Creative writing books by our students
For a full list of publications from the School of Communication and Arts, please visit eSpace.
2021
The Kingdom of the Lost – Book 4: The Velvet City
Written by: Isobelle Carmody
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: In this last part of their long journey, Bily and Zluty must each travel to the dangerous Velvet City, where they will learn the shocking truth about themselves . . . even as their beloved Monster faces the fate he fled. A thrilling series for younger readers from the award-winning author of Little Fur and The Obernewtyn Chronicles.
Empires
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Alaska, 2018, and Mike is a long way from home, nursing a wrecked knee and an unspoken grief, striking out into real estate and parenting his partner’s son. London, 1978, and Simon is an Australian fish out of water navigating adolescence during the Winter of Discontent, and drawn to an eccentric impresario next door. Washington, DC, 1928, and a retired US senator is interviewed about his time in Russia in 1916, and his mission to save a young heir to an empire. Vienna, 1809, and an Irish teenager on the run from the law takes refuge among composers as Napoleon besieges and shells the city. Hong Kong, 2019, and estranged brothers Mike and Simon reunite in midlife to face the secrets of the past, and reconnect in more ways than one.
Who Gets to Be Smart
Written by: Bri Lee
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Details: In 2018 Bri Lee's brilliant young friend Damian was named a Rhodes Scholar, an apex of academic achievement. When she goes to visit him and takes a tour of Oxford and Rhodes House, she begins questioning her belief in a system she has previously revered, as she learns the truth behind what Virginia Woolf described almost a century earlier as the 'stream of gold and silver' that flows through elite institutions and dictates decisions about who deserves to be educated there. The question that forms in her mind drives the following two years of conversations and investigations: who gets to be smart?
Interrogating the adage, 'knowledge is power', and calling institutional prejudice to account, Bri once again dives into her own privilege and presumptions to bring us the stark and confronting results. The questions Bri asks of politics and society have their answers laid bare in the response to the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, COVID-19, and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
The Imitator
Written by: Rebecca Starford
Publisher: Allen and Unwin
Details: Out of place at boarding school, scholarship girl Evelyn Varley realises that the only way for her to fit in is to be like everyone else. She hides her true self and what she really thinks behind the manners and attitudes of those around her. By the time she graduates from Oxford University in 1939, ambitious and brilliant Evelyn has perfected her performance.
War is looming. Evelyn soon finds herself recruited to MI5, and the elite counterintelligence department of Bennett White, the enigmatic spy-runner. Recognising Evelyn's mercurial potential, White schools her in observation and subterfuge and assigns her the dangerous task of infiltrating an underground group of Nazi sympathisers working to form an alliance with Germany. But befriending people to betray them isn't easy, no matter how dark their intent. Evelyn is drawn deeper into a duplicity of her own making, where truth and lies intertwine, and her increasing distrust of everyone, including herself, begins to test her better judgement.
2020
The Kingdom of the Lost – Book 3: The Ice Maze
Written by: Isobelle Carmody
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Bily and Zluty, the injured Monster and two diggers journey into a land of ice and darkness. Here they find a secret settlement and learn more about the mysterious Makers. But the Monster must make a dreadful choice . . .
Vanishing Falls
Written by: Poppy Gee
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Details: Deep within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar House— currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner; his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms— and Celia Lily isn’t in any of them. She has vanished without a trace.…
Just as the water from the falls disappears into the ground, gushing away through subterranean creeks, the secrets in Vanishing Falls are pulsing through the town, about to converge. And when they do, Joelle must summon the courage to reveal what really happened to Celia, even if it means exposing her own past…
Flyaway
Written by: Kathleen Jennings
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Details: In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers— a note that makes her question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure.
A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live— and even thrive— under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles.
The Republic of Birds
Written by: Jessica Miller
Publisher: Text Publishing Australia
Details: Olga loves the stories of the old cartographers and pores over their ancient books and maps, trying to unlock their secrets. Sometimes, she can even feel through the maps— almost see into them— as if by magic.
When the bird army kidnaps Olga’s sister, Mira, Olga knows that only she can venture into the Republic of Birds to rescue her. But first, she must unlock her magical ability.
As her journey takes her into the hidden world of the Iagas and the wilds of the Unmappable Blank, Olga discovers the truth about the war with the birds— and learns just how much is at stake in her quest to save her sister.
On a Starlit Ocean
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: Flying Nun Publications
Details: Erin Jacobs spent the last four years on racing yachts, working for outrageously wealthy owners in glittering regattas around the world. She hasn't been home in all that time, carrying the unspeakable secret of her father's mysterious disappearance offshore.
But when her sister Skye begs her to return home to Great Haven Island, Erin finds the former holiday paradise has fallen on hard times. To save the village, Erin agrees to work with old flame Tristan Drummond, now a powerful developer who plans to re-open the resort and establish a prestigious regatta.
But big plans never do run smooth. Working with Tristan reveals his desire to rekindle their romance, while Erin falls for new doctor Alex Bell, even as their relationship threatens to uncover the truth of her father's death. With home and future at stake, and Tristan's jealousy taking a dangerous turn, will Erin be able to save everything she loves? Or will her dreams be washed into the Haven sea?
A Guide Through Grief: First Aid for Your Heart and Soul
Written by: Edwina Shaw
Publisher: Red Backed Wren Publishing
Details: Practical tools, creative activities and yoga exercises to help you cope with loss. Whether you’re grieving the loss of someone you love, or going through a divorce, the loss of a job, or money, or just struggling to find the joy in life, let Edwina take your hand and gently guide you towards healing.
Writing with the wisdom of experience, after losing her father, brother and son, Edwina shares practical advice, gentle yoga techniques, creative activities and even recipes, to help you heal and grow through grief.
The Girl with the Gold Bikini
Written by: Lisa Walker
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Details: Eighteen-year-old Olivia Grace has deferred her law degree and ducked out of her friends’ gap-year tour of Asia. Instead, she’s fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a private investigator, following in the footsteps of Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars— who taught her everything she knows, including a solid line in quick-quipping repartee, the importance of a handbag full of disguises, and a way of mixing business with inconvenient chemistry.
Playing Watson to the Sherlock of her childhood friend, detective agency owner Rosco (once the Han Solo to her Princess Leia), Olivia pursues a routine cheating husband case from the glitzy Gold Coast to Insta-perfect Byron Bay, where she faces yoga wars, dirty whale activism, and a guru who’s kind of a creep. Olivia Grace is a teenage screwball heroine for the #metoo era, and The Girl with the Gold Bikini is a body-positive detective romp, rich with pop-culture pleasures.
2019
The Dragonfly Sea
Written by: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Details: On the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya, lives solitary, stubborn Ayaana and her mother, Munira. When a sailor named Muhidin, also an outsider, enters their lives, Ayaana finds something she has never had before: a father. But as Ayaana grows into adulthood, forces of nature and history begin to reshape her life and the island itself— from a taciturn visitor with a murky past to a sanctuary-seeking religious extremist, from dragonflies to a tsunami, from black-clad kidnappers to cultural emissaries from China. Ayaana ends up embarking on a dramatic ship's journey to the Far East, where she will discover friends and enemies; be seduced by the charming but unreliable scion of a powerful Turkish business family; reclaim her devotion to the sea; and come to find her own tenuous place amid a landscape of beauty and violence and surprising joy. Told with a glorious lyricism and an unerring sense of compassion, The Dragonfly Sea is a transcendent story of adventure, fraught choices, and of the inexorable need for shelter in a dangerous world.
The Astrid Notes
Written by: Taryn Bashford
Publisher: Pan Australia
Details: Astrid Bell. Dutiful daughter. Classical singer. Secret pop songwriter. And suffering from stage fright.
Jacob Skalicky. Trust-fund kid. Indie singer. Immensely gifted performer. And refusing to sing again.
Are they polar opposites? In his grief and fury at the world, Jacob certainly thinks so. But when Jacob loses everything and Astrid uncovers a shocking family secret, they may need each other to make sense of their lives.
Shadows in the Stone: A Book of Transformations
Written by: Jack Dann
Publisher: IFWG Publishing Australia
Details: The author of The Age #1 bestselling novel The Memory Cathedral returns to Renaissance Italy with a transcendent vision of the ultimate battle between good and evil. In Shadows in the Stone, Jack Dann creates a fully-realized, living, breathing universe, a universe where the Vatican is in Venice, Jehovah is really a lesser god known as the Demiurge, and the magus John Dee’s experiments with angels are true and repeatable. Here you’ll discover a nun who has the expertise and agility of a Ninja warrior, the reincarnated snake goddess known as the Daughter of Light, the famed Florentine magician Pico Della Mirandola, a young magus who is part stone, the Knights Templar of the Crimson Cross, the sapphire tablet: the most secret of the Dead Sea scrolls, and a 15th Century dirigible kept aloft by imprisoned souls. Here you’ll find wild adventure and Machiavellian subtlety, treason and heroism, love and carnality, joy and loss, magic, machines, the cosmic machinations of angels, demons, gods, and half-gods; and the absolutely breathtaking vistas that are their battle grounds.
Beauty
Written by: Bri Lee
Publisher: Allen and Unwin
Details: In recent decades women have made momentous progress fighting the patriarchy, yet they are held to ever-stricter, more punishing physical standards. Self-worth still plummets and eating disorders are more deadly for how easily they are dismissed.
In Beauty, Bri Lee explores our obsession with thinness and asks how an intrinsically unattainable standard of physical 'perfection' has become so crucial to so many. What happens if you try to reach that impossible goal? Bri did try, and Beauty is what she learned from that battle: a gripping and intelligent rejection of an ideal that diminishes us all.
Saving You
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Details: In their tiny pale green cottage under the trees, Mallory Cook and her five-year-old son, Harry, are a little family unit who weather the storms of life together. Money is tight after Harry's father, Duncan, abandoned them to expand his business in New York. So when Duncan fails to return Harry after a visit, Mallory boards a plane to bring her son home any way she can.
During the journey, a chance encounter with three retirees on the run from their care home leads Mallory on an unlikely group road trip across the United States. Zadie, Ernie, and Jock each have their own reasons for making the journey and along the way the four of them will learn the lengths they will travel to save each other - and themselves.
2018
Eggshell Skull
Written by: Bri Lee
Publisher: Allen and Unwin
Details: This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland— where justice can look very different, especially for women. The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story.
Bri Lee has written a fierce and eloquent memoir that addresses both her own reckoning with the past as well as with the stories around her, to speak the truth with wit, empathy and unflinching courage. Eggshell Skull is a haunting appraisal of modern Australia from a new and essential voice.
The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge
Written by: Kali Napier
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Details: 1932. Ernie and Lily Hass, and their daughter, Girlie, have lost almost everything in the Depression. Abandoning their failing wheat farm, they make a new start on the west coast of Australia, where they begin to build a summer guesthouse. But forming new alliances isn't easy— and when Lily's shell-shocked brother Tommy wanders into their new life, his presence will raise questions that cut to the heart of who Ernie, Lily and Girlie really are.
Kali Napier breathes a fever-pitch intensity into the story of these emotionally fragile characters as their secrets are revealed with tragic consequences.
The Paris Wedding
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Details: Ten years ago, Rachael West chose not to move to Sydney with high-school sweetheart Matthew. Instead she stayed on the family wheat farm, caring for her seriously ill mother and letting go of her dreams. Now, Matthew is marrying someone else. And Rachael is invited to the wedding, a lavish affair in Paris, courtesy of the flamboyant family of Matthew's fiancée— a once-in-a-lifetime celebration at someone else's expense in Europe's most romantic city.
She is utterly unprepared for what the week brings. Friendships will be upended, secrets will be revealed— and on the eve of the wedding, Rachael is faced with an impossible dilemma: should she give up on the promise of love, or destroy another woman's life for a chance at happiness?
Green as the Sky is Blue
Written by: Eben Venter
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Details: Simon Avend, a South African living in Australia, can be unruly. He often sets out to exotic destinations, indulging his desires in places like Bali, Istanbul, Tokyo, and the Wild Coast. But along the way unsettling memories arise, of people and also places, especially the cattle farm in the Eastern Cape where he grew up. He approaches a therapist to help him make sense of his past, a process that leads them both on a journey of discovery. When circumstances bring Simon back to South Africa, he must confront the beauty and bitterness of his country of birth, and of the people to whom he is bound.
Green as the Sky is Blue is a bold, unflinching exploration of sexuality, intimacy, and the paradox that lies at the heart of our humanity.
Melt
Written by: Lisa Walker
Publisher: Lacuna
Details: Antarctica is getting hotter …
Summer Wright, hippie turned TV production assistant, organises her life down to the minute. And when her project-management-guru boyfriend, Adrian, proposes marriage— right on schedule— she will reach the peak of The Cone of Certainty.
At least, that’s the plan— until adventure-show queen Cougar Gale intervenes. Suddenly Summer is impersonating Cougar in Antarctica: learning glaciology and climate science on the fly, building a secret igloo, improvising scripts based on Dynasty, and above all trying not to be revealed as an impostor.
Paris Syndrome
Written by: Lisa Walker
Publisher: Harper Collins
Details: Happiness (Happy) Glass has been a loner since moving to Brisbane and yet still dreams about living in Paris with her best friend Rosie after they finish Year Twelve. But Rosie hasn’t been terribly reliable lately.
When Happy wins a French essay competition, her social life starts looking up. She meets the eccentric Professor Tanaka and her girl-gardener Alex who recruit Happy in their fight against Paris Syndrome– an ailment that afflicts some visitors to Paris. Their quest for a cure gives Happy an excellent excuse to pursue a good-looking French tourism intern, also called Alex. To save confusion she names the boy Alex One and the girl Alex Two.
As Happy pursues her love of all things French, Alex Two introduces Happy to her xylophone-playing chickens whose languishing Facebook page Happy sponsors. But then sex messes things up when, confusingly, Happy ends up kissing both of the Alexes. Soon neither of them is speaking to her and she has gone from two Alexes to none.
2017
The Harper Effect
Written by: Taryn Bashford
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Details: Sixteen-year-old Harper was once a rising star on the tennis court— until her coach dropped her for being "mentally weak." Without tennis, who is she? Her confidence at an all-time low, she secretly turns to her childhood friend, next-door neighbor Jacob— who also happens to be her sister's very recent ex-boyfriend. If her sister finds out, it will mean a family war.
But when Harper is taken on by a new coach who wants her to train with Colt, a cold, defensive, brooding young tennis phenom, she hits the court all the harder, if only to prove Colt wrong. But as the two learn to become a team, Harper gets glimpses of the vulnerable boy beneath the surface, the boy who was deeply scarred by his family's dark and scandalous past. The boy she could easily find herself falling for.
The Kingdom of the Lost – Book 2: The Cloud Road
Written by: Isobelle Carmody
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: The second book in the award-winning The Kingdom of the Lost series for younger readers.
Adventure and danger follow Bily, Zluty, Redwing and the Monster as they cross a desert and journey through high stony mountains in search of a new home.
Sharp Edge
Written by: Marianne de Pierres (as Marianne Delacourt)
Publisher: Deadlines
Details: Dead bodies, a complicated love life, and a conflict between the local drug cartels, and a favour owed to the local bikies have Tara scrambling to stay ahead of the game. Just another Tuesday for Tara.
Bjelke Blues: Stories of Repression and Resistance in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland 1968-1987
Written by: Edwina Shaw
Publisher: AndAlso Books
Details: Anthology of short stories by various writers, telling some of the serious, silly, and surreal aspects of life in Queensland during the politically turbulent 1960s-80s.
‘Bjelke Blues gives heart and soul to the remembrances of the men and women who were at the end of police batons... at the front line fighting for justice and decency’ – Matthew Condon, journalist and author of Three Crooked Kings, Jacks and Jokers, All Fall Down and The Night Dragon.
Warriors of Love: A New Interpretation and Introduction
Written by: James Cowan
Publisher: S&S Watkins
Details: In 1244, a man wrapped in a coarse black coat entered Konya and so into the life of Islam’s most celebrated poet and mystic: Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi.
A wanderer and spiritual vagabond, Shams of Tabriz proceeded to wrestle with Rumi’s soul. What he wanted from his protégé was for him to embody a wilder, more robust spirituality that would enable him to embrace life’s rawness more completely than any saint had done in the past.
Dreaming in the Dark
Written by: Jack Dann
Publisher: PS Publishing
Details: A celebration of Australia’s current Golden Age of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and magical realism. Jack Dann— the multi-award-winning author and co-editor of the classic Dreaming Down-Under, the anthology that “has been credited with putting Australian writing on the international map” and the first Australian book to win a World Fantasy Award— has collected a wonderfully eclectic range of short fiction that showcases what our best fantasists are doing right now at this genre-bending moment in time.
2016
The Birdman’s Wife
Written by: Melissa Ashley
Publisher: Affirm Press
Details: Inspired by a letter found tucked inside her famous husband’s papers, The Birdman’s Wife imagines the fascinating inner life of Elizabeth Gould, who was so much more than just the woman behind the man. In a society obsessed with natural history and the discovery of new species, the birdman’s wife was at its glittering epicentre. Her artistry breathed life into hundreds of exotic finds, from her husband’s celebrated collections to Charles Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches.
Fired by Darwin’s discoveries, in 1838 Elizabeth defied convention by joining John on a trailblazing expedition to the untamed wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales to collect and illustrate Australia’s ‘curious’ birdlife.
Hamlet’s Ghost: Vespasiano Gonzaga and his Ideal City
Written by: James Cowan
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Details: Occasionally a man emerges from history without us knowing him. Duke Vespasiano Gonzaga (153191) of Sabbioneta escaped the net of sixteenth century Italy, its history of wars and conflicts, to fashion a life that was uniquely different. He set out to change the way urban man lived. Importantly, he was the first man to build a Città ideale. Sabbioneta is the prototype of all planned cities of the modern era. As a confidant of King Philip II of Spain and a traveller, he quickly acquired a cosmopolitan worldview, which led him to become a uomo universale. It was in this capacity that he designed Sabbioneta as a genuine little Athens. His life was fraught with tragedy, however. Not only did he suffer from syphilis, but his personal troubles left him emotionally damaged. The mysterious death of two wives, including the beautiful Diana of Cardona, forced him to find solace in the construction of his ideal city.
Meteorites
Written by: Carmen Leigh Keates
Publisher: Whitmore Press Poetry
Details: In this much-awaited first collection, Carmen Leigh Keates draws on her experiences of cinema and of travelling to regions in Scandinavia associated with iconic films — among them, Bergman's remote Swedish island of Fårö, and the Estonian capital Tallinn, where Tarkovsky filmed his science fiction masterpiece Stalker. In these poems, geographical, dream and film worlds collide with brilliant results, taking the reader on unexpected and unpredictable voyages.
Elizabeth and Zenobia
Written by: Jessica Miller
Publisher: Text Publishing Australia
Details: When Elizabeth and her unusual and fearless friend Zenobia arrive at Witheringe House, peculiar things begin to happen. Especially in the forbidden East Wing. The flowers and vines of the wallpaper sometimes seem to be alive. A mirror has a surface like the water of a pond. And an old book tells a different story after midnight.
Zenobia is thrilled by the strangeness, but Elizabeth is not so bold...
Until she makes a mysterious and terrifying discovery.
Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane
Written by: Elspeth Muir
Publisher: Text Publishing
Details: In 2009 Elspeth Muir's youngest brother finished his last university exam and went out with some mates to get drunk. Later that night he wandered to the Story Bridge. He put his phone, wallet, T-shirt and thongs on the walkway, climbed over the railing, and jumped thirty metres into the Brisbane River below. Three days passed before police divers pulled his body out of the water. When Alexander had drowned, his blood-alcohol reading was almost 0.3.
Intimate and beautifully told, Wasted mixes memoir with reportage to illuminate the sorrows, and the joys, of drinking. Muir traces her own history with the bottle. She speaks with the father of a boy who died in a drunken attack, and returns to Schoolies on the Gold Coast. And she tries to make sense of her much-loved brother's death.
The Horseman
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Details: It's been eleven years since Dr Peta Woodward, born into a horse-breeding dynasty, fled the family stud in the wake of a deadly tragedy that split her family apart. Carrying wounds that have never truly healed, Peta has focused on helping others. But when an injury during a solo trip through the Australian high country leaves her stranded, the man who comes to her rescue is Craig Munroe, a born and bred high-country horseman, and the kind of man legends are written about.
Stuck in the tiny town of Yarraman Falls while she recovers, Peta is surrounded by prying eyes and heartbreaking reminders of all she has lost. But while she resolves to leave as soon as she can, fate has other ideas . . .
2015
The Obernewtyn Chronicles: Books 1 - 6
Written by: Isobelle Carmody
Publisher: Penguin Random House eBooks
Details: An eBook containing the first six volumes of award-winning and bestselling author Isobelle Carmody's beloved epic fantasy series, The Obernewtyn Chronicles.
Mythmaker
Written by: Marianne de Pierres
Publisher: Watkins
Details: Virgin’s in a tight spot. A murder rap hangs over her head and isn’t likely to go away unless she agrees to work for an organisation called GJIC (the Global Joint Intelligence Commission). Being blackmailed is one thing, discovering that her mother is both alive and the President of GJIC is quite another. Then there’s the escalation of Mythos sightings and the bounty on her head. Oddly, Hamish is the only one she can rely on. Life is complicated.
Analogue Men
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Andrew Van Fleet and Bamberg Davis Kirchner have parted company. Private equity has let him go without a fuss and he’s opting for a job that will let him spend more time at home. But the house is overrun by iPads and teenage hormones and conversations that have moved on without him. Plus his ailing father is now lodged in the granny flat, convalescing from surgery with his scrappy bulldog in tow.
And then there’s Brian Brightman, the expensive fading star at the radio station Andrew’s signed up to manage, still gotcha-calling and dropping single entendres as if it’s the eighties. He too is starting to wonder if the twenty-first century might prove to be his second best. He’s Andrew’s worst nightmare, but they’re thrown together on a road trip to face their shared fear of obsolescence, with hilarious consequences.
New Boy
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Adjusting to a new country and a new school was never going to be easy for Herschelle. The food is strange, it's so different to South Africa and, worst of all, no one understands the Aussie slang he's learnt on the web. But it's the similarities that make things really hard. Herschelle will have to confront racism, bullying and his own past before Australia can feel like home...
Crystal Creek
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Details: Medical student Christina Price has worked hard to rise above an upbringing filled with neglect and the assumption that she would never amount to anything. She promised herself she was never going back to Townsville. But when a twist of fate lands her in a Townsville army base clinic, she must confront past hurts if she wants to succeed and, just maybe, find love.
Captain Aiden Bell is used to the hard life of an army officer. But his career has taken an emotional toll that he hasn't dealt with until meeting Christina stirs memories, desire - and hope.
Bad Behaviour: A Memoir of Bullying and Boarding School
Written by: Rebecca Starford
Publisher: Allen and Unwin
Details: It was supposed to be a place where teenagers would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.
Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant— and later a victim— of various forms of bullying and aggression.
2014
Dust
Written by: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Publisher: Knopf
Details: Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father brings his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched and unleashed a series of unexpected events: Odidi and Ajany’s mercurial mother flees in a fit of rage; a young Englishman arrives at the Ogandas’ house, seeking his missing father; a hardened policeman who has borne witness to unspeakable acts reopens a cold case; and an all-seeing Trader with a murky identity plots an overdue revenge. In scenes stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, buried deep within the shared past of the family and of a conflicted nation.
Machina
Written by: Richard Jordan
Publisher: Playlab
Details: One month ago, David Sergeant made the ultimate commitment to social media, choosing to forever separate mind and body by uploading his consciousness into social networking site Machina. An experimental and irreversible new process known as ‘Going Inside’, the user discards their need for a physical body and attains a kind of digital immortality in the cloud.
Now, as David’s family, friends and ex-lovers struggle to come to terms with his physical absence, questions are being asked about why this promising young man committed the equivalent of social suicide. Did he go willingly? Or was he pushed? David’s mother is determined to find out, even if it means reaching out to her son from the other side …
Over the Water
Written by: William Lane
Publisher: Transit Lounge
Details: Seduced by the sights, sounds, and magic of Indonesia, Joe finds himself unwittingly drawn into the lives of three women. Firstly, he rents a room in fellow teacher Lisa’s house, and discovers that she has a small harem of Indonesian boys living with her. Then there is Danu, a Javanese beauty, who says she is trying to escape an arranged marriage. Danu and Joe find common ground in seeking aspects of themselves— for Danu this means the West, for Joe it means the East. Joe also feels a connection with Babette, a reclusive English woman who lives in a crumbling Dutch villa. She is an old friend of Joe’s elder brother, Emile, who once lived in Bandung. Her relationship with Emile has long ceased, but Joe makes a remarkable discovery. As Over the Water unfolds, Joe discovers that his identity is not only fragile, it is disturbingly arbitrary.
The Art of Being Deaf: a memoir
Written by: Donna McDonald
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Details: Born in 1950s Australia, McDonald was placed in an oral deaf school when she was five. There, she was trained to communicate only in spoken English. Afterwards, she attended mainstream schools where she excelled with speechreading and hard work. Her determination led to achievements that proved her to be “the deaf girl that had made good.” Yet, despite her constant focus on fitting in the hearing world, McDonald soon realized that she missed her deaf schoolmates and desired to explore her closed-off feelings about being deaf.
When she reconnected with her friends, one urged her to write about her experiences to tell all about “the Forgotten Generation, the orally-raised deaf kids that no one wants to talk about.” In writing her memoir, McDonald did learn to reconcile her deaf-self with her “hearing-deaf” persona, and she realized that the art of being deaf is the art of life, the art of love.
Iron Junction
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Details: Desperate to get away from her family's expectations of success in love and in work, Dr Beth Harding leaves Sydney behind and takes a locum job at Iron Junction— a mining town in the distant Pilbara. With the mine growing at a rapid pace, the town full of contractors and tensions running high, Beth is convinced she’s made a huge mistake until she meets Will, a man who shares her dreams and could make the difference between going home and staying on.
Iron Junction seems like just another gig in the long road that’s taking Will Walker even further from home. But in the lonely fly-in, fly-out life, he never counted on meeting Beth …
But when Beth and Will discover that the choices they make will have far-reaching consequences neither could ever have imagined, they have a decision to make. Will they be brave enough to risk loving each other despite everything that stands in their way?
2013
Alfonso
Written by: Felix Calvino
Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
Details: Alfonso is a gentle yet searching exploration of a Spanish migrant's feelings and experiences in the country Australia used to be more than forty years ago. Felix Calvino infuses the stuff of everyday life with tenderness and magic. He recovers a lost time and sensibility. The past shimmers back to life.
Fleeing Herod: A Journey Through Coptic Egypt with the Holy Family
Written by: James Cowan
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Details: When the Holy Family fled to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod Antipas, they journeyed for three years throughout Egypt, mainly along the Nile, to keep Herod’s agents at bay. Using an ancient 4th century text written by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria as his guide, Cowan takes the reader on a fascinating journey through modern-day Egypt in the footsteps of the Holy Family, about the Delta region and up the Nile to a place called Mount Qussqam, where Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus resided for six months. The itinerary, according to Coptic tradition, was revealed to Theophilus in a dream.
Ghost Wife: A Memoir of Love and Defiance
Written by: Michelle Dicinoski
Publisher: Black Inc
Details: Michelle Dicinoski has found the love of her life— and now she just wants to get married and live happily ever after. The only problem is, she's in love with an American woman, Heather, and neither Australia nor America recognises same-sex marriage. What to do when pride and prejudice— love and the law— collide? For Michelle, the answer is clear: go to Canada and get hitched there.
This is the deep, funny, heartwarming and brave story of that trip. Along the way, Michelle reflects on why anyone would want to get married anyway, on the power of acceptance, and on the startling ghost stories in her family. She investigates the hidden worlds of people who make lives for themselves outside social norms, sometimes illegally. Michelle doesn't want to disappear, not from her family and not from society. But living in Australia, will she always be a ghost wife?
Bay of Fires
Written by: Poppy Gee
Publisher: Hatchette Livre
Details: Sarah Avery's reckless behavior has cost her a job, her boyfriend, and the independence she desperately craves. Reluctantly home for the holidays in the tiny seaside town where her parents live, her hopes for calm are shattered when she finds the body of a young female backpacker, washed up on the shore. A year earlier, another woman went missing and hasn't been seen since: is there a killer in this benign harbor?
Journalist Hall Flynn arrives to investigate the murder, which has set the locals reeling. Haunted by demons of his own and yearning for a fresh start, Hall will do whatever it takes to break the story— and Sarah will do whatever it takes to keep her own secrets safe.
Motherland
Written by: Katherine Lyall-Watson
Publisher: PlayLab
Details: Based in fact, the epic and intimate Motherland intertwines the sweeping stories of three very different women from different times, united in the heartach of exile from their homelands.
From the chaos of a Russian military coup, through the hell of Nazi-occupied France to a turbulent Brisbane in the throes of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, Brisbane playwright Katherine Lyall-Watson has penned a painstakingly researched historical drama about how world-changing events can ripple out and take a terrible toll on everyday lives.
Ryder’s Ridge
Written by: Charlotte Nash
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Details: Shaken after a tragic incident in the city hospital where she worked, Daniella figures that the small north-west Queensland cattle town of Ryders Ridge is just the place to hide. Caring and dedicated, she quickly wins the trust of her patients, and the attention of handsome station heir, Mark Walker. As their relationship grows, Daniella begins to think she could make a new life for herself in Ryders. But country towns have their own problems.
Under the big outback sky, Daniella discovers that the local rumour mill can threaten both friendships and careers, and that like the city, Ryders Ridge also has secrets. Mark, too, is a complication— as good as they are together, how can a doctor maintain a practice and live on a cattle station? Just as Daniella considers running away for a second time, a terrible accident forces her to face the secret she left behind in Brisbane, and risk losing Mark forever.
2012
Merlo Girls
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: A fascinating short story from celebrated Australian author Nick Earls, plus a sample of Nick’s edgy detective novel, The Fix!
He is leading another life, or toying with the idea of it, practising it, here at Merlo.
Two men, no longer youthful, through conversations about coffee, communism, cricket and the narrowing of possibilities explore the architecture of their friendship.
The Fix
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: In need of some quick cash when he returns to Brisbane after years in London, Josh whores himself to his brother's PR firm and inadvertently becomes part of ‘the fix’. Josh went to London with investigative journalism on his mind, but he carved out a reputation as a fixer instead and mastered the art of spinning any client out of a crisis. Now he's home in Brisbane, and this time the job is supposed to be good news. The client is a law firm, the talent is Ben Harkin, and the story is the Star of Courage Ben is about to be awarded for his bravery in a siege.
But it was Josh's messy past with Ben that was a big part of his move to London in the first place, and the closer he gets to Ben's story the more the cracks start to show. Throw in a law student who's an exotic dancer by night, and a mini-golf tour of the Gold Coast, and Josh's pursuit of the truth becomes way more complicated than he'd ever expected.
Welcome to Normal
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: This collection of stories showcase the calibre and versatility of Nick Earls at his perceptive best.
An Australian wine-maker tries to crack the Taiwanese market. Two holiday-makers in Spain decide to tell a lie about each other every meal. A man drives home from work trying not to dwell on what he has just done.
From Arizona to Taipei to suburban Brisbane, Nick Earls's characters lead ordinary lives that, in these stories, become far from ordinary. Ranging widely in style, setting and narrator, Welcome to Normal vividly captures the uniqueness of the everyday through its author's eye for detail and his unfailing aim at the human heart.
Flame in the Fire
Written by: Susie Utting
Publisher: Ginninderra Press
Details: Flame in the Fire poetically explores issues of an intense and unsettling nature. In this debut collection, Susie Utting offers the reader her ‘poetry of witness’ from her time spent as a volunteer in 2006 at an orphanage in Zimbabwe for children affected by HIV/AIDS. Through a series of autobiographical poems, Utting expresses an elegiac observation of social and political injustices, revealing the nuanced ways in which these experiences have altered the perceptions and understandings of her own personal grief. Utting offers this contextual information in the collection’s foreword, providing a frame through which to read the poems.
Thrill Seekers
Written by: Edwina Shaw
Publisher: Cutting Edge
Details: Set in Brisbane, Australia, and told as a series of skilfully linked short first-person narratives, this is an account of the descent into thrills-at-any-cost of the Oxley Creek Boys: from excited young teens on a sinking home-made raft to self-seeking drug-crazed adolescents on an inexorable trail of self-destruction and deep personal loss.
2011
The Kingdom of the Lost – Book 1: The Red Wind
Written by: Isobelle Carmody
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: The first book in The Kingdom of the Lost series. When a devastating red wind sweeps across the land, brothers Bily and Zluty are forced to fight for their survival and journey into the perilous unknown. A magical new series for younger readers from the award-winning author of the Little Fur.
Electricity for Beginners
Written by: Michelle Dicinoski
Publisher: Clouds of Magellan
Details: Poems about falling in and out of love. Poems about houses that shake and flood. Poems about frisbees and families. Michelle Dicinoski's 'Electricity for Beginners' is a lyrical exploration of the sparks and surges familiar to us all.
'Michelle Dicinoski's poems have that clarity and zest that marks the arrival of a fresh new voice in Australian poetry. She coaxes you into her poems with sweet allure, and keeps you there... This is a book that hums lightly, warmly, and with charmed intimacy' - Judith Beveridge
Mezza Italiana
Written by: Zoe Boccabella
Publisher: ABC Books
Details: Growing up in Brisbane in the 1970s and 80s, Zoe Boccabella knew if you wanted to fit in, you did not bottle tomatoes, have plastic on the hallway carpet or a glory box of Italian linens. though she tried to be like 'everyone else', refusing to learn Italian and even dyeing her dark hair blonde, Zoe couldn't shake the unsettling sense of feeling 'half-and-half' - half Australian, mezza italiana— unable to fit fully into either culture, or merge the two. Years later, she travels to her family's ancestral village of Fossa in Abruzzo and discovers a place that is the stuff of fairytales— medieval castles, mystics, dark forests, serpent charmers and witches. As Zoe stays in the house that has belonged to her family for centuries, the village casts its spell. She begins to realise the preciousness of her heritage and the stories, recipes and traditions of her extended Italian family become a treasured part of her life. Then the earthquake hits...
2010
The True Story of Butterfish
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: When Annaliese Winter walks down Curtis Holland's front path and into his life, he's ill-prepared for a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who's a confounding and seductive mixture of adult and child. After years travelling the world with his successful band, Butterfish, he's not used to having a neighbour at all, let alone one who appears unimpressed by the slightly chubby ex-rock star next door. So when Curtis receives an invitation to dinner from Annaliese's mother, Kate, no one is more surprised than he is when he not only accepts but finds himself being drawn to this remarkably unremarkable family. Even to Mark, a sebaceous fifteen-year-old at war with his own surging adolescence.
As Curtis gets to know the Winters, he soon realises that with Kate divorced, Annaliese and Mark need a male role model in their lives, but it's hard for him to help when he's just starting to grow up himself and struggling to deal with the death of his father, and harder still when Annaliese begins to show an interest in him that is less than filial.
An Absence of Saints
Written by: Rosanna Licari
Publisher: UQP
Details: Filled with exquisite lyrical and narrative poems, this thought-provoking collection explores a variety of themes, including the sense of belonging, the human condition, family, being a stranger, love and desire, and beginnings and endings. Divided into three sections delineating the author's preoccupations with her family history in Europe, childhood, and the acquisition and processing of experience, this compilation— inspired by the poet’s mother, Sofia, who is the subject of several works— also offers insight into life after immigration to Australia.
Pygmonia: In Search of the Secret Land of the Pygmies
Written by: Peter McAllister
Publisher: UQP
Details: The result of a chance encounter with an early 20th-century photograph of Pygmy-sized people in Far North Queensland, this book discloses the fascinating truth about Pygmy people, who, contrary to common belief, still live in isolated pockets around the world, from South America to Southeast Asia. As it explores several tribes of Aboriginal pygmies from Australia's rainforest— where many of their descendents still live— this enlightening account lays bare the importance of archaeology in modern Australia.
2008
Bachelor Kisses
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Jon, Rick and Jen are in their mid-twenties and share a house in Brisbane. Together they share food rituals, sporadic cocktail nights and the quest for love. Rick seems destined to long, lonely nights beneath his Porky Pig doona. Jen consumes men like chocolate bars. And Jon gets lucky in a way he's never expected— more women than he knows how to handle. A young doctor with grand plans for the hormone of darkness, he finds his life is spiralling way out of control. Bachelor Kisses is the mess Jon Marshall makes of his life when it stops making sense. It's the story of one man's hilarious search for meaning: a chaotic comedy of misjudgements, misinformation and misguided intimacy.
2007
Joel & Cat Set the Story Straight
Written by: Nick Earls and Rebecca Sparrow
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Joel would prefer to get through his final year of high school without Cat Davis or his mother's faux Spanish boyfriend and just hang-out with his best-friend Luke.
Cat Davis has an annoying best-friend, an even more annoying little brother, and a deep abiding hatred of Joel Hedges. Due to an unfortunate incident involving a leaking pen and suspected outbreak of Bird Flu, Joel and Cat are forced to sit next to each other in Extension English.
To make matters worse, and to their mutual horror, they are paired together for a tandem story writing assignment. What ensues reveals a lot about how smug teenage boys are and what teenage girls really think. No, wait – it's about a sane female and an insane male. It's about revenge and mistaken identity.
2006
48 Shades of Brown
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: A few months ago, Dan had to make a choice. Go to Geneva with his parents for a year, board at school or move into a house with his aunt, Jacq, and her friend, Naomi. He picked Jacq's place. Now he's doing his last year at school and trying not to spin out. Trying to be cool. Trying to pick up a few skills for surviving in the adult world. Problem is, he falls for Naomi, and things become much, much more confusing.
2003
Kids’ Night In: A Midnight Feast
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Bedtime stories, rainy-day jokes, holiday reads, funny cartoons, cool art, recipes, and tips from celebrities and sport stars . . . Join your favourite writers, illustrators and celebrities and be the first to check out these never-before-seen stories and illustrations, and much, much more. There's something for everyone. There's no collection like it. It's a great kids' night in!
2000
Zigzag Street
Written by: Nick Earls
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Details: Here I am, on a work day of some importance, riding out of town in a cab with a babe I've just concussed with footwear.
Richard Derrington is twenty-eight and single. More single than he'd like to be. More single than he'd expected to be, and not coping well. Since Anna trashed him six months ago he's been trying to find his way again.
He's doing his job badly, he's playing tennis badly, his renovating attempts haven't got past the verandah, and he's wondering when things are going to change. Zigzag Street covers six weeks of Richard's life in Brisbane's Red Hill. Six weeks of rumination, chaos, poor judgement, interpersonal clumsiness...and, eventually, hope.