Award Winners

Elizabeth posts a 'room for rent' notice in Trevor's bookshop and is caught off-guard when Trevor answers the ad himself. She expected a young student not a middle-aged bookseller whose marriage has fallen apart. But Trevor is attracted to Elizabeth's house because of the empty shed in her backyard, the perfect space for him to revive the artistic career he abandoned years earlier. The face-blind, EH Holden-driving Elizabeth is a solitary and feisty book editor, and she accepts him, on probation... Miles Franklin finalist Philip Salom has a gift for depicting the inner states of his characters with empathy and insight. In this poignant yet upbeat novel the past keeps returning in the most unexpected ways. Elizabeth is at the beck and call of her ageing mother, and the associated memories of her childhood in a Rajneesh community. Trevor's Polish father disappeared when Trevor was fifteen, and his mother died not knowing whether he was dead or alive. The authorities have declared him dead, but is he?

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and seven-year-old daughter. After two years in Europe they are finally settling down. He sees a new life before them, a stable outlook, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated by hand. He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be alone - he's that kind of man. The flight lands, the glass doors hiss open, and Scully's life begins to go down in flames. So begins an odyssey across Europe, a journey through the underworld of every lover's nightmare.

This book chronicles the Nazi's rise to power, conquest of Europe, and dramatic defeat at the hands of the Allies. When the Third Reich fell, it fell swiftly. The Nazis had little time to cover up their memos, their letters, or their diaries. William L. Shirer’s definitive book on the Third Reich uses these unique sources. Combined with his personal experience with the Nazis, living through the war as an international correspondent, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich not only earned Shirer a National Book Award but is recognized as one of the most important and authoritative books about the Third Reich and Nazi Germany ever written. The diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as well as evidence and other testimony gained at the Nuremberg Trials could not have found more artful hands. Shirer gives a clear, detailed and well-documented account of how it was that Adolf Hitler almost succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has become one of the most authoritative books on one of mankind’s darkest hours. Shirer focuses on 1933 to 1945 in clear detail. Here is a worldwide bestseller that also tells the true story of the Holocaust, often in the words of the men who helped plan and conduct it. It is a classic by any measure.

Jason Bourne is on a boat in the Mediterranean moonlight with his lover, Johanna. He's happy for the first time in years. Then in the next instant, he finds himself floating on wreckage as fire and smoke choke the sky. Johanna is gone. And Bourne finds the darkness of lost memory closing around his mind again.

Rogue Forces is the explosive first insiders' story of how some of Australia's revered SAS soldiers crossed the line in Afghanistan, descending from elite warriors to unlawful killers. Mark Willacy, who won a Gold Walkley for exposing SAS war crimes, has penetrated the SAS code of silence to reveal one of the darkest chapters in our country's military history. Willacy's devastating award-winning Four Corners program, 'Killing Fields' captured on film for the first time a war crime perpetrated by an Australian: the killing of a terrified, unarmed Afghan man in a field by an SAS soldier. It caused shockwaves around the world and resulted in an Australian Federal Police war crimes investigation. It also sparked a new line of investigation by the Brereton inquiry, the independent Australian Defence Force inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan. It was a game changer. But for Willacy, it was just the beginning of a much bigger story. More SAS soldiers came forward with undeniable evidence and eyewitness testimony of other unlawful killings, and exposed a culture of brutality and impunity. Rogue Forces takes you out on the patrols where the killings happened. The result is a gripping character-driven story that embeds you on the front line in the thick of the action as those soldiers share for the first time what they witnessed. Willacy also confronts those accused about their sides of the story. At its heart, Rogue Forces is a story about the true heroes who had the courage to come forward and expose the truth. This is their story. A story that had to be told.

It starts in a suburban backyard with Darren Keefe and his older brother, sons of a fierce and gutsy single mother. The endless glow of summer, the bottomless fury of contest. All the love and hatred in two small bodies poured into the rules of a made-up game.Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. No surprise that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety—one of those men who’s always got away with things and just keeps getting.Until the day we meet him, middle aged, in the boot of a car. Gagged, cable-tied, a bullet in his knee. Everything pointing towards a shallow grave.The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a novel of suspense in the tradition of Peter Temple’s Truth. With glorious writing harnessed to a gripping narrative, it observes celebrity, masculinity—humanity—with clear-eyed lyricism and exhilarating narrative drive. Jock Serong’s most recent novel, On the Java Ridge, a fast-paced political thriller, was published in 2017. His debut novel Quota won the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. The Rules of Backyard Cricket is nominated for a 2018 Edgar Allan Poe Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Jock teaches law and writes feature articles in the surfing media and for publications such as The Guardian and Slow Living. He lives with his wife and four children in Port Fairy, Victoria.‘The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong, while classified as ‘crime’, is a compelling literary novel dissecting toxic sporting culture and its fallout.’ Paddy O’Reilly, Australian Book Review, 2016 Books of the Year‘The Rules of Backyard Cricket got the thumbs up from everyone.’ Favourite Fiction for 2016, Avenue Bookstore‘My favourite reading experience of the year (and I don’t even like cricket).’ Heather Taylor Johnson, Sydney Morning Herald’s Year in Reading‘Blow me down if I didn’t hang on every word.’ Clare Wright, Best Books of 2016, Australian‘One of the great novels written about sport…Delicious. It’s the top read of the summer.’ Stuff NZ‘A deeply interesting novel about sibling rivalry, family, masculinity, and the game of cricket…Serong is a talented storyteller, and he brings this unusual world to life.’ Booklist

Greece, 1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war. Amid the destruction, there are those who have come to the frontlines to heal: surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of them—Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley—are at the centre of Gail Jones's extraordinary new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones's imagination these four lives intertwine and change, each compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world. Immersive and gripping, Salonika Burning illuminates not only the devastation of war but also the vast social upheaval of the times. It shows Gail Jones to be at the height of her powers. Gail Jones is one of Australia's most celebrated writers. She is the author of two short-story collections and nine novels, and her work has been translated into several languages. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Prime Minister's Literary Award, the Age Book of the Year, the South Australian Premier's Award, the ALS Gold Medal and the Kibble Award, and has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the International Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Femina Étranger. Originally from Western Australia, she now lives in Sydney. 'Gail Jones is a thoughtful, accomplished writer whose work speaks for itself...Praised for her precise, incisive observations, Jones's writing frequently offers nuanced reflections on the cultural state of Australia as well as quiet revelations about the lives of her characters. Our Shadows is no exception...written like the wave that haunts its imaginative landscape, ebbing and flowing from past generations to the present and back again.' Guardian on Our Shadows

Winner of the Australian Book Industry Awards, General Fiction Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, 2012.This is the story of Sarah Thornhill, youngest child of the family at the heart of Kate Grenville's multi-award-winning novel The Secret River. Her stepmother calls her wilful, but handsome Jack Langland loves her and she loves him. Me and Jack, she thinks, what could go wrong? But there's an ugly secret in Sarah's family. That secret takes her into the darkness of the past, and across the ocean to the wild coasts of New Zealand. Among the strangers of that other place, she can begin to understand. Sarah Thornhill, a novel by one of our greatest writers, is about love lost and found, tangled histories, and how it matters to keep stories alive. 'Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness...She writes with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery.' GuardianKate Grenville is one of Australia's most celebrated writers. Her bestselling novels, which have won many awards and have been published around the world, include The Secret River (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), Lilian's Story, The Idea of Perfection and The Lieutenant.'Sarah Thornhill is the book of a writer of the first rank and there are plenty of things in it that are powerfully realised and that touch the heart...she is a gift of a writer...a haunting performance.' Age'A beguiling love story...The voice of illiterate Sarah, in which the whole story is told, is Grenville’s great triumph…The book is a moving double love story - of a wild, romantic love and a slower, more mature, developing variety - an imaginatively convincing recreation of history and a celebration of country tenderly and beautifully observed, but above all it is a powerful plea for due acknowledgement and remembrance of the veils of the past...We may not be able to change the actions of the past the gave us this country, Grenville says through charismatic Sarah Thornhill, but if we are not at least mindful of them we are no better than fools or accomplices.' Adelaide Advertiser'Sarah Thornhill is a beautifully told story of early Australia and the triumphs and struggles of its convicts, free settlers and aborigines.' Australian Women's Weekly'Grenville's vivid fiction performs as testimony, memory and mourning, within this collective, post-colonial narrative.' Weekend Australian

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. This work tells the story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.

In 1980, Tom Keneally walked into a store in Beverly Hills owned by Polish Jew Leopold Pfefferberg Page to buy a new briefcase. For the next few years, Tom's life was taken over by this charismatic and driven man, known as Poldek, and the story he wanted shared. The resulting book was Schindler's Ark, which went on to win the Booker Prize and ultimately became the Oscar-award-winning film Schindler's List. Tom and Poldek travelled across the US, Germany, Israel, Austria and Poland, interviewing survivors and discovering their extraordinary stories. Searching For Schindler is very much Tom's journey; he reflects on his early days as a successful but less than confident writer, and how this book, the film it became and the people he met, changed his and his family's lives forever.