Award Winners

Hirsch’s rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day’s end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. In the time of the virus, Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge.Today he’s driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They’re checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don’t quite add up.Then a call comes in: a roadside fire. Nothing much—a suitcase soaked in diesel and set alight. But two noteworthy facts emerge. Janne knows more than Hirsch about forensic evidence. And the body in the suitcase is not her son’s.Garry Disher has published over fifty titles across multiple genres. With a growing international reputation for his best-selling crime novels, he has won four German and three Australian awards for best crime novel of the year, and been longlisted twice for a British CWA Dagger award. In 2018 he received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.

When Alice Carroll steps into Curiosity Cottage, a picture-perfect former bric-a-brac shop in the Cotswold Village of Little Pride, she thinks she's found the perfect place to start the new phase of her life. Freshly separated from her collector long-term boyfriend, she's excited to embrace her new, minimalist existence. All Alice needs to do is sell off the left-behind stock, and settle in. But the villagers of Little Pride have other ideas, and Alice quickly realises they won't give up their beloved shop without a fight. Then a dead body is found buried in her neighbour's compost heap, and Alice realises there's much more to Little Pride, and its residents, than meets the eye.

Cambridge, UK, 1947. Martin Friedrich, a German philosopher who is in Cambridge to give a series of lectures, is cycling through an intersection on his way to give a lecture when a speeding car runs through him and kills him. A grisly death for one of the finest minds of the age. Shortly afterwards, Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, an Austrian-born, cockney Jew, whose parents were interned during the war as enemy aliens, stands over the body of Friedrich contemplating the age-old question - who did it? Because Friedrich might be one of the finest minds of his age, but he's also problematic. A brilliant philosopher whose lectures attracted students from all over Europe before the war and is regarded as the founder of modern existentialism, Friedrich was also, in the 1930s, a member of the Nazi Party. As Stephen is soon to discover, there is no shortage of suspects. Friedrich -arrogant, a womaniser dedicated solely to his own work over anything or anybody else - was hated by almost everybody, even those who loved him. Is there any sense to his death - a logic to the sequence of events that led to it - or was his death just a case of rotten, random luck? Has the universe spoken, and, in this sense, should Friedrich be pleased with the nature of his death as it is, after all, confirmation of his life's observations on our indifferent, random universe? Or are there more sinister factors at work?

In Destination Flavour, food writer and presenter Adam Liaw curates the best recipes and stories from the acclaimed television series, along with dozens of brand new dishes encountered in his travels. Celebrating food, people and places across six chapters, this book features more than 80 authentic and achievable recipes, unique stories of people Adam has met along the way, stunning food and travel photography, behind-the-scenes insights into the making of the show and candid moments from the road. This is the book that fans of the show have been waiting for.

Subject: The private diaries of Miles Franklin, author of My Brilliant Career and founder of the most prestigious literary award in Australia, are published here for the first time. [Inside front cover].

Award-winning author-illustrator Drew Sheneman brings budding paleontologists the truth about dinosaurs in this informative and hilarious nonfiction picture book that will teach kids everything they didn't know (and never thought to ask) about their favorite subject-Dinosaurs!

Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself. One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast… In prose as haunting and beautiful as its western setting, Dirt Music confirms Tim Winton's status as one of the finest novelists of his generation. '… an immense work, and its dominant inspiration is a passion for the natural world that makes Winton not just a writer … but a poet-prophet in the Romantic sense, and one of Australia's most precious cultural assets.' Weekend Australian 'Awe-inspiring … Sentence by sentence there are few finer stylists writing in English today.' Chicago Tribune

Director Gregor Jordan explores a sense of place, loneliness and loss in 'Dirt Music'. Georgie's living with a man she doesn't love and his young sons whose dead mother she can never replace. But a reckless moment leads to a life-changing encounter with Lu, an enigmatic loner, one-time musician and sometimes poacher, outcast from the community. Georgie will risk everything for this chance of love. Film is primarily shot in the Kimberley, Western Australia.

Eloise and her family must leave Cornwall on a treacherous sea journey to start a new life in 1870s colonial New Zealand. On the ship across, Eloise meets Lars, a Norwegian labourer travelling below decks, and their lives begin to intertwine. When her brother disappears, her father leaves and the family are left to fend for themselves in their new home, Eloise must find the strength to stand up for what she believes in and the people she loves.

Winner of the 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. With an introduction by Yann Martel.Abandoned in a big city at the onset of winter, a hungry four-year-old boy follows a stray dog to her lair. There in the rich smelly darkness, in the rub of hair, claws and teeth, he joins four puppies suckling at their mother’s teats. And so begins Romochka’s life as a dog. Weak and hairless, with his useless nose and blunt little teeth, Romochka is ashamed of what a poor dog he makes. But learning how to be something else…that’s a skill a human can master. And one day Romochka will have to learn how to be a boy. The story of the child raised by beasts is timeless. But in Dog Boy Eva Hornung has created such a vivid and original telling, so viscerally convincing, that it becomes not just new but definitive.Eva Hornung was born in Bendigo and now lives in Adelaide. As Eva Sallis, she is an award-winning writer of literary fiction and criticism: her first novel Hiam won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1997 and the Nita May Dobbie Award in 1999. Her novel The Marsh Birds won the Asher Literary Award in 2005, and was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Age Book of the Year 2005, NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Dog Boy (2009) won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for several other prizes.Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, the #1 international bestseller that won the 2002 Man Booker (among many other prizes), and was adapted to the screen in an Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. Martel is also the award-winning author of The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (which won the Journey Prize), Self, Beatrice and Virgil, and a book of recommended reading: 101 Letters to a Prime Minister.Praise for Dog Boy ‘Astonishing…a world of terrifying tactility—of teeth, teat, fur and claw…The novel is a strange, sombre, sobering triumph.’ Sydney Morning Herald‘Dog Boy is rich in interest and ideas…Hornung is wonderful on the physical characteristics, both beautiful and repulsive, of animals and children…Dog Boy unravels some of the reasons why humans and dogs are co-dependant and at the same time reinvents the idea of the wild child as an urban survivor, suggesting a future so menacing we prefer to ignore it.’ Age‘Hornung’s writing is beautiful and assured: her descriptions of this dog boy life are vivid and visceral and sensual and utterly compelling. She also writes about the dogs with breath-taking beauty—the penultimate climactic scene will squeeze your heart. Dog Boy is an ambitious concept, magnificently realised—you’ll never look at a dog in the same way again.’ Sunday Telegraph‘A grim and primal story of unnatural selection…This tough new novel represents an important shift in emphasis and a broadening of her vision as she continues her forensic investigation into the human condition.’ Australian‘Grotesque, moving and utterly astonishing.’ Herald Sun‘In exploring what it might be like to be a dog from a human perspective, Dog Boy sheds much light on what it is like to be human. Extraordinary, compelling and utterly believable.’ Yann Martel