Award Winners

School-leaver Skye plays guitar in her all-female Chronic Cramps band. Making her name in the punk/indie scene is easier than FTM (female to male) transitioning from Skye to Finn, from girl to man. Ages 14+.

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019. In April 1988, Valerie Solanas - the writer, radical feminist and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol - was discovered dead in her hotel room, in a grimy corner of San Francisco. She was only 52; alone, penniless and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings. In The Faculty of Dreams, Sara Stridsberg revisits the hotel room where Solanas died, the courtroom where she was tried and convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands where she spent her childhood, and the mental hospitals where she was interned. Through imagined conversations and monologues, reminiscences and rantings, Stridsberg reconstructs this most intriguing and enigmatic of women, articulating the thoughts and fears that she struggled to express in life and giving a powerful, heartbreaking voice to the writer of the infamous SCUM Manifesto.

He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it. This is his story. Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born smiling. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. In this Man Booker Prize winning story, the tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels a latter-day Lazarus's tale.

"Federation is the name given to a particular style of house built in Australia between about 1890 and 1920. Red brick walls and orange tiled roofing, decorated with ridging and chimney pots of terracotta, were among the noticeable characteristics of the majority of houses in this style. But a closer look reveals buildings that display the most extraordinary expression of developing national pride." "This book blends the story of these remarkable buildings with a wealth of information on their restoration and conservation. Shrewd practical advice on restoration techniques from Australia's best-known writer on old houses, together with a comprehensive directory of suppliers which lists all of the services and materials necessary, combine to form an essential guide for every owner of a Federation-style house."--Back cover.

Kif Kehlmann, a young penniless writer, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl offers Kehlmann the job of ghost-writing his memoir. He has six weeks to write the book, for which he’ll be paid $10,000. But as the writing gets under way, Kehlmann begins to fear that he is being corrupted by Heidl. As the deadline draws closer, he becomes ever more unsure if he is ghost writing a memoir, or if Heidl is rewriting him – his life, his future. Everything that was certain grows uncertain as he begins to wonder: who is Siegfried Heidl – and who is Kif Kehlmann?As time runs out, one question looms above all others: what is the truth?By turns compelling, comic and chilling, this is a haunting journey into the heart of our age.

Then she lifts the Fish up from the bassinet and holds him out to me. 'Go on, take him.' And to the Fish she says, 'This is your uncle.' I manage to clap my hands either side of the fish bundle. But I feel like I am holding an expensive glass. Once you're told not to drop it, all you can think of is the glass shattering across the floor. When the baby is born-in a shabby caravan at a beach campground, it's clear he is not like other babies. But the family will try hard to protect and love and accept him. Perhaps all the more to make up for letting his troubled mother down. The young uncle grapples with his connection to the Fish. And as he tries to understand his family and its confusing secrets and shame, his sense of his own place in the world begins to crumble. Lloyd Jones's unique lyrical style is mesmerising in this tender story of family bonds, both strained and strengthened by tragedy, and the redemptive power of writing.

In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers – the youngest is nine, the oldest fifteen – use their strict father’s absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river.They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest brother will be killed by another. This prophesy breaks their strong bond, and unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions.Passionate and bold, The Fishermen is a breathtakingly beautiful novel, firmly rooted in the best of African storytelling.Winner of the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction)Winner of the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Debut Author)Winner of the 2015 FT/Oppenheimer Emerging Voices Award for FictionFinalist for the 2015 Man Booker PrizeFinalist for the 2015 Guardian First Book AwardFinalist for the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel PrizeLonglisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas PrizeLonglisted for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature

**Please note that this is a short illustrated work which will work best on a colour device**An enchanting and darkly comic fable of human greed and nature, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, exquisitely illustrated by Chelsea CardinalFox 8 has always been curious, and a bit of a daydreamer. And, by hiding outside houses at dusk and listening to children's bedtime stories, he has learned to speak 'Yuman'. The power of words and the stories built from them is intoxicating for a fox with a poetic soul, but there is 'danjur' on the horizon: a new shopping mall is being built, cutting off his pack's food supply. To save himself and his fellow foxes, Fox 8 will have to set out on a harrowing quest from the wilds of nature deep into the dark heart of suburbia.

I might as well set the story straight about both of them.'Heroes or Criminals? Crackpots or Visionaries? Relatives or Enemies?It's a simple family story...Visit the website here'Riotously funny. . . deserves a place next to A Confederancy of Dunces.' - Wall Street Journal'A rich father-and-son story packed with incident, humour and characters reminiscent in styles of Charles Dickens and John Irving. . . A Fraction of the Whole soars like a rocket.' - LA Times'A grand achievement and the debut of a great comic talent. But it also has a heart. . . go away and read it.' - Sunday Times'Toltz brings all the energy and assurance of a young Peter Carey to this burlesque, bravura performance.' - Irish Times'A gloriously absorbing, preposterous and funny excursion to the brink of madness and the meaning of life.' - Sunday Telegraph SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2008 MAN BOOKER PRIZE

Nearly fifty years later, Brisbane bookseller Caddie Walker is waiting in line to see a Karlson exhibition featuring the famous fragments when she meets a charismatic older woman. The woman quotes a phrase from the Karlson fragments that Caddie knows does not exist—and yet to Caddie, who knows Inga Karlson’s work like she knows her name, it feels genuine.Caddie is electrified. Jolted her from her sleepy, no-worries life in torpid 1980s Brisbane she is driven to investigate: to find the clues that will unlock the greatest literary mystery of the twentieth century.Toni Jordan is the author of five novels. The international bestseller Addition was a Richard and Judy Bookclub pick and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Fall Girl was published internationally and has been optioned for film, and Nine Days was awarded Best Fiction at the Indie Awards, was shortlisted for the ABIA Best General Fiction award and was named in Kirkus Review’s top 10 Historical Novels of 2013. Our Tiny, Useless Hearts was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize 2017 and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2018. Toni's latest book is the literary mystery The Fragments. She lives in Melbourne.