Australian Literature

Fabulous Lives by Bindy Pritchard ($27, PB) In a collection of short stories spanning Australia & other continents, Bindy Pritchard embraces people with all their frailties & strengths, failures & hopes, as they reach critical junctures in their lives. Both funny & heart-rending, these 16 stories follow the struggles of life’s outsiders—the sick, the lonely, the poor and the ugly—as they try to find hope & belonging in a hostile world. ‘The stories are both generous and devastating. Somehow I feel both emptied and sated by them at the same time, like a fish that’s been gutted then stuffed.’ —Evan Fallenberg

Refuge by Richard Rossiter ($25, PB) Quentin ‘Tinny’ Thompson & his German neighbour, Greta, have at least one thing in common. In their tin sheds close to the coast, they are attempting to live out of the firing line of modern society. Tinny’s sons are growing up & one of them, Rock, wants to head to the city & live with his mother, who is sometimes Prue & sometimes Peaches. Greta’s dream of life in Australia began with a school project on the explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt. Heedless of his fate, she decides to follow in his footsteps. However isolation does not guarantee safety. Violence—so visible in a disintegrating Europe—is not contained. It arrives at her shed in the bush in the figure of the disturbed Clive. Lives do not remain static, even for those who resist change. This is a tender exploration of love & friendship, families, race relations & the consolations of the natural world.

Shepherd by Catherine Jinks ($30, PB) Fourteen-year-old convict Tom Clay lives in a shepherd’s hut in the bush, protecting his master’s sheep from wild dogs. When a vicious fellow shepherd returns to ensure there are no witnesses to his crimes, the bush-crafty Tom and his hapless mate Rowdy face a life-and-death battle to survive.

Fortune by Lenny Bartulin ($30, PB) In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia. Beginning on the day he leads his triumphant Grande Armée into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate, Fortune traces the fates of a handful of souls whose lives briefly touch on that momentous day & then diverge across the globe. Spanning more than a century, Bartulin’s epic moves from the Napoleonic Wars to South America, and from the early penal settlement of Van Diemen’s Land to the cannons of WW1, mapping the reverberations of history on ordinary people. Some lives are willed into action & others are merely endured, but all are subject to the unpredictable whims of chance. ‘... savage and nihilistic, wise and kind, never less than gripping, and it is over far sooner than you want it to be.’ — Geordie Williamson

The Emerald Tablet by Meaghan W. Anastasios

The Suez Canal, 1956. The world teeters on the brink of nuclear war & the Middle East is a tinderbox. Archaeologist Benedict Hitchens, however, is enjoying a peaceful existence after years in the professional & personal wilderness. His recent discoveries in western Turkey secured him a place in history, but when he learns that the woman who betrayed him is leading a team into the Sinai Desert in search of an ancient treasure, he puts everything at risk to seek his revenge. Having aligned herself with unprincipled and ruthless men to further her own interests, her motivations are laid bare as she confronts ghosts she’d rather forget, and makes amends for past wrongdoings. Both are forced to grapple with their own personal demons as they race to unearth a secret that will, in the wrong hands, mean the annihilation of humankind. ($30, PB)

The Blue Rose by Kate Forsyth ($33, PB) Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at the Chateau de Belisamasur-le-Lac in Brittany, for her father, the Marquis de Ravoisier, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the chateau’s orchards, gardens and fields an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan the chateau’s new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer. David & Viviane fall in love, but her father has betrothed her to a rich duke & Viviane goes to court & becomes a maid-in-waiting to Marie- Antoinette. An embittered David catches the trade winds to Imperial China—where he receives news of the French Revolution, and knows he must return to France to save Viviane.

Six Minutes by Petronella McGovern ($30, PB) One Thursday morning, Lexie Parker dashes to the shop for biscuits, leaving her daughter, Bella, in the safe care of the other mums in playgroup. Six minutes later, Bella is gone. Police & media descend on the tiny village of Merrigang on the edge of Canberra. Locals unite to search the dense bushland. But as the investigation continues, relationships start to fracture, online hate messages target Lexie, and the community is engulfed by fear. Is Bella’s disappearance connected to the angry protests at Parliament House? What secrets are the parents hiding? And why does a local teacher keep a photo of Bella in his lounge room? What happened in those six minutes & where is Bella? The clock is ticking.