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3 38 y separately published work icon Puberty Blues Kathy Lette , Gabrielle Carey , Melbourne : Vintage Australia , 2022 Z355484 1979 single work novel (taught in 1 units) ''By day, we were at school learning logarithms, but by night - in the back of cars, under the bowling alley, on Cronulla Beach, or, if you were lucky, in a bed while someone's parents were out - you paid off your friendship ring.' For Deb and Sue, life is about surfies, panel vans, straight-leg Levis, nicking off from school, getting wasted and fitting in. But why should guys have all the fun? Puberty Blues is raw, humorous and honest. An Australian classic. 'A profoundly moral story' -- Germaine Greer 'I don't recall reading Puberty Blues so much as devouring it. I was about thirteen, alone in my bedroom with the door firmly shut. I was fascinated' -- Kylie Minogue'
1 y separately published work icon Sadvertising Ennis Cehic , Melbourne : Vintage Australia , 2022 23434849 2022 selected work short story

'An electrifying collection of stories from the febrile imagination of a young writer who traverses culture, genre and form.

'A man grows tired of his open-plan office and builds a fort made of stationery. A woman's euphoria at finally achieving Desktop Zero is quickly replaced with despair. A group of copywriters dream of being poets, and a disillusioned sales executive overthinks his think piece.

'In the mind-bendingly upside-down world of Sadvertising, iPhones have feelings, brands come to life, creative directors disappear into parallel universes and lowly freelancers become immortal. It's a world where gods, ghosts and muses stalk the corridors of bland and placeless offices, and the wondrous exists alongside the mundane.

'Short, punchy and direct, Ennis Cehic's satirical fables are box-fresh and shot through with pitch-black humour, existential dread and late capitalist yearning for meaning. They grapple with love and loneliness, art and commerce, dream and reality, and reflect the absurdity of the modern condition.

'Sadvertising is a surreal, subversive and utterly contemporary literary debut from an unforgettable new voice.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Corporal Hitler’s Pistol Thomas Keneally , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2021 21857861 2021 single work novel

'How did Corporal Hitler's Luger from the First World War end up being the weapon that killed an IRA turncoat in Kempsey, New South Wales, in 1933?

'When an affluent Kempsey matron spots a young Aboriginal boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to her husband, not only does she scream for divorce, attempt to take control of the child’s future and upend her comfortable life, but the whole town seems drawn into chaos.

'A hero of the First World War has a fit at the cinema and is taken to a psychiatric ward in Sydney, his Irish farmhand is murdered, and a gay piano-playing veteran, quietly a friend to many in town, is implicated.

'Corporal Hitler's Pistol speaks to the never-ending war that began with 'the war to end all wars'. Rural communities have always been a melting pot and many are happy to accept a diverse bunch … as long as they don’t overstep. Set in a town he knows very well, in this novel Tom Keneally tells a compelling story of the interactions and relationships between black and white Australians in early twentieth-century Australia.' (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon Empires Nick Earls , Melbourne : Vintage Australia , 2021 21542676 2021 single work novel

'Empires rise and fall, human lives are lived, collisions occur more than we will ever know, and yet the unexpected can still happen. ''Alaska, 2018, and Mike is a long way from home, nursing a wrecked knee and an unspoken grief, striking out into real estate and parenting his partner’s son. London, 1978, and Simon is an Australian fish out of water navigating adolescence during the Winter of Discontent, and drawn to an eccentric impresario next door. Washington, DC, 1928, and a retired US senator is interviewed about his time in Russia in 1916, and his mission to save a young heir to an empire. Vienna, 1809, and an Irish teenager on the run from the law takes refuge among composers as Napoleon besieges and shells the city. Hong Kong, 2019, and estranged brothers Mike and Simon reunite in midlife to face the secrets of the past, and reconnect in more ways than one.

'Empires rise and fall, human lives play out, encounters, collisions and connections occur more than we can ever know – and yet, the unexpected can still happen.

'Endlessly compelling and inventive, Empires is a masterful novel in five parts with boys and men at its heart. Spanning centuries and crossing continents, it explores the empires we build, the way we see ourselves, the narratives we construct and the interconnectedness of all things. This is Nick Earls at his finest.' (Publication summary)

1 4 y separately published work icon The Rabbits Sophie Overett , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2021 21315222 2021 single work novel

'The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bo’s mother, Rosemary, and Bo’s younger sister, Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen.

'Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delia’s life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student, and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And now she must also care for her mother.

'Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously. Or, they were until sixteen-year-old Charlie Rabbit disappears in the middle of a blinding heatwave. The family reels from the loss, and struggles to cope as the children’s estranged father, Ed, re-enters their lives.

'Only nothing is quite as it seems, and Charlie’s disappearance soon proves to be just that – a disappearance, or, rather, an unexpected bout of invisibility he’s unable to reverse.

'The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 2 y separately published work icon Fire Flood Plague : Australian Writers Respond to 2020 Sophie Cunningham (editor), Melbourne : Vintage Australia , 2020 19897834 2020 anthology essay

'Leading Australian writers respond to the challenges of 2020, to create a vital cultural record of these extraordinary times.

'Writers, scientists, historians, journalists and commentators consider subjects as broad as culture and the arts, working as a doctor, travel, domestic violence, security, immigration, the death of a loved one, geopolitics, distance and zoom to ensure we never forget the experience of this pile-on of a year.

'Including original pieces from Lenore Taylor, Nyadol Nuon, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Lucashenko, Billy Griffiths, Jess Hill, Kim Scott, Brenda Walker, Jane Rawson, Omar Sakr, Richard McGregor, Jennifer Mills, Gabrielle Chan, John Birmingham, Tim Flannery, Rebecca Giggs, Kate Cole-Adams, George Megalogenis, James Bradley, Alison Croggan, Melanie Cheng, Kirsten Tranter, Tom Griffiths, Joelle Gergis and Delia Falconer.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon HRT : Husband Replacement Therapy Kathy Lette , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2020 19100748 2020 single work novel

'What do you do when you’re told you’ve got terminal cancer at 50? Take up crochet, get religion and bow out gracefully? Or upend your life and spend every remaining minute exploring new pleasures?

'Ruby has always been the generous mediator among her friends, family and colleagues, which is why they have all turned up to celebrate her 50th birthday. But after a few too many glasses of champers, Ruby’s speech doesn’t exactly go to plan. Instead of delivering the witty and warm words her guests are expecting, Ruby takes her moment in the spotlight to reveal what she really thinks of every one of them. She also accuses her husband, Harry, of having an affair.

'Saving the best till last, Ruby lambasts her octogenarian mother for a lifetime of playing her three daughters against each other. It’s blisteringly brutal. As the stunned gathering gawks at Ruby, the birthday girl concludes her bravura monologue with the throwaway comment that she has terminal cancer. She has cashed in her life savings and plans on taking her two sisters cruising into the sunset for a dose of Husband Replacement Therapy. Courageous? Or ruthlessly selfish?

'But, do they even want to go with her now that she's cast herself off into social Siberia?' (Publication summary)

2 5 y separately published work icon The Coconut Children Vivian Pham , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2020 23273319 2017 single work novel

'Sonny and Vince have always known each other. It took two years of juvie, a crazy mother (her), a violent father (him) and a porn stash for them to meet again.

'Sonny is in her last year of school and with protective parents she is forced to watch the world from her bedroom window. She has a habit of falling hopelessly in love with just about anyone. Vince is handsome, brash, a leader in the gangs, who became a legend after he was taken away by juvenile justice two years ago. Now, Vince is back. One problem – they have not been friends since they were children. Growing up in the vertigo of 1990's Cabramatta, of households which harbour histories and parents who are difficult to love, they stumble upon each other once more.

'While sharing the ugly and scary details of Western Sydney in this time, Vivian Pham also illuminates the beauty, hope, possibility, kindness and love that can spring from small gestures and strong friendships.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon The Lost Boy : Tales of a Child Soldier Ayik Chut Deng , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2020 18608148 2020 single work autobiography

'After life as a boy soldier in South Sudan, fighting battles in Ethiopia and refugee camps in Kenya, Ayik Chut found himself a refugee in Toowoomba, Queensland.

'With a FOREWORD from Ray Martin.

'As a boy living in the Dinka tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). During his time as a child soldier, he witnessed unspeakable violence and was regularly tortured by older boys. At age nineteen, he and his family escaped the conflict in Sudan and resettled in Toowoomba, Australia. But adjusting to his new life in small-town Queensland was more difficult than he anticipated. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, leading to years of erratic behaviour on the wrong medication. He struggled with drugs and alcohol, fought with his family and found himself in trouble with the law before he came to the painful realisation that his behaviour was putting his life, as well as the lives of his loved ones, at risk.' (Publication summary)

1 5 y separately published work icon The Dickens Boy Thomas Keneally , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2020 18608019 2020 single work novel historical fiction

'In the late 1800s, rather than run the risk of his under-achieving sons tarnishing his reputation at home, Charles Dickens sent two of them to Australia.

'The tenth child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proved unable ‘to apply himself ’ to school or life. So aged sixteen, he is sent, as his brother Alfred was before him, to Australia.

'Plorn arrives in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father’s work. He is sent out to a 2000-square-mile station in remotest New South Wales to learn to become a man, and a gentleman stockman, from the most diverse and toughest of companions. In the outback he becomes enmeshed with Paakantji, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women.

'Plorn, unexpectedly, encounters the same veneration of his father and familiarity with Dickens’ work in Australia as was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushrangers, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women, Plorn meets extraordinary people and enjoys wonderful adventures as he works to prove himself.

'This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a triumph.'(Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon The Origin of Me Bernard Gallate , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2020 17538075 2020 single work novel young adult

'Lincoln Locke's fifteen-year-old life is turned upside down when he's thrust into bachelor-pad living with his dad, after his parents' marriage breaks up, and into an exclusive new school. Crestfield Academy offers him a new set of peers - the cr me de la cr me of gifted individuals, who also happen to be financially loaded - and a place on the swim relay team with a bunch of thugs in Speedos. Homunculus, the little voice inside Lincoln's head, doesn't make life any easier; nor does Lincoln's growing awareness of a genetic anomaly that threatens to humiliate him at every turn.

'On a search for answers to the big LIFE questions, he turns to the hallowed school library, where he spies Edwin Stroud's nineteenth-century memoir, My One Redeeming Affliction. The book weaves itself into Lincoln's life in ways more fascinating and alarming than he could have imagined.

'When he meets Bert McGill, the local junkyard hermit, Lincoln finds among the detritus of Bert's life tantalising glimpses of the enigmatic Stroud, star of Melinkoff's Astonishing Assembly of Freaks. He begins to piece together a time past, of dubious relationships and, it turns out, of redeeming afflictions.

'Audacious, funny and wonderfully inventive, The Origin of Me is a story of friendships, of young love, of imagination, and of celebrating differences, past and present.'  (Publication summary)

4 10 y separately published work icon The Bass Rock Evie Wyld , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2020 17537370 2020 single work novel historical fiction

'In 1720s Scotland, a priest and his son get lost in the forest, transporting a witch to the coast to stop her from being killed by the village.

'In the sad, slow years after the Second World War, Ruth finds herself the replacement wife to a recent widower and stepmother to his two young boys, installed in a huge house by the sea and haunted by those who have come before.

'Fifty years later, Viv is cataloguing the valuables left in her dead grandmother's seaside home, when she uncovers long-held secrets of the great house.

'Three women, hundreds of years apart, slip into each other's lives in a novel of darkness, violence and madness.' (Publication summary)

1 5 y separately published work icon Maybe the Horse Will Talk Elliot Perlman , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 17490749 2019 single work novel

'‘I am absolutely terrified of losing a job I absolutely hate.’

'Stephen Maserov has problems. A onetime teacher, married to fellow teacher Eleanor, he has retrained and is now a second-year lawyer working at mega-firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche. Despite toiling around the clock to make budget, he’s in imminent danger of being downsized. And to make things worse, Eleanor, sick of single-parenting their two young children thanks to Stephen’s relentless work schedule, has asked him to move out.

'To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of. But if he’s not careful, it might be the last job he ever has…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Wild Nathan Besser , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 17117219 2019 single work novel historical fiction

'Jonathan Wild knows power like no one else in London. He arrived as a wide-eyed young man in 1703, dazzled by a metropolis brimming with trade, immigration and crime. With a combination of greed, arrogance and ambition, Wild stopped at nothing to secure his place in this great and monstrous London and within a few years, he became the city’s Thief-Taker General, one of the most feared and wealthy officials in town, charged with the capture and arrest of felons for reward. But his power is matched only by the number of enemies he’s made along the way, and his star is burning rather too brightly for the likings of some.

'Daniel Defoe is in trouble. Following a series of failed business ventures, the renowned pamphleteer, fiction writer and political operative is dead broke. With his creditors at his heels, and facing debtors’ prison, Defoe is too crippled with anxiety to write. That is, until he visits Newgate Prison with the intention of chronicling the stories of its inmates, and meets a young man with a deep hatred for Jonathan Wild and a story to tell.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 6 y separately published work icon Fake Fake : A Startling True Story of Love in a World of Liars, Cheats, Narcissists, Fantasists and Phonies Stephanie Wood , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 16557132 2019 single work autobiography

'A powerful, richly layered investigative story for our times, drawing on the personal stories of the author and other women who have been drawn into relationships based on duplicity and false hope.

'Women the world over are brought up to hope, even expect, to find the man of their dreams and live happily ever after. When Stephanie Wood meets a former architect turned farmer she embarks on an exhilarating romance with him. He seems compassionate, loving, truthful. They talk about the future. She falls in love. She also becomes increasingly beset by anxiety at his frequent cancellations, no-shows and bizarre excuses. She starts to wonder, who is this man?

'When she ends the relationship Stephanie reboots her journalism skills and embarks on a romantic investigation. She discovers a story of mind-boggling duplicity and manipulation. She learns that the man she thought she was in love with doesn’t exist. She also finds she is not alone; that the world is full of smart people who have suffered at the hands of liars, cheats, narcissists, fantasists and phonies, people enormously skilled in the art of deception.

'In this brilliantly acute and broad-ranging book, Wood, an award-winning writer and journalist, has written a riveting, important account of contemporary love, and the resilience of those who have witnessed its darkest sides.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Dead Man Walking : The Murky World of Michael McGurk and Ron Medich Kate McClymont , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 15634831 2019 single work biography

'The complete story of the lives and shoddy business deals of Michael McGurk and Ron Medich from the person McGurk confided in.

'Employing her insider status and trademark wit, pace and intelligence, Kate McClymont unravels the complex business relationships between Michael McGurk and Ron Medich.

'Rumour has it that Sydney is full of corruption and crime, but no one expected to read about a Sydney businessman being shot, in the back of his head, in his driveway, in Cremorne. Nor that, ultimately, a Point Piper millionaire would be convicted for ordering the hit. But this is not just a Sydney story. Its strands traverse Moscow, Brunei, Indonesia and Hawaii and involve property deals, fraud, conspiracy, false identities, kidnapping and a miniature Koran. There are bumbling criminals, turncoats, snitches, wealthy people brought down, and devastated families.

'Just prior to his murder, Michael McGurk – who had a history of violence, threats, arson charges, intimidation and failed businesses – had informed Kate McClymont, Australia’s best-known investigative journalist, that he believed there was a hit out on him. They agreed they would meet, and then he was shot.

'This is an extraordinary story of ten years of events that you simply could not make up.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon The Blue Rose Kate Forsyth , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 15595313 2019 single work novel historical fiction

'Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at the Chateau de Belisama-sur-le-Lac in Brittany, for her father, the Marquis de Ravoisier, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the chateau’s orchards, gardens and fields an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan the chateau’s new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer.
David and Viviane fall in love, but it is an impossible romance. Her father has betrothed her to a rich duke who she is forced to marry and David is hunted from the property. Viviane goes to court and becomes a maid-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette and a member of the extended royal family. Angry and embittered, David sails away from England with Lord Macartney, the British ambassador, who hopes to open up trade with Imperial China.

'In Canton, the British embassy at last receives news from home, including their first reports of the French Revolution. David hears the story of ‘The Blue Rose’, a Chinese fable of impossible love, and discovers the blood-red rose growing in the wintry garden. He realises that he is still in love with Viviane and must find her.

'Viviane escapes the guillotine and returns to the ruin of Chateau de Belisima to rebuild her life. David carrying a cluster of rosehips finds her there, and together they decide to grow the fabled red rose of China in France.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Strange Blasphemy Anson Cameron , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 15595069 2019 single work novel

'At a surf campus, a weekend of cultural exchange begins, during which a group of less-advantaged boys from Dallas Islamic Academy are taught to surf by boys from Yarraside Boys’ Grammar, an elite private school. A sexual encounter takes place on the beach between Seb, a rich kid from the Grammar, and Fariad, a Muslim Afghan refugee from the Academy. Little does anyone know that this encounter has been unwittingly recorded by a drone, sent up by one of the Grammar schoolkids to watch the antics of the surfers.

'What then ensues no one can predict. Sides are taken. Threats are made. Seb’s and Fariad’s families and communities are involved. In not giving his side of the story, Seb enters a living nightmare, where, in his attempts to protect Fariad, and defuse the situation, he unleashes a storm of hatred, suspicion, lies, deceit … and ultimately murder.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 4 y separately published work icon The Hollow Bones Leah Kaminsky , Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 15407926 2019 single work novel

'Berlin, 1936. Ernst Schäfer, a young, ambitious zoologist and keen hunter and collector, has come to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who invites him to lead a group of SS scientists to the frozen mountains of Tibet. Their secret mission: to search for the origins of the Aryan race. Ernst has doubts initially, but soon seizes the opportunity to rise through the ranks of the Third Reich.

'While Ernst prepares for the trip, he marries Herta, his childhood sweetheart. But Herta, a flautist who refuses to play from the songbook of womanhood and marriage under the Reich, grows increasingly suspicious of Ernst and his expedition.

'When Ernst and his colleagues finally leave Germany in 1938, they realise the world has its eyes fixed on the horror they have left behind in their homeland.

'A lyrical and poignant cautionary tale, The Hollow Bones brings to life one of the Nazi regime’s little-known villains through the eyes of the animals he destroyed and the wife he undermined in the name of science and cold ambition.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 1 y separately published work icon The Ink Stain Thomas Keneally , Meg Keneally , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2019 15407753 2019 single work novel historical fiction

'Henry Hallward, editor of the Sydney Chronicle, has been imprisoned for criminal libel so often he can edit the newspaper from his cell.

'While awaiting trial during one of his imprisonments, Hallward boasts of a story that will destroy several powerful people. But before he can finish it he is killed, and Monsarrat and Mrs Mulrooney are sent to investigate.

'After Monsarrat meets with Colonel Duchamp, the governor’s right-hand man, it is clear the duo are on their own in solving this murder. And it seems there are many who had reason to wish Hallward dead. There is Gerald Mobbs, editor of the Chronicle’s rival newspaper. There is Duchamp’s sister, Henrietta, who can’t quite hide her cunning behind her ladylike exterior. And there is Albert Bancroft, an éminence grise whose property dealings seem to put him in an ideal position to have carried out the killing.

'Monsarrat and Mrs Mulrooney must sift through the suspects, unravel hidden agendas and navigate shifting loyalties, aware that at any moment Duchamp could ignominiously dismiss them, leaving Hallward’s murder unsolved and the independence of the colony’s press in grave jeopardy. And when a young boy is kidnapped, it becomes clear freedom of speech may not be the only casualty.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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