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Picador HB WAS $39.99 NOW $32.99 PB WAS $32.99 NOW $27.99
Australian Fiction BRIDGE OF CLAY Markus Zusak
The Book Thief garnered international acclaim and made Markus Zusak a household name. Thirteen years on, the many readers who have been waiting for his next book have been rewarded with this very different but equally wonderful novel. A multi-generational Australian family saga, Bridge of Clay is largely narrated by Matthew, the eldest of five brothers, though it centres on the actions of the idiosyncratic middle child, Clay, and his desire to construct an object of beauty as a way of coping with family tragedy and dealing with its complex legacy. Heart-wrenching for all the right reasons, Bridge of Clay is indubitably worth the wait. NB: Hardback available only while stocks last.
THE BUS ON THURSDAY Shirley Barrett
An absurdist contemporary rom-com about cancer, life as a newly single woman and making a tree change? Huh? With The Bus on Thursday, Shirley Barrett delivers an unorthodox but highly entertaining novel that draws on disparate influences – everything from Bridget Jones to The Exorcist and Twin Peaks – to tell the story of Eleanor Mellett, freshly single and thoroughly traumatised Allen & Unwin PB from the ordeals associated with her $29.99 treatment for breast cancer. Moving to a remote mountain hamlet, she interacts with a bizarre cast of characters, including a highly sexed vacuum-cleaner salesman and an exorcism-obsessed friar. Barrett delivers the narrative in the form of Eleanor’s private, savagely funny and surprisingly poignant blog, ensuring an entertaining read.
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CEDAR VALLEY Holly Throsby
When Benny Miller arrives in the small town of Cedar Valley, she is searching for answers. Benny’s late mother was a mystery to her, and she hopes that this town holds the key that will unlock the many secret parts of her mother’s life. While Benny is searching for the truth about her mother, another outsider arrives in town – a mysterious, well-dressed man who sits down in front of the town’s Allen & Unwin PB antique shop and dies. Who was he and $29.99 what was he doing in Cedar Valley? Throsby is perhaps best known as a musician, but not for long – the way she intertwines the mysteries of Cedar Valley will leave you fully immersed in this delightful novel, which paints a lovely portrait of small-town Australian life and community.
Vintage PB WAS $32.99 NOW $29.99
THE FRAGMENTS Toni Jordan
Text PB $29.99
Oh, the twist at the end! It’s the perfect finish to this mystery about a lost book and the secrets of its famous young author. Inga Karlson’s first book captivated its readers in the 1930s, but just before her second was due to be published, she and the book perished in a fire, leaving only a few fragments. In 1980s Brisbane, Caddie Walker meets a woman who seems to know the words that went up in smoke. Meanwhile, in the 1930s, book-loving Rachel escapes her family and moves to New York. In alternating narratives, Caddie tries to find out more about the fragments as the connection between Rachel and Inga slowly emerges. There’s delicious romance amongst the intrigue, and Jordan’s portraits of the two contrasting settings are pitch-perfect.
THE BUTCHERBIRD STORIES A S Patrić
Transit Lounge PB $29.99
THE CLOCKMAKER’S DAUGHTER Kate Morton
THE CHILDREN’S HOUSE Alice Nelson
Beautifully poised and finely structured, this stunning novel traces the effects of trauma on mothers, and the trauma that absent mothers inflict on their children. At the same time it is a celebration of hope, goodness and love of all kinds. Alice Nelson has skilfully woven together multiple stories of displacement, loss and abandonment in this, her second novel. Marina was born on a kibbutz where children were the property of the community rather than their parents, living communally in ‘the Children’s House’. Constance is a refugee from the massacre in Rwanda, so traumatised she can’t summon any feeling for her young son. Reading about their – and Nelson’s other characters’ – lives is deeply moving.
Bestselling novelist Kate Morton (The Distant Hours, The Lake House) delivers another engaging read with her sixth novel, which follows Elodie Winslow, a young archivist working in contemporary London, as she seeks to uncover the story behind two seemingly unrelated items found in Allen & Unwin PB an old satchel: a sepia photograph of a woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist’s $32.99 sketchbook containing the drawing of a twin-gabled house. The house seems familiar to Elodie, and as she first identifies it and then researches its history, she uncovers a story of 19th-century murder, mystery and thievery.
THE HELPLINE Katherine Collette
THE GIRL ON THE PAGE John Purcell
Fourth Estate PB $32.99
Former Sydney bookseller John Purcell published his previous novels, the Secret Lives of Emma trilogy, under the pseudonym of Natasha Walker, but there are a number of similarities between those books and this: strong female characters, lots of sex, fast-paced narrative and sly humour. Set in London, The Girl on the Page follows ‘hard-drinking, bed-hopping, hot-shot young book editor’ Amy Winston as she attempts to coax literary great Helen Owen to deliver a long-overdue novel. Purcell’s story is full of barbed references to the contemporary publishing world, but it also raises serious questions about how writers can retain their artistic integrity while at the same time meeting the business-focused requirements of modern publishing houses.
Before the release of the Miles Franklin– winning Black Rock White City, AS Patrić honed his craft via writing short stories. In this collection, he returns to short-form writing, and the result is a collection that feels accomplished and mature. Some of these stories have familiar settings, others travel further afield to different times and foreign places. What these stories have in common is a clarity of language, and emotional complexity. As in many of his previously published works, The Butcherbird Stories sees Patrić focusing his attention on migrant experiences – something he does very well. This is fiction that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final pages.
Text PB $29.99
Fans of Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine are highly likely to enjoy Katherine Collette’s debut novel, which is heartwarming and humorous in equal measure. Germaine Johnson is an insurance probability outcomes mathematician who is more comfortable with pie charts and sudoku puzzles than she is with other people. She’s also in need of a job. When she eventually gets a position working on the senior citizens helpline at the local council, Germaine soon realises that Mayor Verity Bainbridge wants to rope her into a secret project to close the local senior citizens centre. But as Germaine gets to know – and like – the local senior citizens, the probability of her life getting complicated increases. And so too does her happiness.
Literary Award Winners THE ENIGMATIC MR DEAKIN
FLIGHTS
HOME FIRE
LESS
THE LIFE TO COME
MILKMAN
TRACKER
THE YELLOW HOUSE
Judith Brett Text PB $34.99 Brett’s masterful biography of Alfred Deakin – scholar, spiritualist and Australia’s second prime minister – won the 2018 National Biography Award.
Michelle de Kretser Allen & Unwin PB $22.99 This year’s Miles Franklin Award went to this meditation on intimacy, loneliness and our flawed perception of other people.
Olga Tokarczuk Text PB $32.99 This novel of linked fragments connected by themes of travel and human anatomy was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.
Anna Burns Faber PB $29.99 Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Burns’ confronting and mordantly humorous novel won this year’s Man Booker Prize.
Kamila Shamsie Bloomsbury PB $19.99 Awarded the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, this powerful reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone is set against the backdrop of contemporary London.
Alexis Wright Giramondo PB $39.95 Winner of the 2018 Stella Prize, this memoir takes as its subject Aboriginal leader, political thinker and entrepreneur Tracker Tilmouth.
Andrew Sean Greer Abacus PB $19.99 Humorous and wise, Greer’s novel about growing older and the essential nature of love was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Emily O’Grady Allen & Unwin PB $29.99 The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award for 2018 went to this powerful novel about the legacies of violence and the possibilities of redemption.
