Staff Recommended Reads

She hears her own thick voice deep inside her ears when she says, ‘I need to know where I am.’ The man stands there, tall and narrow, hand still on the doorknob, surprised. He says, almost in sympathy, ‘Oh, sweetie. You need to know what you are.’Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of nowhere. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girls, forced to wear strange uniforms, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious armed jailers and a 'nurse'.The girls all have something in common, but what is it? What crime has brought them here from the city? Who is the mysterious security company responsible for this desolate place with its brutal rules, its total isolation from the contemporary world? Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. They pray for rescue—but when the food starts running out it becomes clear that the jailers have also become the jailed. The girls can only rescue themselves.With extraordinary echoes of ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’, ‘The Natural Way of Things’ is a compulsively readable, scarifying and deeply moving contemporary novel. It confirms Charlotte Wood's position as one of our most thoughtful, provocative and fearless truth-tellers, as she unflinchingly reveals us and our world to ourselves.

Although there are acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists, the Circus of Dreams is no conventional spectacle. Some tents contain clouds, some ice. The circus seems almost to cast a spell over its aficionados, who call themselves the rêveurs - the dreamers. At the heart of the story is the tangled relationship between two young magicians, Celia, the enchanter's daughter, and Marco, the sorcerer's apprentice. At the behest of their shadowy masters, they find themselves locked in a deadly contest, forced to test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love...A fabulous, fin-de-siècle feast for the senses and a life-affirming love story, The Night Circus is a captivating novel that will make the real world seem fantastical and a fantasy world real.The Starless Sea, the magical second novel from the author of the The Night Circus, is available now.

"Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains. In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island. He has been there ever since. People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests. This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile. Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains?"--Publisher's summary.

Some girls are born to be loved, some are born to be useful, and some are born to be bad …Indulged and wealthy Kat Fitzhubert is sold in an arranged marriage to a colony across the world. Lady Viola Montefiore is the dark-skinned changeling of a ducal family, kept hidden then shipped away. Titania Boot is as broad as a carthorse, and as useful. On the long sea voyage from their homeland of England, these three women are fast bonded in an unlikely friendship. In the turmoil of 1850s Australia one woman forges a business empire, while another turns to illegal brewing, working alongside a bushranger as the valleys around her are destroyed. The third vanishes on her wedding day, in a scandal that will intrigue and mystify Sydney’s polite society and beyond. In this magnificent and broad-sweeping saga, award-winning author Jackie French defies the myth of colonial women as merely wives, servants, petty thieves or whores. Instead, in this masterful storyteller’s hands, these three women will be arbiters of a destiny far richer than the bewitching glitter and lure of gold.

The right words at the right moment can be priceless. Bringing the hugely beloved "Poetry Pharmacy" trilogy to completion, these poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort and joy for all. Here are pages to return to time and again - a place for calm contemplation, and that vital recognition: although the world may change, others have felt as I now feel.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them-not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He has it all-family money, good looks, devoted friends-but he's looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys.

What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none: this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear—at last!—what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age: the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality.----------------Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was awarded local and overseas prizes, has been adapted for the stage and as an acclaimed television miniseries, and is now a much-loved classic. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Dark Places and the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection. Her most recent books are two works of non-fiction, One Life: My Mother’s Story and The Case Against Fragrance. She has also written three books about the writing process. In 2017 Grenville was awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. She lives in Melbourne.‘There is no doubt Grenville is one of our greatest writers’ Sunday Mail

What if Elizabeth Macarthur - wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in early Sydney - had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? In her introduction Kate Grenville tells, tongue firmly in cheek, of discovering a long-hidden box containing that memoir. What follows is a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented. Grenville's Elizabeth Macarthur is a passionate woman managing her complicated life-marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her own heart, the search for power in a society that gave her none-with spirit, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir reveals the dark underbelly of the polite world of Jane Austen. It explodes the stereotype of the women of the past - devoted and docile, accepting of their narrow choices. That was their public face-here's what one of them really thought. At the heart of this book is one of the most toxic issues of our times - the seductive appeal of false stories. Beneath the surface of Elizabeth Macarthur's life and the violent colonial world she navigated are secrets and lies with the dangerous power to shape reality.

Winner of the Australian Book Industry Award for Best Book 2014.Don Tillman is getting married. He just doesn’t know who to yet.But he has designed the Wife Project, using a sixteen-page questionnaire to help him find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent and beautiful. And on a quest of her own to find her biological father—a search that Don, a professor of genetics, might just be able to help her with.The Wife Project teaches Don some unexpected things. Why earlobe length is an inadequate predictor of sexual attraction. Why quick-dry clothes aren’t appropriate attire in New York. Why he’s never been on a second date. And why, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love: love finds you.The Rosie Project is a classic screwball romance.Graeme Simsion is a Melbourne-based novelist and screenwriter.The Rosie Project was the 2014 ABIA Book of the Year and has sold over three million copies worldwide. The sequel, The Rosie Effect, is also a bestseller, with worldwide sales of more than a million copies. Graeme’s screenplay for The Rosie Project is in development with Sony Pictures and The Best of Adam Sharp is in development with Toni Collette’s Vocab Films. Graeme’s latest novel is Two Steps Forward, (Oct, 2017) co-written with his wife, Anne Buist.

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