. Who is Rafa? Who are the Rephaim? And who can she trust?
This fast-paced thrill-ride is the first book in The Rephaim series (all 4 books now available).
Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.
Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for her biological mother, she meets the adult Willem, and they fall in love. Pregnant and engaged, she moves into the family mansion, wanting nothing more than to create a loving family for her child. But the Veldkamps are cold and distant. And why is Louisa a taboo subject?
An expectant mother gets more than she bargained for when she marries into a seemingly perfect family in this gripping debut novel–a must read for fans of A. J. Finn and B. A. Paris.
After surviving a nightmarish childhood, Anneliese Bakker is on the mend and searching for her birth mother. But when she meets Willem, she falls madly in love and finally finds a safe place to land. Engaged and expecting her first child, she moves into the Veldkamp mansion on a stately, tree-lined avenue in Amsterdam. And yet, nothing about Willem’s family is as it seems. Instead of…
