A genuine Aussie bookish girl, I’ve been an editor in the Australian publishing industry for 25 years, and I’ve been writing Australian novels for 15 of them. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m reviewing Australian books – can’t get enough of them! I’ve dedicated my heart and mind to exploring and seeking to understand the contradictions and quirks of the country I am privileged to call home, from its bright, boundless skies to the deepest sorrows of bigotry and injustice. Acknowledging the brilliance of those women writers who’ve come before me and shining a light ahead for all those to come is the most wonderful privilege of all.
Toni Jordan writes stories that defy genre pigeonholing, so she’s a woman after my own heart. The Fragments is a mystery about a missing manuscript and it’s also a complex piecing together of women’s personal histories. In the 1980s, in sleepy, sunny Brisbane, bookseller Caddie attends an exhibition of charred fragments from a famously lost novel of 1930s New York literary sensation, Inga Karlson – and meets an enigmatic stranger there who sparks Caddie’s obsession to uncover the truth of Inga’s life and death. A highly entertaining romp follows, full of mischievous twists, but, best of all, this novel holds another dare for me: that women’s lives and writing can and should sparkle with unpredictability.
Inga Karlson died in a fire in New York in the 1930s, leaving behind three things: a phenomenally successful first novel, the scorched fragments of a second book―and a literary mystery that has captivated generations of readers.
Nearly fifty years later, Brisbane bookseller Caddie Walker is waiting in line to see a Karlson exhibition, featuring the famous fragments. A charismatic older woman quotes a phrase from the Karlson fragments that Caddie knows does not exist. Caddie is jolted from her sleepy life in 1980s Brisbane, and driven to uncover the truth about this fascinating literary mystery.
I’ve written fourteen novels about family, friendship, food, and love; stories that I hope transport people so completely and utterly, that they almost forget they are reading and instead find themselves walking in the shoes of the characters. That’s what I’m aiming for anyway. As a reader it’s what I want also – to laugh and cry, and feel the characters are people that I know and feel sorry to leave them behind when I turn the last page.
This novel is elegantly written and emotionally authentic, and while it is a light and zippy read, the more you think about it, the more it seems to say.
It is about a week in the life of Melbourne man Simon Larsen. Things are not going very well for Simon. He was a successful architect but during lockdown his business failed and his beautiful home had to be sold. Now Simon has moved his family to a tiny flat, and he is unemployed, broke, and can hardly get off the sofa.
While Simon seems hopeless, the family he has married into are formidable, from his beautiful wife Tansy to his terrifying mother-in-law Gloria. I loved the Schnabels but still, I’m not sure I would want to be related.
'I loved every page of this funny, warm, delightful novel!' LIANE MORIARTY
'A smart, funny novel about love, marriage and family.' Weekend Australian
'With sharply observed characters and comic set-pieces to make you laugh out loud, Dinner with the Schnabels is great fun to read and casts a more mature and acerbic eye on modern masculinity.' Sydney Morning Herald, Fiction Pick of the Week
You can marry into them, but can you ever really be one of them?
A novel about marriage, love and family.
Things haven't gone well for Simon Larsen lately. He adores his wife, Tansy, and his…
Kristyn Harman is an award-winning researcher who successfully completed doctoral research investigating the circumstances in which at least ninety Australian Aboriginal men were transported as convicts within the Australian colonies following their involvement in Australia’s frontier wars. She has published extensively on historical topics, and currently lectures in History at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. Having lived in both countries, Kristyn is fascinated by the different understandings that New Zealanders and Australians have of their nation’s respective pasts. She is particularly intrigued, if not perturbed, by the way in which most New Zealanders acknowledge their nation’s frontier wars, while many Australians choose to deny the wars fought on their country’s soil.
Van Diemen’s Land is the former name for the island at the bottom of Australia now called Tasmania. The British who invaded the island changed the colony’s name after the place became infamous. Not only was it home to the British Empire’s most feared convict stations, but it also had a fearsome reputation as the location of one of the most brutal genocides in the Empire’s history. Nick Brodie draws on extensive, yet previously ignored, archival documents to refute the long-standing myth that the Vandemonian War was fought between hapless convict shepherds at the far reaches of the island colony and the island’s Aboriginal inhabitants. He demonstrates instead how this significant conflict was an orchestrated campaign in which the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony used military and para-military forces to prosecute his war against Aboriginal people. Ultimately, the British won the Vandemonian War and then purposefully covered up the military nature…
Britain formally colonised Van Diemen's Land in the early years of the nineteenth century. Small convict stations grew into towns. Pastoralists moved in to the aboriginal hunting grounds. There was conflict, there was violence. But, governments and gentlemen succeeded in burying the real story of the Vandemonian War for nearly two centuries. The Vandemonian War had many sides and shades, but it was fundamentally a war between the British colony of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and those Tribespeople who lived in political and social contradiction to that colony. In The Vandemonian War acclaimed history author Nick Brodie now exposes the…
I took an early plunge into literature because of my very smart, highly literate parents, and it shaped my young brain. When my brilliant mother came down with Alzheimer’s, I had been a professional published writer for years, with a penchant for the non-pollyanna side of life. Here was the perfect subject matter. My aim was to take on her disintegration and downfall and turn it into art, to produce something as pitiless and unladylike as the disease itself. If people learn something about Alzheimer’s by reading it, that’s fine. But my larger purpose was to do her (and my) ordeal justice via the powers she bestowed on me.
This is a memoir by a great Australian writer of literary fiction. Set in Perth in the late 40s, the 50s, and early 60s, this book is not fiction, but it’s as profoundly satisfying as a fine novel, and the author uses, with great artistry and authority, certain conventions of fiction. It’s coming-of-age interwoven with the chilling true-crime story of a lurking serial killer, who turns out to have close ties to the author’s own family; one of the victims is a boy the author knew. Perth, on the southwest coast of Australia, bordered by the Indian Ocean on one side and the vast Australian outback on the other, is often called the most isolated city in the world. It’s known for being a bland, safe place with a low crime rate, making it the perfect sundrenched-but-sinister setting for scandal, murder, and awakening sexuality. Drewe is a powerful writer, and…
"Robert Drew has written a moving and unpretentious memoir of a precocious youth, a bittersweet tribute to youth's optimism."-Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
A "spiced and savory memoir" (The New York Times) of the dark life hidden in a sunny seaside Australian community.
Written with the same lyrical intensity and spellbinding prose that has won Robert Drewe's fiction international acclaim, The Shark Net is set in a city haunted by the menace of an elusive serial killer. Drewe's middle class youth in the seaside suburbs of Perth, Australia-often described as the most isolated city in the…
Each day I rise knowing that I have the grit and determination to rise above life’s barriers, no matter what the cost. At times, that cost has been high. I have built an awesome life from the ashes of childhood tragedy and I try to absorb today’s lessons, for I never know what’s just around the corner. I love and live life to the fullest because after all, we are only given one shot at it. My recent memoir depicts my strengths, my weaknesses, my loves, and my disappointments. All have been valuable inspirational tools in my wonderful journey through life.
There have been several books written about the life of Dawn Fraser, one of Australia’s greatest female swimmers to date. I like this original one which was recommended to me by Bill Sweetenham A.M and Hall of Fame who wrote the foreward for my own memoir. I borrowed this when both Bill and I were starting in our swimming careers.
I think this one portrays both sides of Dawn’s character. From her rise from humble beginnings in the poorer part of Sydney’s Balmain to her great accomplishments on the world sporting stage, she inspired me to reach for the stars: to always be the best that I could be.
Through it all—the kudos of being the best, through the heartache of losing her mother, the tragic car accident on the eve of a major event, and the eventual breakdown of her marriage, Dawn remained herself: just a loveable Aussie with…
The Australian writer Helen Garner has been publishing for nearly 50
years but only recently has her work taken off in the United States. I had never heard of her until a friend gave
me one of Garner’s published diaries,
and as I read I wondered why I had never heard of her.
It’s an absolute pleasure reading her honest,
witty, intelligent take on her world and her often amusing, painful encounters with colleagues, family, and strangers. She has an exceptional eye for the small details
that make life rich, the quirks and traits in other people that make them
compelling or objectionable or funny.
Garner vividly brings her world into your living room. I particularly admire the honesty with which
she writes about herself, her own failings and weaknesses, because she manages
to make the personal universal. Read
this book and you’ll likely recognize aspects of yourself in Garner’s…
Finally, Helen Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of her everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.
Yellow Notebook, Diaries Volume I, in this new paperback edition, spans about a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip. It will delight Garner fans and those new to her work alike.
A genuine Aussie bookish girl, I’ve been an editor in the Australian publishing industry for 25 years, and I’ve been writing Australian novels for 15 of them. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m reviewing Australian books – can’t get enough of them! I’ve dedicated my heart and mind to exploring and seeking to understand the contradictions and quirks of the country I am privileged to call home, from its bright, boundless skies to the deepest sorrows of bigotry and injustice. Acknowledging the brilliance of those women writers who’ve come before me and shining a light ahead for all those to come is the most wonderful privilege of all.
If you’re a lover of women’s literature – Austen, the Brontës, Woolf – you are in for an utterly original treat with this mother-daughter odyssey. Australian Indigenous lawyer, Jasmine, takes her mother, Della, to England, wanting to indulge her passion for literature with a tour of significant dead-white-author sites. But what is really found along the way are the rich veins of ancient stories and the essential power we all possess: listening. This is a moving and intricate portrait of intergenerational, post-colonial trauma that examines whose stories get to be told and whose need to be told. For me, as an Australian and a lover of English literature, After Story is a slice of necessary truth-telling, which I predict will become an Australian classic of the future.
When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother, Della, on a tour of England's most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past. Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine's older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes…
I’m a YA fantasy writer, and I’ve been addicted to stories of adventure for as long as I can remember. My love of story filled me with a heart for other worlds and realms and a fondness of reading things that challenged my heart and mind here in the real world. Stories are what make us human, and we storytellers are tasked with challenging readers’ assumptions about how the world, life, love, and humanity works. My obsession with story-telling led me to write my YA fantasy series The Annals of Lusiartha.
As a big sci-fi fan, I often loved exploring the idea of what would happen if the human race ever met aliens. In Galax-Arena, three children are kidnapped and forced to perform death-defying circus stunts in order to entertain their captors. Not only does the story contain some riveting descriptions of acrobatic feats and tricks, the story explores fascinating concepts of slavery, trust, and what it means to be a child in comparison to an adult.
Before The Hunger Games—even before Battle Royale—there was the Galax-Arena, where children are pitted against each other for the benefit of a shadowy audience that feeds on their fear. A Children's Book Council of Australia Honour Book for Older Readers, Galax-Arena is a dark, uncompromising thriller and a cult classic.Joella, her brother Peter and her sister Liane, are kidnapped and transported to become entertainers for an alien species. Many of the performing children are desaparecidos—the disappeared—kidnapped from third world slums and chosen for their extraordinary gymnastic ability. For the children, there is only one escape from the Galax-Arena: out of…
I have a passion for Historical Fiction. It started when I was 12 years old. Before that, I never liked any kind of history. Then, in school, we started learning about King Tut, and I was fascinated. I started having frequent dreams that he would sit and tell me stories about our life together and he believed that I was his wife, Sunni. Into adulthood, I still had these dreams, so I decided to write about the stories that he would tell. Along with exhaustive research, I learned who Sunni (Anukshanamun) was. My book is based on facts mixed with my dreams.
I am actually only part-way into this book, but I love it so far. I have always loved Charles Dickens, and learning more about his family interests me. This book is about his 10th child, Edward. He was a difficult child and was sent to the Outback. He lived among the aborigines and mostly convicts. It is a life story about how he handled it and tried coming out on top. I recommend this book because it gives hope and encouragement to all people. Young and old.
By the Booker-winning author of Schindler's Ark, a vibrant novel about Charles Dickens' son and his little-known adventures in the Australian Outback.
In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child, sixteen-year-old Edward, to Australia.
Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that his father's fame has reached even there, as has the gossip about his father's scandalous liaison with an actress. Amid colonists, ex-convicts, local tribespeople and a handful of eligible young women, Edward strives to be his own man - and keep secret the fact that he's read none of his father's novels.
I don’t think of myself as a dreamer but, rather, a hard-headed activist scholar. Globally, most of us live under the domination of production for trade. We have ceded co-governance of production—collectively deciding what we produce, how we produce it, and for whom—to the abstract logic of markets operated via money. We face two great challenges reproduced by capitalism—growing socio-political inequities and ecological unsustainability. So, I argue that we must replace monetary values and operating systems with ‘real’, social and ecological, values and production for demand, for the basic needs of humans and the planet. Postcapitalism means moving beyond money to realize our self-value and emancipation.
This amazing, super scrapbook of text, photos, and other images richly chronicles more than two centuries of resistance and protests in the land we now call Australia.
Since the 1788 invasion, radicals, refugees, resisters, and revolutionaries have included First Nations peoples, the oldest continuing living culture in the world, who had covered the entire continent before capitalist settlement. Creatively and constructively engaged in campaigns and interventions in the outdated politicking of unrepresentative political parties, over 500 such instances are detailed in this book.
One of several exciting cultural works produced by McIntyre, he both records and analyzes struggles and strategies for diverse forms of emancipation pointing beyond capitalism.
This book reveals Australia’s radical past through more than 500 tales of Indigenous resistance, convict revolts and escapes, picket line hijinks, student occupations, creative direct action, street art, media pranks, urban interventions, squatting, blockades, banner drops, guerilla theatre, and billboard liberation. Twelve key Australian activists and pranksters are interviewed regarding their opposition to racism, nuclear power, war, economic exploitation, and religious conservatism via humor and creativity. Featuring more than 300 spectacular images How to Make Trouble and Influence People is an inspiring, and at times hilarious, record of resistance that will appeal to readers everywhere.
