2019 Book Club List

BOOK CLUB TITLES LIST 2019 ## New for 2019 Edith WHARTON, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - In the highest circle of New York social life during the 1870's, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, prepares to marry the docile May Welland. Before their engagement is announced, he meets May's cousin, the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska, who has returned to New York after a long absence.

(305 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Classic Paul COELHO, THE ALCHEMIST - The Alchemist is an allegorical novel first published in 1988. It follows Santiago, a young boy Spanish shepherd, on a journey to fulfill his Personal Legend. It has been hailed as a modern classic. The plot is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' short story: Tale of two dreamers.

(192 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Spiritual

Anna FUNDER, ALL THAT I AM– When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country to London.

(370 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Historical, War

Anthony DOERR, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Set during World War II Europe, this novel is sobering without being sentimental. The tension builds as the alternating, parallel stories of Werner and Marie-Laure unfold, and their paths cross.

(530 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Historical, War

Anne TYLER, THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE - Marrying quickly during World War II after falling in love at first sight, a mismatched couple discovers that their different personalities and approaches to life are taking a toll on their relationship and their family.

(352 pages) Themes: Literary, Domestic

Freda Marnie NICHOLLS, THE AMAZING MRS LIVESEY - The truly remarkable life of the notorious Ethel Livesey, a serial fraudster and confidence trickster who became a media sensation after she ran out on her society wedding in 1945 and was later arrested for obtained goods by false pretences.

(303 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Biography

## Tayari JONES, AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE - Could you put your life on hold for twelve years? A stunning love story about family, injustice and marriage, and three people at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control.

(306 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Domestic, Contemporary Chimamanda Ngozi ADICHIE, AMERICANAH - A story of love and race centred around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.

(477 pages) Also avaialable eBook Themes: Literary, Political

## Sarah VAUGHAN, ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL - Centres on a high-profile marriage that begins to unravel when the husband is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is sure her husband, James, is innocent and desperately hopes to protect her precious family. Kate is the barrister who will prosecute the case – she is equally certain that James is guilty and determined he will pay for his crimes.

(392 pages) Also avaialable eBook Themes: Thriller Dai SIJIE, BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS - Two hapless city boys are exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China's infamous Cultural Revolution. There they meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation.

(172 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Historical, Political Anita HEISS, BARBED WIRE AND CHERRY BLOSSOM– Hiroshi manages to escape from Cowra prison camp to Erambie Station, an Aboriginal mission. Banjo Williams offers Hiroshi refuge. Love blossoms between Mary, Banjo’s daughter, and Hiroshi, and they each dream of a future together. But how long can Hiroshi be hidden safely and their bond kept a secret?

(264 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Historical, War Laline PAULL, THE BEES - A member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive, Flora 717, due to her courage and strength, finds her way into the Queen's inner sanctum where she discovers secrets about the hive that cause her to challenge authority and perform unthinkable acts.

(344 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Sci-fi

Lauren OLIVER, BEFORE I FALL - After she dies in a car crash, teenager Samantha relives the day of her death over and over again until, on the seventh day, she finally discovers a way to save herself.

(344 pages) Themes: Contemporary

## Eli GOTTLIEB, BEST BOY - First-person account of Todd Aaron, a 50-something autistic man who’s been institutionalized for more than 40 years. The Payton LivingCenter is peopled with orderlies and patients who are by turns belligerent and compassionate, dangerously disturbed and insanely well adjusted.

(246 pages) Themes: Psychological, Hospital

## Georgia BLAIN, BETWEEN A WOLF AND A DOG - Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the anxieties of the middle class: loneliness, relationships, death. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Estranged from both her sister, April, and her exhusband, Lawrence, Ester wants to fall in love again.

(272 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Domestic, Mainstream Ta-Nehisi COATES, BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME - In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America and how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies and lives.

(152 pages) Themes: Biography, Race

S. PATRIC, BLACK ROCK WHITE CITY - During a hot Melbourne summer Jovan’s cleaning work at a bayside hospital is disrupted by acts of graffiti and violence becoming increasingly malevolent. For Jovan the mysterious words that must be cleaned away dislodge the poetry of the past. He and his wife Suzana were forced to flee Sarajevo and the death of their children.

(248 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Contemporary Colm TOIBIN, BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP– With AIDS about to claim a wellloved young man, three generations of his family are reunited at his bedside in Ireland, in a novel that explores the nature of love and the complex interrelationships among family members.

(272 pages) Themes: Literary, Domestic

Anita AMIRREZVANI, THE BLOOD OF FLOWERS - After her father dies without leaving her with a dowry, a seventeenth-century Persian teen becomes a servant to her wealthy rug designer uncle in the court of Shah Abbas the Great, where her weaving talents prove both a blessing and curse.

(376 pages) Themes: Historical Nam LE, THE BOAT - Ranging from the Colombian slums to New York City, from the streets of Tehran to a boat in the South China Sea, a collection of short fiction explores the complexities of human relationships and the challenges we face.

(315 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Short stories

Michelle LOVRIC, THE BOOK OF HUMAN SKIN - 1784, Venice. Miniguillo Fasan claws his way out of his mother’s womb. The magnificent Palazzo Espagnol, built on New World drugs and silver, has an heir. Twelve years later Minguillo uncovers a threat to his inheritance: a sister. His jealousy will condemn her to a series of fates as a cripple, a madwoman and a nun.

(500 pages) Themes: Historical Jonathan TROPPER, THE BOOK OF JOE - a young writer named Joe Goffman, whose sizzling first novel savaged everyone in his Connecticut hometown, then became a huge hit movie. Of course, Joe never planned on going home again. Until now.

(338 pages) Themes: Contemporary, Humour

Tess EVANS, BOOK OF LOST THREADS– Tender, funny and memorable, Book of Lost Threads is a story about love and loss, parents and children, hope, faith and the value of simple kindness.

(350 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Contemporary, Mainstream

## Trent DALTON, BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE – Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. A novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane's violent working class suburban fringe.

(480 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Humour, Coming of age, Contemporary Monica ALI, BRICK LANE - Monica Ali's gorgeous first novel is the deeply moving story of one woman, Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and transported to London at age eighteen to enter into an arranged marriage. Gradually she is transformed by her experience, and begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny.

(492 pages) Themes: Literary, Migrants Evelyn WAUGH, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED - Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, gradually becoming infatuated with them and the life of privilege they inhabit.

(326 pages) Themes: Literary, Classic ## Rachel LEARY, BRIDGET CRACK - Van Diemen's Land, 1826. A desperate convict flees into the wilderness. But the land that hides her will show her no mercy.

(320 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Historical

Hannah KENT, BURIAL RITES - Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

(352 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Historical, Mystery

Souad, BURNED ALIVE - A memoir by a young Jordanian woman who was the victim of an "honour crime" describes how she was nearly killed by her own family, her struggle to survive critical burns after being set on fire, and her determination to build a new life for herself.

(210 pages) Themes: Biography ## Venero ARAMANNO, BURNING DOWN - Charlie Smoke is living out his early retirement from the boxing ring as a bricklayer. It is the mid-1970s and he believes his best days are behind him. When he meets Holly Banks and her teenage son, Ricky, he has a chance to do things differently. But Charlie is unwittingly pulled back into the gambling underworld he thought he'd left behind.

(229 pages) Also available eBook Themes; Domestic

BUTTERFLY ON A PIN : A MEMOIR OF LOVE, DESPAIR AND REINVENTION - Alannah Hill, one of Australia’s most ## Alannah HILL,

successful fashion designers, tells a fierce and intelligent account of how a frecklefaced teenage runaway metamorphosed into a trailblazer and true original.

(352 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Memoir Heather ROSE, THE BUTTERFLY MAN - On 7 November, 1974 a young English nanny named Sandra Rivett was murdered in London's West End. Her employer, Lord Lucan, was named as her attacker. Lord Lucan disappeared the night Sandra Rivett died and has never been seen since. Henry Kennedy lives on a mountain on the other side of the world. He is not who he says he is. Is he a murderer or a man who can never clear his name?

(336 pages) Themes: Mystery Michael McGIRR, BYPASS - In a work of creative non-fiction which is a tantalising mixture of memoir, travel story, social history, road story and romance, he reveals his affectionate obsession with the Hume Highway and the stories it carries with it, whilst he also details his own personal and spiritual journey.

(307 pages) Themes: Travel memoir, Philosophy J. K. ROWLING, THE CASUAL VACANCY– When Barry Fairborther dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is not what it first seems, and the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Rowling’s first novel for adults is blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising.

(512 pages) Themes: Contemporary, Gritty

P. D. JAMES, THE CHILDREN OF MEN - The year is 2021. The country is under the absolute rule of the Warden. Then by chance, Theo Faron meets a young woman who seeks to challenge the power of the Warden's regime.

(241 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Dystopian

Edwidge DANTICAT, CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT - The interconnected secrets of a coastal Haitian town are revealed when one little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, goes missing.

(256 pages) Themes: Literary, Contemporary

Tim WINTON, CLOUDSTREET - Cloudstreet traces the fortunes and misfortunes of two rural families who move to Perth and struggle to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster.

(426 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Domestic

Stella GIBBONS, COLD COMFORT FARM - Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her country relatives, the gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, and becomes enmeshed in a web of violent emotions, despair, and scheming, until Flora manages to set things right. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas.

(233 pages) Also available ebook Themes: Satire, Classic Olive Ann BURNS, COLD SASSY TREE - Set in a fictional Georgia town called Cold Sassy during 1905-1906, it follows the life of young Will Tweedy, and explores themes such as religion, death, and social taboos.

(391 pages) Themes: Historical, Humour

Gabrielle ZEVIN, THE COLLECTED WORKS OF A.J. FIKRY - When his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A. J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life.

(243 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Contemporary, Mainstream Emily Gray TEDROWE, COMMUTERS - At seventy-eight, Winnie Easton has finally found love again with Jerry Trevis, a wealthy Chicago businessman. But their decision to buy one of the town's biggest houses ignites anger and scepticism—as children and grandchildren take drastic actions to secure their own futures and endangered inheritances.

(378 pages) Themes: Contemporary, Domestic

Anthony MARRA, A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA - Set in rural Chechnya during the region's war with Russia. An eight-year-old girl witnesses her father's abduction by Russian soldiers. Swearing to protect the girl, local doctor Akhmed brings her to a crumbling hospital, run by a hardened but dedicated surgeon, for safety.

(405 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, War

Mark HADDON,

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE

NIGHT-TIME - Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

(268 pages) Themes: Contemporary, Mystery Christopher MORGAN, CURRAWALLI STREET - With simplicity and great beauty, Currawalli Street reveals the echoes between past and present through the story of one ordinary street and its families, from the pre-war innocence of early 1914 to the painful and grim consequences of the Vietnam War. (296 pages) Themes: Historical, Domestic, War ## Bruce PASCOE, DARK EMU - Argues for a reconsideration of the 'huntergatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession.

(278 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: History, Indigenous

William LANDY, DEFENDING JACOB - Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next. His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

(488 pages) Themes: Thriller, Legal Ruth REICHL, DELICIOUS! - Working as a public relations hotline consultant for a once-prestigious culinary magazine, Billie Breslin unexpectedly enters a world of New York restaurateurs and artisanal purveyors while reading World War II letters exchanged between a plucky twelve-year-old and the legendary chef James Beard.

(374 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Food, Romance Bill CLEGG, DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY - Portrait of a community in the aftermath of a tragedy. June Reid, the broken woman at the epicenter of the novel, is struggling with a loss so profound that she is unable to see beyond her grief, unaware that it has touched many people. Clegg tells their stories with heartbreaking sensitivity and insight.

(293 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Death

Sarah MURGATROYD, THE

DIG TREE - Describes the mid-nineteenth-century Burke and Wells expedition in which eighteen amateur explorers took on the task of charting a course across the vast unmapped interior of Australia from Melbourne to the northern coast, recounting the tragic, nightmarish results of that odyssey.

(372 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: History, Explorers Herman KOCH, THE DINNER - A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened...

(304 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Psychological suspense Annette YOUNG, A DISTANT PROSPECT - Australia promised a fresh start for Lucy Straughan and her father when they fled war-torn Ireland. Instead, Lucy was stricken by polio.

(491 pages) Themes: Historical, War, Religious

Alice HOFFMAN, THE DOVEKEEPERS - A tale inspired by the tragic first-century massacre of hundreds of Jewish people at Masada presents the stories of a hated daughter, a baker's wife, a girl disguised as a warrior, and a medicine woman who keep doves and secrets while Roman soldiers draw near.

(504 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Historical, War Barack OBAMA, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER - In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.

(442 pages) Themes: Autobiography

Rosalie HAM, THE DRESSMAKER - Peopled with exotic characters, this is a story of love, hate and haute couture, set in a country town that's disconcerting to visit but a bitingly comedic and heart-breaking place to live.

(296 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Gothic

Chris STEWART, DRIVING OVER LEMONS : AN OPTIMIST IN ANDALUCIA– A warm, funny account of a British family's attempt to make a home in southern Spain follows the first drummer for the rock band Genesis as he heads for Andalucia with his wife and kids.

(256 p.) Also available eBook Themes: Travel, Memoir

Jane HARPER, THE DRY - Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife and child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily. When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murdersuicide charge.

(342 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Mystery ## Tara WESTOVER, EDUCATED : A MEMOIR – Memoir of a young woman raised in a survivalist family in Idaho who strives for education while still showing great understanding and love for the world she leaves behind (256 p.) Also available eBook Themes: Memoir

Rainbow ROWELL, ELEANOR & PARK - Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

(324 pages) Themes: Romance

## Gail HONEYMAN, ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE Smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . . The only way to survive is to open your heart.

(352 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Quirky, Women

Muriel BARBERY, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG - The book follows events in the life of a concierge, Renée Michel, whose deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but intellectually precocious girl named Paloma.

(320 pages) Themes: Contemporary, Quirky

Elizabeth von ARNIM, THE ENCHANTED APRIL - Four women, previously unknown to one another, leave a dreary winter in England behind to take a one month April holiday in a small, charming Italian castle after responding to an advertisement in a newspaper.

(220 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Classic, Travel Lily KING, EUPHORIA - Frustrated by his research efforts and depressed over the death of his brothers, Andre Banson runs into two fellow anthropologists, a married couple, in 1930s New Guinea and begins a tumultuous relationship with them.

(261 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Historical, Anthropology

Celeste NG, EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU - Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

(297 pages) Themes: Psychological Ian RANKIN, EXIT MUSIC - (Inspector Rebus novel) It's late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes…

(448 pages) Themes: Mystery

Moshin HAMID, EXIT WEST - In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet. They embark on a furtive love affair, thrust into premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors--doors that can whisk people far away.

(228 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Magical realism, Literary, War Sofie LAGUNA, THE EYE OF THE SHEEP - Meet Jimmy Flick. He's not like other kids. He finds a lot of the adult world impossible to understand - especially why his Dad gets so angry with him.

(308 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary

Toni JORDON, FALL GIRL– Della Gilmore has been conning people since she was a child. Now she is attempting to pull off the biggest coup of her career.

(232 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Humour, Romance

Thomas HARDY, FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD - After an unfortunate marriage to Sergeant Troy and an affair with Farmer Boldwood, Bathsheba Everdene finally becomes the wife of the man who has always loved her.

(433 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Classic, Romance

Lauren Groff, FATES AND FURIES - Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

(389 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Domestic

Sularai GENTILL, A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN– In Australia’s 1930s, the Sinclair name is respectable and influential, yet the youngest son Rowland – an artist – has a talent for scandal. Mounting political tensions fuelled by the Great Depression take Australia to the brink of revolution. Rowland is indifferent to the politics, until a brutal murder exposes an extraordinary and treasonous conspiracy.

(346 pages) Themes: Historical, Mystery Sarah WATERS, FINGERSMITH - Growing up as a foster child among a family of thieves, orphan Sue Trinder hopes to pay back that kindness by playing a key role in a swindle scheme devised by their leader, who is planning to con a fortune out of the naive Maud Lilly.

(582 pages) Themes: Historical, Mystery, LGBTQIA Richard GLOVER, FLESH WOUNDS - Part poignant family memoir, part rollicking venture into a 1970s Australia, this is a book for anyone who's wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet.

(304 p.) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Biography, Domestic Maxine BENEBA-CLARKE, FOREIGN SOIL - In Melbourne's Western Suburbs, in a dilapidated block of flats overhanging the rattling Footscray train-lines, a young black mother is working on a collection of stories.

(256 pages) Themes: Short stories, Refugees

## Patrick deWITT, FRENCH EXIT - a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration.

(248 pages) Themes: Quirky

Liz BYRSKI, GANG OF FOUR - Gang of Four is a very different coming-of-age story in that the protagonists are all in their fifties. Author Liz Byrski does a superb job of crafting four very different stories which overlap, diverge and merge again throughout the book.

(399 pages) Themes: Mainstream ## Amor TOWLES, A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW - Deemed unrepentant by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a hotel across the street from the Kremlin, where he lives in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold.

(462 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Historical

Richard FIDLER, GHOST EMPIRE - In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire - centred around the legendary Constantinople - we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history. A beautifully written ode to a lost civilization, and a warmly observed father-son adventure far from home.

(492 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: History, Travel M. R. CAREY, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS - Not every gift is a blessing.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointed at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh. Melanie is a very special girl.

(460 pages) Themes: Apocalyptic Jeanette WALLS, THE GLASS CASTLE– A successful journalist, Jeanette Walls, relates the horrific childhood she experienced being raised by alcoholic, manipulative, and selfish parents. What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity.

(341 pages) Themes: Autobiography Joan LONDON, THE GOLDEN AGE - It is 1954 and thirteen-year-old Frank Gold, refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio in Australia. At the Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Hospital in Perth, he sees Elsa, a fellow-patient, and they form a forbidden, passionate bond.

(242 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, History Gillian FLYNN, GONE GIRL - When a woman goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, her diary reveals hidden turmoil in her marriage, while her husband, desperate to clear himself of suspicion, realizes that something more disturbing than murder may have occurred.

(463 pages) Themes: Psychological suspense Osamah SAMI, GOOD MUSLIM BOY - Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences ‌ despite his best laid plans to be a Good Muslim Boy. (257 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Autobiography, Humour

Holly THROSBY, GOODWOOD - In 1992, when Jean Brown is seventeen, a terrible thing happens. Two people go missing. People die in Goodwood, of course, but never like this. They don't just disappear...As the intensity of speculation about the fates of Rosie and Bart heightens, Jean, who is keeping secrets of her own, and the rest of Goodwood are left reeling.

(378 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Mystery, Coming of age

Charles DICKENS, GREAT EXPECTATIONS - On Christmas Eve, young Pip, an orphan being raised by his sister and her husband, encounters a convict in the village churchyard. The man, who has escaped from a prison ship, scares Pip into stealing him some food and a file to grind away his leg shackle. This incident is crucial: firstly, it gives Pip, who must steal the goods from his sister's house, his first taste of true guilt, and secondly, Pip's kindness warms the convict's heart.

(575 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Classic, Coming of age

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY - In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton finds Mary Ann SHAFFER and Annie BARROWS,

inspiration for her next book in her correspondence with a native of Guernsey, who tells her about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born as an alibi during German occupation.

(290 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: History, Romance, Quirky Helen MACDONALD, H IS FOR HAWK - Recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery.

(320 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Autobiography, Nature

Anthony QUINN, HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE– Summer of 1911. The streets of London ring with cheers for a new king’s coronation and the cries of increasingly violent suffragette protests.

Connie Callaway, fired up by the possibilities of independence, wants more than the conventional comforts of marriage. Will Maitland, the rising star of county cricket, is a man of traditional opinions. Buffeted and spun by choice and chance, their lives become inextricably entangled.

(349 pages) Themes: History, War, Suffragettes Margaret ATWOOD, THE HANDMAID’S TALE - The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

(311 pages)

Themes: Literary, Dystopian Ahn DO, THE HAPPIEST REFUGEE - The laugh-out-loud, reach-for-your-hanky story of one of Australia's best-loved comedians.

(229 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Autobiography, Humour

Samantha TIDY, THE HAPPINESS JAR - Rachel Hudson succumbs to cystic fibrosis at age twenty-seven, intentionally leaving behind secrets that push each of her remaining family to question what it is they want from life, and from each other.

(334 pages) Themes: Contemporary

Edmund de WAAL, THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES - Wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie.

Later, when Edmund inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined…

(264 pages) Themes: History, Art Jill Alexander ESSBAUM, HAUSFRAU - Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno—a banker—and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside.

(324 pages) Themes: Literary, Psychological Sue PIETERS-HAWKE, HAZEL : MY MOTHER’S STORY - Candid, revealing and fascinating this biography explores Hazel Hawke's life as she navigated challenges and profound social changes, and celebrates her value as a mother, wife, role model and tireless worker for the rights and welfare of others.

(429 pages) Themes: Biography

Sam and Jenny BAILEY, HEAD OVER HEELS– At the age of 19, a young farmer, Sam Bailey, miscalculated a bend in the road, overturned his ute and became a quadriplegic. After months of struggle, he learned how to resume his life as a farmer, running a sheep and cattle property in northwest New South Wales.

(256 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Biography Jill STARK, HIGH SOBRIETY - Booze had dominated Jill Stark’s social life ever since she had her first sip of beer, at 13. In the shadow of her 35th year, Jill made a decision: she would give up alcohol. But what would it mean to stop drinking in a world awash with booze?

(307 pages) Themes: Memoir, Food and drink

Niall WILLIAMS, HISTORY OF THE RAIN - Ruthie Swain, the bedridden daughter of a dead poet, tries to find her father through stories -- and through generations of family history in County Clare.

(386 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary

## Kamila SHAMSIE, HOME FIRE - Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother's death, an invitation from a mentor in America has allowed her to resume a dream long deferred. But Isma worries about the influence of a powerful politician's son who drives the family to choose between love and loyalty, with devastating consequences.

(264 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Political

Jamie FORD, HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET– Henry is a Chinese American growing up in Seattle during World War II. Henry struggles with his identity, his stubborn father, and when his best friend, a Japanese American girl, is sent to an internment camp he has to decide between love and loyalty.

(366 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: History, Mainstream, War Roxane GAY, HUNGER : A MEMOIR OF (MY) BODY - Gay has written about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health.

(280 pages) Themes: Memoir, Food and drink

Jaclyn MORIARTY, I HAVE A BED MADE OF BUTTERMILK PANCAKES – This is a carefully and cleverly built and extraordinary book of great charm and originality… [the] narrative is studded with wry and lovely observations on life.

It is completely adorable and whimsical whilst still feeling very reflective of everyday life.

(424 pages) Themes: Quirky, Fantasy Maya ANGELOU, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS– In this first volume of her autobiography, Maya evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American South of the 1930s.

(309 pages) Themes: Autobiography

Niccolao AMMANITI, I’M NOT SCARED - When Michele Amitrano stumbles onto a boy held prisoner in a hole deep in the Italian countryside, he begins a journey that will lead him to a series of startling discoveries. I'm Not Scared is a powerful tale of how one boy finds the courage to overcome his fear, risk his life, and make wrenchingly difficult moral choices.

(215 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Psychological Emily RUSKOVICH, IDAHO - Ann and Wade have carved out a life for themselves from a rugged landscape in northern Idaho. With her husband's memory fading, Ann attempts to piece together the truth of what happened to Wade's first wife, Jenny, and to their daughters.

(308 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Mystery

Kate GRENVILLE, THE IDEA OF PERFECTION - The Idea of Perfection is a romance between two people who have given up love. Set in rural New South Wales, Douglas Cheeseman and Harley Savage first clash over the conservation of the old bridge, but eventually a closer relationship develops.

(401 pages) Themes: Literary

David MALOUF, AN IMAGINARY LIFE– The Roman poet Ovid, in exile, tells the story of his encounter with a wild boy, brought up among wolves in the snow.

(153 pages) Also available eBook Themes: History, Literary

Rebecca SKLOOT, THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS - Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells – taken without her knowledge – become one of the most important tools in modern medicine.

(310 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Biography, Science

Hannah ROTHSCHILD, THE IMPROBABILITY OF LOVE– Annie leaves a junk store with a painting. She prepares an elaborate dinner for her boyfriend, only to be stood up, now the gift is gathering dust on her mantelpiece. But every painting has a story – and if it could speak, what would it tell us?

(416 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Satire, Mainstream Mary-Rose MacColl, IN FALLING SNOW - A vivid and compelling story of love, war and secrets, set against the backdrop of WWI France.

(440 pages) Themes: History, War

Annie HAUXWELL, IN HER BLOOD– When investigator Catherine Berlin gets an anonymous tip-off about a local loan shark, the case seems straightforward – until her informant is found floating in the Limehouse Basin.

(320 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Mystery

Isabel ALLENDE, INES OF MY SOUL - This magisterial work of historical fiction recounts the astonishing life of Ines Suarez, a daring Spanish conquistadora who toiled to build the nation of Chile--and whose vital role has too often been neglected by history.

(336 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Biographical fiction, Magical realism

Ayaan Hirsi ALI, INFIDEL– Ayaan Hirsi Ali captured the world’s attention with Infidel, her coming-of-age memoir, which spent thirty-one weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her memoir shows the development of beliefs, iron will, and extraordinary determination to fight injustice of this elegant, distinguished and sometimes reviled political superstar and champion of free speech.

(384 pages) Themes: Memoir

Francesca SEGAL, THE INNOCENTS - Adam must choose between duty and passion when, after becoming engaged to Rachel, his girlfriend of twelve years, he finds himself powerfully drawn to her reckless and beautiful cousin, Ellie, who represents everything that he has always tried to avoid, but now finds himself longing for.

(282 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Romance Claire TOMALIN, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN - A portrait of nineteenth-century actress Ellen Ternan, the woman who was the mistress of Charles Dickens, describing her secret relationship with the author.

(283 pages) Themes: Biography, Arts

Victoria HISLOP, THE ISLAND - A richly enchanting novel of lives and loves unfolding against the backdrop of the Mediterranean during World War II, The Island is an enthralling story of dreams and desires, of secrets desperately hidden, and of leprosy's touch on an unforgettable family.

(469 pages) Themes: Family

Craig SILVEY, JASPER JONES - It’s a riveting tale, set in 1960s small-town Australia, about a young, bookish adolescent who is drawn into events surrounding the grim disappearance of a local girl when the solitary Jasper Jones, a rebellious mixed-race older boy comes asking for his help.

(320 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Coming of age Helen GARNER, JOE

CINQUE’S CONSOLATION : A TRUE STORY OF DEATH, GRIEF AND THE LAW - In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests-most of them university students-had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque.

(328 pages) Themes: True crime Alex MILLER, JOURNEY TO THE STONE COUNTRY - Betrayed by her husband, Annabelle Beck retreats from Melbourne to her old family home in tropical North Queensland where she meets Bo Rennie, one of the Jangga tribe. Intrigued by Bo's claim that he holds the key to her future, Annabelle sets out with him on a path of recovery.

(364 pages) Themes: Literary, Love Amy TAN, THE JOY LUCK CLUB - After being drawn together by the shadows of their past, four women start meeting every week in San Francisco to engage in hobbies they all enjoy. After one of the four members dies, her daughter takes her place to fulfill her mother's dying wish.

(288 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Historical, Women

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL : ADVENTURES IN THE CULINARY UNDERBELLY - A deliciously funny, delectably shocking ## Anthony BORDAIN,

banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine (312 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Memior, Food and drink Kate MORTON, THE LAKE HOUSE - The morning after the Edevane's exclusive Midsummer Eve party in Cornwall in 1933, their youngest child, Theo, is nowhere to be found. The family pack up and leave their beautiful country home, never to return. Until, in 2003, a young female police officer stumbles into the lost gardens surrounding the abandoned house.

(595 pages) Also available eBook, and eAudiobook Themes: Mystery ## Naomi J. Williams, LANDFALLS - a fictionalized reimagining of the ill-fated Lapérouse expedition (1785-1788), a voyage of exploration that attempted to circumnavigate the globe for science and the glory of France. Each chapter of Landfalls is told from a different point of view, including those of the French captains, rank-and-file crew members, natives, and loved ones waiting at home.

(336 pages) Themes: History ## Susan JOHNSON, THE LANDING - Jonathan Lott is confused. His wife has left him for a woman and he doesn't like living alone. Is it true that an about-to-be-divorced man in possession of a good fortune is in need of a new wife?

(288 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Mainstream, Domestic Vanessa DIFFENBAUGH, THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS– A mesmerizing, moving and elegantly written debut novel, ‘The Language of Flowers’ beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.

(352 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Psychological Dominic SMITH, THE LAST PAINTING OF SARAH DE VOS - Bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth.

(374 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Historical Tracy CHEVALIER, THE LAST RUNAWAY - Forced to leave England and struggling with illness in the wake of a family tragedy, Quaker Honor Bright is forced to rely on strangers in the harsh landscape of 1850 Ohio and is compelled to join the Underground Railroad network to help runaway slaves escape to freedom.

(305 pages) Themes: Historical

Kate ATKINSON, LIFE AFTER LIFE - Ursula Todd is born on a cold snowy night in 1910 -- twice. As she grows up during the first half of the twentieth century in Britain Ursula dies and is brought back to life again and again. With a seemingly infinite number of lives it appears as though Ursula has the ability to alter the history of the world, should she so choose.

(544 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Alternative histories George DAWSON & Richard GLAUBMAN, LIFE IS SO GOOD – In this remarkable book, 103-year-old George Dawson, a slave’s grandson who learned to read at age 98, reflects on his life and offers valuable lessons in living as well as a fresh, firsthand view of America during the twentieth century.

(250 pages) Themes: Memoir

Michelle de KRETSER, THE LIFE TO COME – Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations.

(384 pages) Also available eBook and eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Short stories

M. L. STEDMAN, THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS - After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia. He moves with his wife to an isolated Australian lighthouse where they suffer miscarriages and a stillbirth. Tom allows his wife to claim an infant that has washed up on the shore, a decision with devastating consequences.

(352 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: History, Family Laura ESQUIVEL, LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE - Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in tum-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.

(222 pages) Themes: Literary, Love, Magical realism

## George SANDERS, LINCOLN IN THE BARDO - Traces a night of solitary mourning and reflection as experienced by the sixteenth president after the death of his eleven-year-old son at the dawn of the Civil War. (288 pages) Themes: Literary, Historical

Ros MORIARTY, LISTENING TO COUNTRY - The moving and personal story of one woman's journey into the remote and rugged Tanami Desert with the matriarchs of her husband's family.

(232 pages) Memoir, Indigenous

Hanya YANAGIHARA, A LITTLE LIFE - Four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.

(720 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Psychological

Lily BRETT, LOLA BENSKY - Lola Bensky is a nineteen-year-old rock journalist who irons her hair straight and asks a lot of questions. A high-school dropout, she's not sure how she got the job - but she's been sent by her Australian newspaper right to the heart of the London music scene at the most exciting time in music history: 1967.

(267 pages) Themes: Autobiography fiction Brooke DAVIS, LOST AND FOUND - Follows a shared encounter between an abandoned 7-year-old, a widowed shut-in and a nursing home escapee, who embark on a road trip across Western Australia to find the child's mother.

(272 pages) Themes: Whimsy, Ageing

## Martin SIXSMITH, THE LOST CHILD – The nuns took Philomena’s baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, she decides to find him. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Philomena's son was trying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess, he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration, and he struggled to hide secrets that would jeopardize his career (464 pages) Themes: Biography, Family Nancy MITFORD, LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE - Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, the story of coldly beautiful Polly Hampton and her aristocratic parents is a comedy of English manners between the wars.

(249 pages) Also available in eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Satirical

## Francesc MIRALLES, LOVE IN SMALL LETTERS - A homebody linguistics teacher in Barcelona has his world turned upside down when a stray cat, Mishima, introduces him to places he's never been and people he's never met, in an internationally best-selling romantic comedy.

(300 pages) Themes: Romantic comedy Jhumpa LAHIRI, THE LOWLAND - Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavours to heal family wounds.

(339 pages) Themes: Literary, Family

## Leila SLIMANI, LULLABY - Follows the relationship between a working FrenchMoroccan couple and their too-good-to-be-true nanny, whose devotion to their children spirals into a psychologically charged cycle of jealousies, resentments and violence.

(224 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Mystery

## Derek HANSON, LUNCH WITH MUSSOLINI - With the end of World War II in sight, a German officer orders the reprisal shooting of eight women in a small Alpine village near Lake Como. Fifty years later in Sydney, the daughter of one of the victims discovers that her mother's executioner is living quietly nearby under an assumed name.

(432 pages) Themes: Thriller Paula BYRNE, MAD WORLD– An engaging and original biography of Evelyn Waugh and the family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. (367 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Biography

Helen SIMONSON, MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND - When Major Pettigrew, a retired British army major in a small English village, embarks on an unexpected friendship with the widowed Mrs. Ali, who runs the local shop, trouble erupts.

(388 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Mainstream, Racism

Mark DOUGLAS-HOMES, A MALICE OF WAVES - For five years Priest's Island has guarded the secret of Max Wheeler's disappearance. Each anniversary the boy's family gathers at the scene to mourn his loss and to commission a new inquiry into the mystery. Now Cal McGill, an oceanographer with expertise in tracking bodies at sea, has taken up the quest.

(289 pages) Themes: Mystery Fredrik BACKMAN, A MAN CALLED OVE - A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.

(337 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Quirky, Ageing Nathan BRESSER, MAN IN THE CORNER - David’s was a perfectly acceptable life – successful business, happy marriage, two children. But then he involves himself in an identity-theft crime worth millions of dollars, and his world is turned upside down.

(299 pages) Themes: Psychological suspense

Farahad ZAMA, THE MARRIAGE BUREAU FOR RICH PEOPLE - What does an Indian man with a wealth of common sense do when his retirement becomes too monotonous for him to stand? Open a marriage bureau of course!

(276 pages) Themes: Romance, Humour

Andy WEIR, THE MARTIAN - After a bad storm cuts his team’s Mars mission short, injured astronaut Mark Watley is stranded. Now he’s got to figure out how to survive without air, shelter, food, or water on the harsh Martian landscape until the next manned mission in four years.

(360 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Science fiction Aminatta FORNA, THE MEMORY OF LOVE - In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to keep. In the capital hospital, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies a dying man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic.

(445 pages) Themes: Literary Alice Melike ULGEZER, THE MEMORY OF SALT– Ali’s father is Turkish and her mother is Australian. This novel is Ali’s coming to terms with this meeting of two cultures that are at once so similar and so separate.

(320 pages) Themes: Literary, Love

Jeffery EUGENIDES, MIDDLESEX– This is the story of Calliope Stephanides, who discovers at the age of fourteen that she is really a he. Cal traces the story of his transformation and the genetic condition that caused it back to his paternal grandparents, who happen also to be brother and sister, and the Greek village of Bithynios in Asia Minor.

(529 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, LGBTQAI Karen FOXLEE, THE MIDNIGHT DRESS - Rose, nearly sixteen, is used to traveling around with her alcoholic father but connects with the people of a small, coastal Australian town, especially classmate Pearl and reclusive Edie, who teaches her to sew a magical dress for the Harvest Festival while a mystery unfolds around them.

(327 pages) Themes: Mystery, Mystical John BERENDT, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defence? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.

(386 pages) Themes: True crime

Jessie BURTON, THE MINIATURIST - A dollhouse whose figures and furnishings foretell life events, mysterious notes, family secrets and the powerful guild and church of 1686 Amsterdam. All these elements combine for an engaging story of a young bride’s struggle to be the ‘architect’ of her own fortune.

(400 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Historical Susan ABULHAWA, MORNINGS IN JENIN - This is Amal's story, the story of one family's struggle and survival through over sixty years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, carrying us from Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon and the anonymity of America.

(338 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Historical

Tracy KIDDER, MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS - The true story of a gifted man who loves the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it. In medical school, Paul Farmer found his life’s calling: to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

(312 pages) Themes: Biography, Science Elena FERRANTE, MY BRILLIANT FRIEND - Beginning in the 1950s Elena and Lila grow up in Naples, Italy. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.

(331 pages) Also available eAudibook Themes: Mainstream George JOHNSTON, MY BROTHER JACK - David and Jack Meredith grow up in a patriotic suburban Melbourne household during the First World War, and go on to lead lives that could not be more different.

(367 pages) Themes: Autobiographical fiction

Joanna RAKOFF, MY SALINGER YEAR– A memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing, where a young woman finds herself entangled with one of the last great figures of the century.

(272 pages) Themes: Memoir

Charlotte WOOD, THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS - Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert in a story of two friends, sisterly love and courage - a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted.

(315 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Suspense, Horror

Kristin HANNAH, THE NIGHTINGALE - Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. When World War II strikes and Antoine (Viann’s husband) is sent off to fight, Viann and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope.

(440 pages) Themes: History, War

Cormac McCARTHY, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.

(309 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Mystery, Western ## Behrouz BOOCHANI, NO

FRIEND BUT THE MOUNTAIN : WRITING FROM MANUS ISLAND - Since 2013, journalist Behrouz Boochani has been held in the Manus Island offshore processing centre. This book is the result: an act of survival.

A first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait of four years of incarceration.

(309 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Politics, Memoir Neil GAIMAN, THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE - Presents a modern fantasy about fear, love, magic, and sacrifice in the story of a family at the mercy of dark forces, whose only defence is the three women who live on a farm at the end of the lane.

(243 pages) Themes: Contemporary, Fantasy ## Zadie SMITH, ON BEAUTY - Centers on the story of two families and their different yet increasingly intertwined lives. An unfailingly perceptive portrait of a struggling marriage, and an empathetic depiction of adolescent struggle. It is also an outsider’s witty look at American cultural life floundering under the weight of political and cultural divisions.

(446 pages) Themes: Literary, Domestic Ian McEWAN, ON CHESIL BEACH - Ian McEwan's novel about a disastrous wedding night brings the grand narrative of history to bear on the small picture of individual lives.

(166 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Love

## Rick Morton, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DIRT - Violence, treachery and cruelty run through the generational veins of Rick Morton's family. A horrific accident thrusts his mother and siblings into a world impossible for them to navigate, a life of poverty and drug addiction.

(349 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Biography, Psychological

Caroline OVERINGTON, ONLY IN NEW YORK - An uplifting tale of one woman juggling her dream job as a foreign correspondent, the demands of 2-year-old twins, a high-flying husband who can’t get a green card, and all the temptations of life in New York City.

(245 pages) Themes: Memoir, Family

## Julian BARNES, THE ONLY STORY - A man who ran away as a teen university student with a married woman more than twice his age reflects on how they fell in love, how he freed her from a sterile marriage and how their relationship fell apart as she succumbed to depression.

(224 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Psychological Ceridwen DOVEY, ONLY THE ANIMALS - Ten tales are told by the souls of animals killed in human conflicts in the past century or so, from a camel in colonial Australia to a cat in the trenches in World War I. (245 pages) Themes: Literary, Short stories

Elizabeth STROUT, OLIVE KITTERIDGE - The world of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher in a small coastal town in Maine, is revealed in stories that explore her diverse roles in many lives, including a lounge singer haunted by a past love, her stoic husband, and her own resentful son.

(260 pages) Themes: Literary, Short stories

Amanda COPLIN, THE ORCHARDIST - Set in the untamed American West. One day, orchardist Talmadage is in town to sell his fruit at the market, two girls steal some apples. Later, they appear on his homestead, cautious yet curious about the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, Jane and her sister Della take up on Talmadage's land.

(448 pages) Themes: Historical, Literary Chris CLEAVE, THE OTHER HAND - It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important.

(374 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Migrant

Stephanie BISHOP, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD - Cambridge 1963.

Charlotte struggles to reconnect with the woman she was before children, and to find the time and energy to paint. Her husband, Henry, cannot face the thought of another English winter. A brochure slipped through the letterbox gives him the answer: 'Australia brings out the best in you'.

(352 pages) Themes: Domestic

## Michael ROBOTHAM, THE OTHER WIFE - When his father, a celebrated surgeon, is brutally attacked and a strange woman shows up at his bedside covered in blood, Joe O'Loughlin is forced to question everything he has always believed about his father and soon discovers that the truth comes with a high price.

(384 pages) Themes: Suspense

## Claire FULLER, OUR ENDLESS NUMBERED DAYS - Peggy is eight when her survivalist father tells her that the world has been destroyed and takes her to live in a remote cabin, but years later, her search for the owner of a pair of found boots unwittingly leads her back to civilization.

(394 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Coming of age Kent HARUF, OUR SOULS AT NIGHT - David Nicholls Addie Moore's husband died years ago, so did Louis Waters' wife, and, as neighbours in Holt, Colorado they have naturally long been aware of each other. The nights are terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk to. Then one evening Addie pays Louis an unexpected visit.

(189 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Love Per PETTERSEN, OUT STEALING HORSES - After a meeting with his only neighbor, sixty-seven-year-old Trond is forced to reflect upon a long-ago incident that marks the beginning of a series of losses for Trond and his childhood friend, Jon. (258 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Coming of age

W. Somerset MAUGHAM, THE PAINTED VEIL - Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic.

(213 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: History Paula McLAIN, THE PARIS WIFE - No twentieth-century American writer has captured the popular imagination as much as Ernest Hemingway. This novel tells his story from a unique point of view — that of his first wife, Hadley.

(385 pages) Themes: History, Biographical fiction

Leif ENGER, PEACE LIKE A RIVER - The quiet 1960s Midwestern life of the Land family--father Jeremiah, and children, Reuben, Davy and Swede--is upended when Davy kills two teenage boys who have come to harm the family. On the morning of his sentencing, Davy escapes from his cell and the Lands set out in search of him.

(365 pages) Themes: Coming of age

## Roxane DHAND, THE PEARLER’S WIFE - Set at the turn of the century, among the pearl merchants making their fortune in the ports of Western Australia.

(400 pages) Also available eBook Themes: History, Mainstream

Oscar WILDE, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY - Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works.

(213 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Classic, Gothic

## Geoffrey ROBERTSON, RATHER HIS OWN MAN - In this witty, engrossing and sometimes poignant memoir, Australia’s inimitable Geoffrey Robertson charts his progress from pimply state schoolboy to top Old Bailey barrister and thence onwards and upwards to a leading role in the struggle for human rights throughout the world.

(496 pages) Themes: Autobiography Jean-Paul DIDIERLAURENT, THE READER ON THE 6:27 - Guylain Vignolles lives on the edge of existence. Working at a book pulping factory in a job he hates, he has but one pleasure in life . . . Sitting on the 6.27 train each day, Guylain recites aloud from pages he has saved from the jaws of his monstrous pulping machine.

(256 pages) Themes: Literary Ernest CLINE, READY PLAYER ONE - Immersing himself in a mid-twenty-firstcentury technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty, and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's creator.

(374 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Science fiction Magda SZUBANSKI, RECKONING - Magda describes her journey of self-discovery from a suburban childhood, haunted by the demons of her father’s espionage activities in wartime Poland and by her secret awareness of her sexuality, to the complex dramas of adulthood and her need to find out the truth about herself and her family.

(374 pages) Also available eAudiobook, eBook Themes: Memoir Robert GOOLRICK, A RELIABLE WIFE - He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for "a reliable wife." She responded, saying that she was "a simple, honest woman." She was, of course, anything but honest, and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving her a wealthy widow, able to take care of the one she truly loved.

(291 pages) Themes: History, Psychological

Ben Aaronovitch, RIVERS OF LONDON - Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost.

(392 pages) Themes: Urban fantasy Emma DONOGHUE, ROOM– Jack and Ma live in a locked room that measures eleven foot by eleven. When he turns five, he starts to ask questions, and his mother reveals to him that there is a world outside. Told entirely in Jack’s voice, Room is no horror story or tearjerker, but a celebration of resilience and the love between parent and child.

(401 pages) Also available eBook, eAudibook Themes: Literary, Psychological E. M. FORSTER, A ROOM WITH A VIEW - Lucy Honeychurch falls in love while on a visit to Florence and must choose between fulfilling her social role or following her heart.

(240 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Romance

Tatiana de ROSNAY, SARAH’S KEY - On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid.

(294 pages) Themes: History, War Erica BAUERMEISTER, THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS– Once a month on Monday night, eight students gather in Lillian’s restaurant for a cooling class. The students have come to learn the art behind Lillian’s soulful dishes, but it soon becomes clear that each seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen.

(261 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Food and drink ## Chris HAMMER, SCRUBLANDS - In an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself. A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version.

(496 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Mystery Sue Monk KIDD, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES - The Secret Life of Bees is the story of Lily, a fourteen-year-old girl who runs away from her unloving father to search for the secrets of her dead mother's past.

(336 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Racism

## Stuart TURTON, THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE - Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden can identify her killer. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different person. And some hosts are most helpful than others...

(528 pages) Themes: Mystery

Carlos Ruis ZAFON, THE SHADOW OF THE WIND - It is 1945 and Barcelona is enduring the long aftermath of civil war when Daniel Sempere’s bookseller father decides he is old enough to visit the fabulous secret library, the ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’. There, Daniel must ‘adopt’ a single book, promising to care for it and keep it alive always.

(487 pages) Themes: Literary, Magical realism, Mystery Robert DREWE, THE SHARK NET - Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world's most isolated city - and proud of it. This sunbaked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquility and friendliness. Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew…

(358 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Memoir, Murder, Coming of age Michel DIGNAND, SHE KNOWS HOW TO LOOK AFTER HERSELF– Seventeen widely different scenarios, seventeen widely different outcomes in this collection of stories from local author Michel Dignand.

(165 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Short stories

James REBANKS, THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE - Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations.

(292 pages) Also available eAudibook Themes: Memoir, Rural Annie PROULX, THE SHIPPING NEWS - When Quoyle's two-timing wife meets her just desserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life.

(352 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Family, Death Delia EPHRON, SIRACUSA - Two couples are on vacation in Siracusa, a town on the coast of Sicily, where the secrets they have hidden from each other are exposed and relationships are unravelled.

(288 pages) Themes: Domestic, Contemporary

Tanya BRYON, THE SKELETON CUPBOARD - Tanya Byron's account of her years of training as a clinical psychologist, when trainees find themselves in the toughest placements of their careers.

(301 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Memoir, Psychology

Jodi PICCOULT, SMALL GREAT THINGS - Hesitating to treat the newborn of a white supremacist couple who has demanded that a white nurse assist them, a black nurse is placed on trial in the tragic aftermath and is aided by a white public defender with whom she begins questioning their beliefs as the case becomes more racially charged.

(480 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Mainstream, Racism, Contemporary Emily St John MANDEL, STATION ELEVEN - An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

(336 pages) Also includes eBook Themes: Science Fiction, Apocalyptic Lisa GENOVA, STILL ALICE - Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty years old, she’s a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world -renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children.

When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis changes her life.

(292 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Family, Disease Margaret LAURENCE, THE STONE ANGEL - Stubborn, querulous, self-reliant – and, at ninety, with her life nearly behind her – Hagar Shipley makes a bold last step towards freedom and independence. As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past.

(328 pages) Themes: Literary, Ageing

John WILLIAMS, STONER - William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known.

(278 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Classic, Psychological Irene NEMIROVSKY, SUITE FRANCAISE - A story of life in France under the Nazi occupation includes two parts--"Storm in June," set amid the chaotic 1940 exodus from Paris, and "Dolce," set in a German-occupied village rife with resentment, resistance, and collaboration.

(431 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, War

Siri HUSTVEDT, THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN - After Mia Fredricksen's husband of thirty years asks for a pause - so he can indulge his infatuation with a young French colleague - she cracks up (briefly), rages (deeply), then decamps to her prairie childhood home.

(182 pages) Themes: Women

Tara June WINCH, SWALLOW THE AIR - When May's mother dies suddenly, she and her brother Billy are taken in by an aunt. However their loss leaves them both searching for their place in a world that doesn't want them. May sets off to find her father and her Aboriginal identity.

(198 pages) Themes: Psychology, Indigenous Alan BRADLEY, THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is propelled into a mystery when a man is found murdered on the grounds of her family's decaying English mansion and Flavia's father becomes the main suspect.

(363 pages) Themes: Mystery ## Kim SCOTT, TABOO - A group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place. They come at the invitation of Dan Horton, the elderly owner of the farm on which the massacres unfolded. He hopes that by hosting the group he will satisfy his wife's dying wishes and cleanse some moral stain from the ground on which he and his family have lived for generations.

(304 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Literary, Indigenous

TAMIL TIGRESS : MY STORY AS A CHILD SOLDIER IN SRI LANKA’S BLOODY CIVIL WAR - In 1987, 17-year old Niromi DE SOYZA,

Niromi de Soyza shocked her middle-class Sri Lankan family by joining the Tamil Tigers.

(308 pages) Themes: Autobiography, War

## Christine Mangan, TANGERINE - This is the story of two women, friends in college, until an accident drives a wedge between them. Years later, Alice is living in Tangier with her husband when Lucy shows up. A twisted tale told in alternating points of view.

(320 pages) Themes: History, Psychological

## Heather MORRIS, THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ - Based on the true story of an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, it traces the experiences of a Jewish Slovakian who uses his position as a concentration-camp tattooist to secure food for his fellow prisoners.

(277 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Biographical fiction, War, Love, History

## Lisa SEE, THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE - A young Chinese woman finds purpose, passion, and the key to a new life in the tea-growing traditions of her ancestors.

(400 pages) Also available eAudibook Themes: Literary, Culturally diverse

Peter CAREY, THEFT - Michael "Butcher" Boone is an ex-“really famous" painter, now reduced to living in a remote country house and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh. Alone together they've forged a delicate equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives.

(269 pages) Themes: Literary, Art Tim O’BRIEN, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED - They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles, each other. And, if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a nightmarish war that history is only beginning to absorb.

(236 pages) Themes: Literary, War, Short stories Patricia HIGHSMITH, THIS SWEET SICKNESS - Obsessed with his love for Annabelle Delaney, David Kelsey tries to break up her marriage and succeeds in accidentally killing her husband.

(288 pages) Themes: Psychological suspense

Victoria HISLOP, THE THREAD - The troubled history of the city of Thessaloniki in a story that spans almost a century, beginning with the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 which almost destroyed the city, burning for almost two days and razing 9,500 houses.

The city that rose from the ashes would be very different...

(390 pages) Themes: History Jamie MASON, THREE GRAVES FULL - More than a year ago, mild-mannered Jason Getty killed a man he wished he’d never met. Then he planted the problem a little too close to home. But just as he’s learning to live with the undeniable reality of what he’s done, police unearth two bodies on his property—neither of which is the one Jason buried.

(306 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Suspense, Humour Nick HARKAWAY, TIGERMAN - Assigned to a ceremonial post in Mancreu, British consul and Afghanistan war veteran Lester Ferris is compelled to disregard widespread underworld activities while bonding with a comic-addicted youth who during a violent uprising desperately relies on him for help.

(372 pages) Themes: Alternative, Adventure, Contemporary

## Melissa LUCASHENKO, TOO MUCH LIP - Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things – her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley.

(328 pages) Themes: Family, Indigenous

## Sarah KRASNOSTEIN, THE TRAUMA CLEANER - Details the unique life of a woman who went from husband and father, to drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, and trophy wife to a trauma cleaner who brings order to chaotic crime scenes.

(336 pages) Also available eAudiobook Themes: Biography Betty SMITH, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN - The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg.

(496 pages) Themes: Literary, Coming of age

TRUE NORTH : THE STORY OF MARY AND ELISABETH DURACK - Brenda Niall was given unprecedented access to private Belinda NIALL,

family letters, unpublished memoirs, diaries and family papers to write True North – a biography of the two sisters and a uniquely Australian story.

(248 pages) Themes: Biography, History Milan KUNDERA, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING - After the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a married surgeon, Tomas, becomes a window washer while trying to reconcile himself to decisions that he and his wife must make about their relationship.

(320 pages) Themes: Literary

Alan BENNETT, THE UNCOMMON READER - By turns cheeky and charming, the novella features the Queen herself as its protagonist. When her yapping corgis lead her to a mobile library, Her Majesty develops a new obsession with reading.

(120 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Quirky

## Colson WHITEHEAD, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - After Cora, a pre-Civil War Georgia slave, escapes with another slave, Caesar, they seek the help of the Underground Railroad as they flee from state to state and try to evade a slave catcher, Ridgeway, who is determined to return them to the South.

(120 pages) Themes: Literary, History

Rachel JOYCE, THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY– When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other.

(357 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Quirky, Ageing

A.J. MACKINNON, THE UNLIKELY VOYAGE OF JACK de CROW Equipped with his cheerful optimism and a pith helmet, A.J. Mackinnon takes the reader with him from the borders of North Wales to the Black Sea - 4900 kilometres over salt and fresh water, under sail, at the oars or at the end of a tow rope.

(368 pages) Themes: Travel, Humour Alice PUNG, UNPOLISHED GEM– Alice grows up straddling two worlds, East and West, her insular family and the Australia outside. With wisdom beyond her years and a keen eye for comedy in everyday life, she writes of the trials of assimilation and cultural misunderstanding, and of the tender but fraught relationships between three generations of women.

(282 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Memoir, Family, Migrant ## Rutger BREGMAN, UTOPIA FOR REALISTS – A noted Dutch journalist and economist proposes an outline for a new worldwide Utopia, with central tenets including a shortened work week, a guaranteed basic income for all, wealth redistribution, and open borders everywhere.

(282 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Politics, Social, Contemporary Maggie O’FARRELL, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX– A tale of two sisters in colonial India and Edinburg bound together by loneliness and driven apart by rivalries that lead to a cruel betrayal; it is also the gripping story of how 60 years later, their shocking secret comes to life.

(245 pages) Themes: History, Psychological suspense

Anthony CAPELLA, THE VARIOUS FLAVOURS OF COFFEE– A passionate adventure set against the backdrop of the coffee trade. Stretching from London to Africa at the turn of the last century, The Various Flavours of Coffee is a sweeping saga of forbidden love, trade secrets, and the playfully delicious story of a young man’s coming-of-age.

(560 pages) Themes: History, Love

Arnold ZABLE, VIOLIN LESSONS– From the cabarets of 1940s Baghdad to the streets of war-torn Saigon and the canals and alleyways of present-day Venice, music weaves through each of these spellbinding true stories.

(194 pages) Themes: Travel, Music

Bill BRYSON, A WALK IN THE WOODS - Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail.

(397 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Travel, Humour

## Michael ONDAATJE, WARLIGHT - Years after growing up in the care of a group of mysterious protectors who served in unspecified ways during World War II, a young man endeavors to piece together the truth about his parents and the unconventional education he received.

(289 pages) Themes: Literary, Coming of age FOWLER, WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES - Meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking; as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind.

Karen

Joy

(308 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Literary, Family Marina LEWYCKA, WE ARE ALL MADE OF GLUE - Georgie Sinclair's life is coming unstuck. Her husband's left her. Her son's obsessed with the End of the World.

And now her elderly neighbour Mrs Shapiro has decided they are related.

(419 pages) Also available eAudibook Themes: Humour, Friendship

Paul KALANTHI, WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR - An unforgettable reflection on the practice of medicine and the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

(228 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Memoir, Cancer

Sofi OKSANEN, WHEN THE DOVES DISAPPEARED - A story of occupation, resistance, and collaboration in Estonia during and after World War II. (320 pages) Themes: History, War

K. T. MEDINA, WHITE CROCODILE - After her estranged husband goes missing while clearing minefields, Tess Hardy travels to Cambodia to search for him and uncover the truth, amidst tales of a mythical White Crocodile that kills everyone it meets.

(384 pages) Also available eBook

## Amy BLOOM, WHITE HOUSES - After meeting the future first lady while covering Franklin Roosevelt's campaign, Lorena Hickock and Eleanor discover a powerful passion between them.

(240 pages) Themes: Biographical fiction, LGBTQIA

## Meg WOLITZER, THE WIFE - On the eve of her husband's receipt of a prestigious literary award, Joan Castleman, who has put her own writing ambitions on hold to support her husband, evaluates her choices and decides to end the marriage.

(224 pages) Themes: Mainstream, Marriage

Alice STEINBACH, WITHOUT

RESERVATIONS : THE TRAVELS OF AN

INDEPENDENT WOMAN

- The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the nature of independence, chronicling her own adventures as a woman in search of freedom from the things that define her as she journeys to Paris, Oxford, Milan, and beyond.

(278 pages) Also available eBook Themes: Memoir, Travel Cate KENNEDY, THE WORLD BENEATH– Once, Rich and Sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, twenty-five years later, about the only thing they have in common is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie. When the Rich decides to take Sophie on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, a chain of events is set off that no-one could have predicted.

(342 pages) Also available eBook, eAudiobook Themes: Domestic

Joan DIDION, THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING - An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief.

(227 pages) Also available eBook

Geraldine BROOKS, YEAR OF WONDERS - When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer.

(308 p.) Also available eBook Themes: History, Disease

## Emily O’GRADY, THE YELLOW HOUSE - The book is told in the first-person by 10-year-old Cub, whose grandfather was responsible for murders. Although Les died twelve years ago, his notoriety has grown in Cub’s lifetime and the local community have ostracised the whole family.

(324 p.) Also available eBook

Themes: Literary, Family, Contemporary Diane ACKERMAN, THE ZOO KEEPER’S WIFE - Documents the true story of Warsaw Zoo keepers and resistance activists Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who in the aftermath of Germany's invasion of Poland saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish citizens by smuggling them into empty cages and their home villa.

(349 pages) Themes: Biographical fiction, War

New kits for 2019 An American marriage by Tayari Jones Anatomy of a scandal by Sarah Vaughn Best boy by Eli Gottlieb Between a wolf and a dog by Georgia Blain Boy swallows universe by Trent Dalton Bridget Crack by Rachel Leary Burning down by Venero Aramanno Butterfly on a pin : a memoir of love, despair and reinvention by Alannah Hill Dark emu : Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture by Bruce Pascoe Educated : a memoir by Tara Westover Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman French exit by Patrick deWitt A gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles Home fire by Kamila Shamsie Kitchen confidential : adventures in the culinary underbelly by Anthony Bordain Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams The landing by Susan Johnson Lincoln in the bardo by George Saunders The lost child by Martin Sixsmith Love in small letters by Francesc Miralles Lullaby by Leila Slimani Lunch with Mussolini by Derek Hanson No friend but the mountains by Behrouz Boochani On beauty by Zadie Smith One hundred years of dirt by Rick Morton The only story by Julian Barnes The other wife by Michael Robotham Our endless numbered days by Claire Fuller The pearler’s wife by Roxane Dhand Rather his own man by Geoffrey Robertson Scrublands by Chris Hammer The seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton Taboo by Kim Scott Tangerine by Christine Morgan The tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris The tea girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See Too much lip by Melissa Lucashenko The trauma cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein The underground railroad by Colson Whitehead Utopia for realists : and how we can get there by Rutger Bregman Warlight by Michael Ondaatje White houses by Amy Bloom The wife by Meg Wolitzer The yellow house by Emily O’Grady