AustLit

'Prussia, 1836

'Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature — she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity...until she meets Thea.

'Ocean, 1838

'The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their King's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break.

'The whale passed. The music faded.

'South Australia, 1838

'A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible ... is devotion.

'This long-awaited novel demonstrates Hannah Kent's sublime ability with language that creates an immersive, transformative experience for the reader. Devotion is a book to savour.' (Publication summary)

'One teacher. One school. One year.

'Brendan James Murray has been a high school teacher for more than ten years. In that time he has seen hundreds of kids move through the same hallways and classrooms - boisterous, angry, shy, big-hearted, awkward - all of them on the journey to adulthood.

'In The School, he paints an astonishingly vivid portrait of a single school year, perfectly capturing the highs and lows of being a teenager, as well as the fire, passion and occasional heartbreak of being their teacher. Hilarious, heartfelt and true, it is a timeless story of a teacher and his classes, a must-read for any parent, and a tribute to the art of teaching.' (Publication summary)

'When Kaya Wilson came out to his parents as transgender, a year after a near-death surfing accident and just weeks before his father's death, he was met with a startling family history of concealed queerness and shame.

'This is a trans story.

'As Beautiful As Any Other weaves this legacy together with intimate examinations of the forces that have shaped Wilson's life, and his body: vulnerability and power, grief and trauma, science and narrative.

'This is also my story.

'In this powerful and lyrical memoir, Wilson makes a case for the strength we find when we confront the complexities of our identity with compassion. As Beautiful As Any Other is a trailblazing debut of remarkable beauty, insight and candour.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'A riveting, suspenseful, and exuberant novel from the bestselling, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation.

'Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life.

'But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients—a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported? Or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of this day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

'Propulsive, insightful, and full of Aravind Adiga’s signature wit and magic, Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Strange what chooses to flourish here. Which plants. Which stories.

'Bettina Scott lives a tidy, quiet life in Runagate, tending to her delicate mother and their well-kept garden after her father and brothers disappear — until a note arrives that sends Bettina into the scrublands beyond, searching for answers about what really happened to this town, and to her family.

'For this is a land where superstitions hunt and folk tales dream — and power is there for the taking, for those willing to look.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Picador ed.)

'In a city locked in a kind of perpetual twilight, an antiquarian bookseller accepts a very strange commission - the valuation of a rare codex. Within its fragile pages is the story of another book, another codex, but unravelling the mystery may mean unravelling the nature of reality itself...

'A noirish mystery. A speculative fiction with a social conscience. An unbridled imagination, and a scholar's bibliomanic preoccupations. From Here On, Monsters stretches the boundaries of what we consider fiction in weird and totally wonderful ways...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Around you the world is swirling - you pass through a submerged town; the bakery, a wheelbarrow, a bike floating on its side on the main street, its steeples and trees barely visible through the thick water.

'A body buried in a suburban backyard.

'A suicide pact worthy of Chekhov.

'A love affair born in a bookshop.

'The last days of Bennelong.

'And a very strange gift for a most unusual Prime Minister...

'Tantalising, poignant, wry, and just a little fantastical, this subversive collection of short fiction - and one singular novella - from bestselling author Debra Adelaide reminds us what twists of fate may be lurking just beneath the surface of the everyday.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains...

'Since 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani has been held in the Manus Island offshore processing centre.

'People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests...

'This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile.

'Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains? '  (Publication summary)

''Have you met Mrs Edith Coleman? If not you must - I am sure you will like her - she's just A1 and a splendid naturalist.'

'In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. Over the next thirty years, Edith Coleman would write over 300 articles on Australian nature for newspapers, magazines and scientific journals. She would solve the mystery of orchid pollination that had bewildered even Darwin, earn the acclaim of international scientists and, in 1949, become the first woman to be awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion. She was 'Australia's greatest orchid expert', 'foremost of our women naturalists', a woman who 'needed no introduction'.

'And yet, today, Edith Coleman has faded into obscurity. How did this remarkable woman, with no training or connections, achieve so much so late in life? And why, over the intervening years, have her achievements and her writing been forgotten?

'Zoologist and award-winning writer Danielle Clode sets out to uncover Edith's story, from her childhood in England to her unlikely success, sharing along the way Edith's lyrical and incisive writing and her uncompromising passion for Australian nature and landscape. ' (Publication summary)

'From the Wreck tells the remarkable story of George Hills, who survived the sinking of the steamship Admella off the South Australian coast in 1859. Haunted by his memories and the disappearance of a fellow survivor, George’s fractured life is intertwined with that of a woman from another dimension, seeking refuge on Earth. This is a novel imbued with beauty and feeling, filled both with existential loneliness and a deep awareness that all life is interdependent.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Clive James has been close to death for several years, and he has written about the experience in a series of deeply moving poems. In Sentenced to Life, he was clear-sighted as he faced the end, honest about his regrets. In Injury Time, he wrote about living well in the time remaining, focusing our attention on the joys of family and art, and celebrating the immediate beauty of the world.

'Seeking stories of Australia's Great Ocean Road, a young writer stumbles across a manual from a minor player in the road's history, FB Herschell. It is a volume unremarkable in every way, save for the surprising portrait of its author that can be read between its lines: a vision of a man who writes with uncanny poetry about sand.

And as he continues to mine the archive of FB Herschell - engineer, historian, philosopher - it is not the subject, but the man who begins to fascinate. A man whose private revolution among the streets of Paris in May 1968 begins to change the way he views life, love, and the coastal landscape into which he was born...' (Source: Publisher's blurb)