Award Winners

It's an author's job to create a new world in the pages of a book. But when lines start to blur and reality begins to fade, getting lost in a story can be dangerous - especially if you can't find your way back. Madeleine d'Leon doesn't know where Edward came from. He is simply a character in her next book. But as she writes, he becomes all she can think about. His charm, his dark hair, his pen scratching out his latest literary novel - Edward McGinnity can't get Madeleine out of his mind - softly smiling, infectiously enthusiastic, and perfectly damaged. She will be the ideal heroine for his next book. But who is the author and who is the creation? And as the lines start to blur, who is affected when a killer finally takes flesh?

Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air - and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. In Air-Borne, New York Times columnist and Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery.

I had a body once before. I didn't always love it. I knew the skin as my limit, and there were times I longed to leave it. I knew better than to wish for this. This is the story of Yun. It's the story of Adam. Two young people. A familiar chase. But this is not a love story. It's a story of revenge, transformation, survival. Feel something, the body commands. Feel this. But it's a phantom . . . I go untouched. They want their body back. Who are we, if we lose hold of the body? What might we become? The Airways shifts between Sydney and Beijing, unsettling the boundaries of gender and power, consent and rage, self and other, and even life and death. A powerful, inventive, and immersive novel from award-winning author Jennifer Mills.

Acutely observed, evocative collection of short stories from the Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of Unexploded, blending fiction, biography and memoir.Hovering on the border of life and death, these stories form a ground-shifting collection, taking us into history, literature and the hidden lives of iconic figures. In 1920s Nova Scotia, as winter begins to thaw, a woman emerges from mourning and wears a new fur coat to a dance that will change everything. A teenager searches for his lover on a charged summer evening in 2011, as around him London erupts in anger. A cardiac specialist lingers on the edge of consciousness as he awaits a new heart and is transported to an attic room half a century ago. In an ancient Yorkshire churchyard, the author visits Sylvia Plath's grave and makes an unexpected connection across time. On a trip to Brighton, reluctant jihadists face the ultimate spiritual test. And at Charleston, Angelica Garnett, child of the Bloomsbury Group, is overcome by the past, all the beloved ghosts that spring to life before her eyes. Precise, playful and evocative, these exquisitely crafted stories explore memory, the media and mortality, unfolding at the line between reality and fiction. Written with vigorous intelligence and delicate insight, this collection captures the surprising joys, small tragedies and profound truths of existence.

In the summer of 1979, Stefan Hertmans fell in love with a dilapidated house in Ghent. He rescued it from decay and it became his peaceful sanctuary. Decades on, he learns that a bust of Hitler once sat on the mantelpiece, and a war criminal and his family relaxed in its rooms. This shocking discovery sends Hertmans to the archives, where he uncovers the secrets of the house and the atrocities committed by its former owner Willem Verhulst. Drawing on the historical record and interviews with Verhulst’s family, Hertmans reimagines the life of a weak, narcissistic man who climbed the ranks of the SS. Hertmans also uncovers the marital drama that took place in the house: Verhulst’s commitment to the SS was at odds with the outlook of his wife, a deeply religious pacifist. The Ascent is an immersive tale of war, family and individual fate, in which Hertmans demonstrates his mastery at spinning a personal story into an epic narrative.Stefan Hertmans is the prize-winning author of many literary works, including poetry, novels, essays, plays, short stories and a handbook on the history of art. His novel War and Turpentine was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, and was chosen as a book of the year in The Times, the Sunday Times and the Economist, and as one of the ten best books of the year in the New York Times.David McKay is a translator of Dutch literature living in The Hague. He received the 2017 Vondel Prize for his translation of Hertmans’ War and Turpentine.

Chance encounters have life-changing consequences. As the doctor's journey spirals back into his own family story, memories and ghosts shadow the seductions of the present. "Avenue of Eternal Peace", a kaleidoscopic novel of healing and hope, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and filmed as "Children of the Dragon" with Bob Peck and Lily Chen. This is a new, revised edition.

Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other.In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life.In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community.Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past – and perhaps a way forward.Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.

Mike Amon is a regular teenager. All he wants is to fit in. He wants to sit at the cool bench. He wants to be a star athlete. He wants his first kiss. He also wants his mum to survive. When his mum is suddenly diagnosed with advanced breast and brain cancer, Mike knows it's a long shot, but if he manages to achieve his dreams, maybe it'll give his mum enough strength to beat an incurable disease. In the meantime, he has to live with his African dad whom he doesn't really know, a man who has strange foreign ways - and who Mike doesn't really feel comfortable sharing his teenage desires and deepest fears with. He doesn't even want to think about what it might mean if his mum never comes home from the hospital. Based on his award-winning stand-up show, and the loss of his own mother when he was 12, Matt Okine's coming-of-age novel, Being Black n Chicken and Chips, is a funny, heart-warming, and sometimes surreal look at how young people deal with grief, the loss of loved ones, and becoming an adult - all whilst desperately trying to fit in with the other kids.

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Winner of the Western Australian Premiers Book Award, Winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award. Harley, a man of Nyoongar ancestry, finds himself at a difficult point in the history of his country, family and self. As the apparently successful outcome of his white grandfathers enthusiastic attempts to isolate and breed the first white man born, he wants to be a failure. But would such failure mean his Nyoongar ancestors could label him a success? And how can the attempted genocide represented by his family history be told? Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past. Benang is brilliant. It is a mature, complex, sweeping historical novel which will remind people of Rushdie, Carey and Grenville at their best. This is an absolute page turner and in the end we are left with a sense of joy and gratitude that such stories are still possible that the silence has been broken. Sydney Morning Herald... Benang soars to the level of superb storytelling with an emotional punch to the guts, not unlike Toni Morrisons Beloved. Weekend Australian. Haunting and poignant, Benang pierces the heart even as it seeks to lance the savage bleeding of the wounds of white settlement in Australia. Canberra Times.