Award Winners

Winner, Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, 1996‘When I hear the word culture I think excellence and I think access…’ I wasn’t sure where this was going, but at least he wasn’t reaching for his revolver. Murray Whelan, hero of Stiff, is back at his richly futile best in The Brush-Off. When the body of an artist is fished from the moat outside the National Gallery, Murray—political minder, brushed-off lover and art buff on the make—goes looking for the big picture. If he can put the fix in, he might have a chance of staying employed. The second adventure in Shane Maloney’s series brilliantly mixes high art with low blows.Born in Hamilton in western Victoria, in 1953, Shane Maloney is one of Australia’s most popular novelists. His award-winning and much-loved Murray Whelan series—Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask, Something Fishy and Sucked In—has been published around the world.Before becoming a writer, Shane Maloney booked rock bands, promoted public radio, conducted public relations for the Boy Scouts Association, ran the Melbourne Comedy Festival and became a swimming pool lifeguard. There is no evidence that anyone drowned on his watch.In 1996 The Brush-Off won the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction. In 2004 Stiff and The Brush-Off were made into telemovies, starring David Wenham as Murray Whelan. In 2009 Shane Maloney was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association of Australia Lifetime Achievement Award.He lives in Melbourne.‘The Brush-Off brilliantly mixes the comic and the tragic: this amusing thriller has you laughing at the moments where a gasp may be more appropriate.’ Rolling Stone‘Maloney is top shelf.’ Australian‘A succulent, consistently funny detective story…The plot is something like John Cleese might dream up if he was drunk with Dashiell Hammett.’ Age

Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived there all her thirty-two years. Too tall, too stern—too old, now—for marriage, she looks out for her reclusive father, Joshua, and wonders about his past. There is a shadow there: an old enmity.When Joshua Grayling is offered the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis, Eliza is horrified. It involves a sea voyage with an uncertain, probably violent, outcome. Insanity for an elderly blind man, let alone a drunkard.Unable to dissuade her father from his mad fixation, Eliza begins to understand she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the vessel they will be sailing on. And in that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza’s mission too.Irresistible prose, unforgettable characters and magnificent, epic storytelling: The Burning Island delivers everything readers have come to expect from Jock Serong. It may be his most moving, compelling novel yet.Jock Serong’s novels have received the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, the Colin Roderick Award and the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK). He lives with his family on Victoria’s far west coast.‘There is some kind of magic in the way Jock Serong conjures places and times and people. The Burning Island is a ripping yarn of a book; sometimes while reading I’d be sunk so deep in its adventures, and in the precision of captured moments, that if interrupted I’d rise to the surface blinking, reluctant and surprised.’ Lucy Treloar

Winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore Award. This edition comes with an afterword by J. M. Coetzee.John Egan lives with his mother, father and grandmother in rural Ireland. The Guinness Book of Records is his favourite book and he wants to visit Niagara Falls with his mother. But, more than anything, he is determined to become a world-famous lie detector, almost at any cost.Carry Me Down is written in clean, compelling prose, and is about John’s obsessive and dangerous desire to see the truth, even as his family is threatened in countless ways. In this singular tale of disturbed love every word rings true.M. J. Hyland was born in London to Irish parents in 1968 and spent her early childhood in Dublin. She studied English and Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia and worked as a lawyer for several years. Her first novel, How the Light Gets In (2003) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Age Book of the Year, and made Hyland joint winner of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award.Carry Me Down (2006) was the winner of the Encore Prize and the Hawthornden Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2006); while Hyland’s third novel This Is How was longlisted for the Orange and IMPAC literary awards.M. J. Hyland lives in Manchester, England, where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at Manchester University.‘Carry Me Down is uncompromising, unputdownable and done with expert lightness. It’s a work of discreet brilliance. M.J. Hyland is a truly gifted writer.’ Ali Smith‘This is writing of the highest order.’ J. M. Coetzee‘Hyland’s talent and her power of realisation are manifest and moving…a novel that will command the world’s attention.’ Monthly‘Hyland writes in unadorned, clear prose, evoking period, place and setting with intense clarity and a lovely, restrained lyricism.’ Australian‘Carry Me Down is a heart-rendingly domestic work full of compassion for the most ordinary of our human frailties.’ Age‘Hyland’s disquieting novel is feverishly alert to childhood’s bewilderments and sensitively articulates the strange osmosis between the mundane and the otherworldly.’ Sunday Times

Read The Case Against Fragrance and you will never think about fragrance in the same way again. If you have been suffering fragrance in silence, you will know you are not alone.’ ConversationKate Grenville had always associated perfume with elegance and beauty. Then the headaches started.Like perhaps a quarter of the population, Grenville reacts badly to the artificial fragrances around us: other people’s perfumes, and all those scented cosmetics, cleaning products and air fresheners. On a book tour in 2015, dogged by ill health, she started wondering: what’s in fragrance? Who tests it for safety? What does it do to people?The more Grenville investigated, the more she felt this was a story that should be told. The chemicals in fragrance can be linked not only to short-term problems like headaches and asthma, but to long-term ones like hormone disruption and cancer. Yet products can be released onto the market without testing. They’re regulated only by the same people who make and sell them. And the ingredients don’t even have to be named on the label.This book is based on careful research into the science of scent and the power of the fragrance industry. But, as you’d expect from an acclaimed novelist, it’s also accessible and personal. The Case Against Fragrance will make you see—and smell—the world differently.When I was little, my mother had a tiny, precious bottle of perfume on her dressing-table and on special occasions she’d put a dab behind her ears. The smell of Arpege was always linked in my mind with excitement and pleasure–Mum with her hair done, wearing her best dress and her pearls, off for a night out with Dad. When I got old enough to have my own special occasions I also had my favourite perfume. I loved the bottles: those sensuous shapes. I loved the names and the labels, so evocative of all things glamorous.Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her bestselling novel The Secret River received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places and Joan Makes History. Kate lives in Sydney and her most recent works are the non-fiction books One Life: My Mother’s Story and The Case Against Fragrance.

'Celestial Bodies' is set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, where we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present.

Welcome to Cinnamon Gardens, a home for those who are lost and the stories they treasure. Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home is nestled in the quiet suburb of Westgrove, Sydney – populated with residents with colourful histories, each with their own secrets, triumphs and failings. This is their safe place, an oasis of familiar delights – a beautiful garden, a busy kitchen and a bountiful recreation schedule. But this ordinary neighbourhood is not without its prejudices. The serenity of Cinnamon Gardens is threatened by malignant forces more interested in what makes this refuge different rather than embracing the calm companionship that makes this place home to so many. As those who challenge the residents' existence make their stand against the nursing home with devastating consequences, our characters are forced to reckon with a country divided. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to storytelling and how our stories shape who we are. 'An engrossing, urgent, warm, wise and utterly, utterly beautiful novel.' Emily Maguire, bestselling author of An Isolated Incident and Love Objects 'Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens filled this reviewer's heart with both hope and rage at witnessing history repeat itself, while somehow preserving optimism about how communities can be rebuilt.' Books + Publishing

The morning starts like any other. Rachel Klein drops her daughter, Kylie, at the bus stop and heads into her day. But then a phone call changes everything. A woman has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will ever see her again is if she pays a ransom - and kidnaps another child. The caller is a mother herself, whose son has also been abducted, and if Rachel doesn't do exactly as she's told, both children will die. Rachel is now part of a terrifying scheme - The Chain. The rules are simple: find the money, find your victim, and then commit a horrible act you'd have thought yourself incapable of just 24 hours ago. Rachel is an ordinary woman, but over the coming days she will be pushed beyond ordinary limits to save her daughter. What the anonymous masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children. But what they don't know is that they may have met their match. Can Rachel be the one person to finally break The Chain?

Inspector Hal Challis has been summoned to Mawson's Bluff, his childhood home in the Australian Outback, where his father is dying. Sergeant Ellen Destry is left to head an investigation into a ring of pedophiles that has descended on the peaceful Mornington Peninsula, a resort community near Melbourne. A little girl has been abducted from the fairgrounds at the annual Waterloo Show; it takes her mother twenty-four hours to report her missing. By then, hope is slim that the police will find the child before it is too late. Challis' sister's difficult husband disappeared from the Bluff four years ago; since then Meg has received nuisance mail that she assumes comes from him. While Challis is in town, an extra buried body is discovered when a new grave is dug in the local graveyard. A black plastic bag containing the corpse of Meg's husband is found on top of a coffin that was interred four years earlier. With two very different crimes to solve, Challis and Destry have their work cut out for them.

When Sammy Starling, a former London gangster with a passion for collecting, discovers that his beautiful young wife is missing, he assumes old enemies in the police force are taking their revenge. Ten years ago Starling's evidence of police corruption put DI Marty Keller, an ambitious, clever young cop with everything to live for, behind bars. Now Keller is out. And getting even.But as investigations into Eva Starling's disappearance proceed, it's DCI David Brock who is under suspicion of corruption. His team is disbanded and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla is reassigned to the Fraud Squad. Unsuccessfully trying to come to terms with Brock's disgrace, Kolla needs to find out why nothing in this case seems to be making sense.Using the tenacity, ingenuity and intelligence Brock is relying on, Kolla links the pieces in this puzzle of kidnapping, murder and revenge, and finds answers that no one is expecting.The Marx Sisters, Maitland's first novel, was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award for best first crime novel and his second, The Malcontenta, was joint winner of the inaugural Ned Kelly Award for best crime novel. All My Enemies followed in 1996 and The Chalon Heads is the fourth gripping case for the Scotland Yard team of DCI Brock and his assistant DS Kathy Kolla.

The first title in the launch of Bolinda's Australian Classics series, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is an ongoing Australian literary classic, nominated for the Booker Prize and written by the multi-award-winning author, Thomas Keneally.Jimmie Blacksmith is the son of an Aboriginal mother and a white father. A missionary shows him what it means to be white - already he is only too aware of what it means to be black. Exploited by his white employers and betrayed by his white wife, Jimmie cannot take any more. He must find a way to express his rage. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is based on an actual incident that occurred at the turn of the century. Set against the background of a turbulent Australian history, Thomas Keneally records with clarity the chant of one troubled man.