FICTION

THE REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK FOR MARCH 2024'I have goosebumps just talking about this story' REESE WITHERSPOON'Smart, funny and furious' MARIE CLAIRE'Genre-busting ... A clear-eyed deconstruction of skewed value systems' FINANCIAL TIMESIt's 1985 and Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City. Thirteen years later, art history student Raquel is preparing her final thesis, feeling the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities as the wealthy students around her. Anita's name and the mysterious circumstances around her death has all but faded from view.When Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. But then she stumbles upon Anita's story, and is struck not only by the question of who gets to leave a legacy, but by how her own relationship eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist . . .* A NEW YORK TIMES, ELLE AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING HIGHLIGHT FOR 2024 *

Happiness And Love An unnamed narrator who has fled a set of friends she despised, who bring out the very worst in her and each other, finds herself once more sat at their dinner table for a single, hideous evening. The funny, propulsive new novel about hating your friends, hating what they bring out in you, hating how you pander to them, the perfect satirical summer read for fans of Emma Cline, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Ottessa Moshfegh. 'Exceptionally funny and entertaining' Katy Hessel, bestselling author of The Story of Art Without Men 'A gorgeous book on being a hater, and I inhaled this in one sitting' Stylist Years after escaping her unbearable artworld friends in New York for a new life in London, an unnamed writer finds herself once more at their dinner table for a single, hideous evening. It's the day after the funeral of their mutual friend, a failed actress and - Eugene and Nicole, an artist-curator couple - are hosting a dinner party. If the narrator once loved and admired the couple and their important friends, she now despises them all. Most of all, however, she despises herself for being lured back to this cavernous apartment, to this hollow, bourgeois social set, for a dinner party that isn't even being thrown in their deceased friend's honour, but in the honour of an up-and-coming actress who is by now several hours late. As the guests sip at their drinks and await the actress's arrival, the narrator, from her vantage point in the corner seat of a white sofa entertains herself - and us - with a silent, tender, merciless takedown. A satire about friendship, capitalism, culture, and art, Happiness and Love is the razor-sharp new novel from an exciting literary voice. 'Bracing and funny and fiercely clever' Orlando Whitfield, Nero-award listed author of All that Glitters 'An ecstatic performance of heightened perception' Chris Kraus, bestselling author of I Love Dick 'Zeitgeist and timeless, cynical but not soulless. Fabulous!' Melissa Broder, author of Milk Fed and The Pisces

The Stars Are A Million Glittering Worlds A hypnotic novel about love, guilt, and forgiveness. If you loved Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro, you will adore The Stars Are a Million Glittering Worlds.

Call Me Ishmaelle: A reimagining of Moby Dick from the perspective of a cross-dressing female sailor. Moby-Dick reimagined from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailor. 'Brilliantly written... ambitious, brave, strange' Philip Hoare. 'One of the most valuable writers in the world' Deborah Levy. 1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York. Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville's Moby Dick from a female perspective. As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest. Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realizes there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender, and human purpose.

Theory & Practice WINNER, STELLA PRIZE, 2025SHORTLISTED, THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD 2025 SHORTLISTED, VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD, FICTION, 2025 'One of the living masters of the art of fiction.' Max Porter 'Michelle de Kretser is to my mind one of the finest writers alive and Theory and Practice a lightning strike of a book.' Ali Smith 'Michelle de Kretser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.' Neel Mukherjee One of the most anticipated literary releases of the year, this gripping novel changes the game on what fiction can be and do. It's 1986, and 'beautiful, radical ideas' are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students-and Kit. He claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray. Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art. PRAISE- 'Thrillingly original.' Sigrid Nunez 'I loved it...raw, funny, truthful, youthful' Tessa Hadley 'Startlingly intelligent and stylish.' Jasmine Vojdani, New York Magazine 'Brilliant and mesmerising.' Gleaner 'Perfect for a summer read, but also with a timeless appeal.' Good Weekend 'Utterly absorbing.' Felicity Plunkett, Saturday Paper 'Ambitious and dazzling ' Men Yiman, Big Issue 'I've read it twice...The more you look at it, the more it offers you.' Kate Evans, ABC News 'Theory & Practice blazes with intelligence, passion and wit. I devoured it, greedily, in a single glorious sitting.' Sarah Waters 'Michelle de Kretser is a genius-one of the best writers working today. She is startlingly, uncannily good at naming and facing what is most difficult and precious about our lives. Theory & Practice is a wonder, a brilliant book that reinvents itself again and again, stretching the boundaries of the novel to show the ways in which ideas and ideals are folded into our days, as well as the times when our choices fail to meet them. There's no writer I'd rather read.' V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Women's Prize for Fiction and Carol Shields Prize award-winning Brotherless Night 'A brilliant account of what it means to be a feminist and wrestling with universal emotions that cannot be denied. It's a slim book, something you can finish in one glorious and insightful sitting.' Women's Agenda 'A thought-provoking narrative on desire, shame and moral complexities.' Harper's Bazaar 'De Kretser perceptively evokes how maternal figures, both birthright and adoptive, maintain a hold on us, despite our attempts to distance ourselves...A form-melding book contending with colonialism, the disharmony that can arise between our purported ideals and how we live, the depths of jealousy and shame, and motherhood and the maternal figures who shape us...An inquiry into what fiction can look like and what it can achieve.' Jack Callil, Guardian 'Sharp-witted and mesmerising...The narrator's clever political insights and beautiful depictions of art and literature offer readers a view into a captivating mind. De Kretser is at the top of her game.' Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Your Friend And MineA warm, witty and wise novel about second chances, friendship, and romance for readers of Marian Keyes and Liane Moriarty.

I Cheerfully Refuse Barnes & Noble's April Book Club Pick An Amazon Top 10 Editors' Pick A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved musician taking to Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved bookselling wife. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amid the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humour, generous strangers and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. As his essentially guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake. A rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, I Cheerfully Refuse is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.

'Despite the inordinate limits placed on women, See allows their strengths to dominate their stories' Washington Post'Poignant . . . quietly affecting' Time'Emotional and illuminating' BookPageIn 15th century China two women are born under the same sign, the Metal Snake. But life will take the friends on very different paths. According to Confucius, ‘an educated woman is a worthless woman’, but Tan Yunxian – born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separation and loneliness – is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. She begins her training in medicine with her grandmother and, as she navigates the male world of medicine, requiring tact and diplomacy, she struggles against the confining world of her class. From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose – despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it – and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom. How might a woman like Yunxian break free of tradition, go on to treat women and girls from every level of society, and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a captivating story of women helping other women. It is also a triumphant reimagining of the life of a woman who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.Praise for Lisa See 'This novel spans wars and generations, but at its heart is a beautifully rendered story of two women whose individual choices become inextricably tangled’ Jodi Picoult 'No one writes about female friendship, the dark and the light of it, with more insight and depth than Lisa See’ Sue Monk Kidd 'See’s thoughtful and empathetic book sheds necessary attention on this largely ignored event' New York Times 'A powerful and essential story of humanity' Los Angeles Review of Books 'A spellbinding portrait of a time burning with opportunity and mystery' O: The Oprah Magazine 'A lush tale infused with clear-eyed compassion' The Washington Post

The beautiful novel of female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epic set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wetsuits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives. ‘For centuries, women on Korea’s Jeju island have been free-diving into the sea, a practice explored through this fictionalized story of two friends who struggle to stay close amid war, family rivalries, and a shifting cultural landscape. It’s riveting, historical, and heartbreaking all at once’ Marie Claire ‘Lisa See excels at mining the intersection of family, friendship and history... This novel spans wars and generations, but at its heart is a beautifully rendered story of two women whose individual choices become inextricably tangled’ Jodi Picoult, author of A Spark of Light ‘I was spellbound the moment I entered the vivid and little-known world of the diving women of Jeju… No one writes about female friendship… with more insight and depth than Lisa See’ Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees

An epic, kaleidoscopic story of four women connected across time and place by an invisible thread and their determination to shape their own stories, from the acclaimed author of The Mother Fault.Shortlisted for the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2024 Longlisted for the Stella Prize and Indie Book Awards 2024Sydney Morning Herald Best Reads of the Year for 2023 One of the lucky few with a job during the Depression, Peggy’s just starting out in life. She’s a bagging girl at the Angliss meatworks in Footscray, a place buzzing with life as well as death, where the gun slaughterman Jack has caught her eye – and she his. How is her life connected to Hilda’s, almost a hundred years later, locked inside during a plague, or La’s, further on again, a singer working shifts in a warehouse as her eggs are frozen and her voice is used by AI bots? Let alone Maz, far removed in time, diving for remnants of a past that must be destroyed? Is it by the river that runs through their stories, eternal yet constantly changing – or by the mysterious Hummingbird Project, and the great question of whether the march of progress can ever be reversed? Propulsive, tender and engrossing, this genre-bending novel is a feast for the heart as well as the mind and senses. For fans of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Michelle de Kretser’s The Life to Come and Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House, it confirms Mildenhall as one of the most ambitious and dynamic writers in the country. 'Kate Mildenhall is such an exciting writer to read … This generous, playful novel speaks to themes of climate change, survival and holding space for each other, as well as the enduring power of female friendship.' The Guardian ‘Spellbinding, genre-defying, and powerful in its vision of the future … The Hummingbird Effect is a devastating novel that exposes the ways the future is seeded in the past.’ Australian Book Review

A collection of delightful short stories from one of Ireland's greatest ever writers, Brian Friel 'A fake! A quack! A charlatan! Get a grip on yourself, woman! We'll say another rosary and then I'll leave you home.'Stories of Ireland is a brilliant, colourful compendium of mid-century Irish experience from one of Ireland's greatest ever writers, Brian Friel. Demonstrating all of Friel's peerless instinct for voice, scene, and the uncanny mystery found in the everyday, these tales tell of beauty, struggle and discovery- from the drowning of a man in the bog-black waters of Lough Keeragh, to the camaraderie of teenage potato gathers in County Tyrone, and from the careful work of the German War Graves Commission in Glenn na fuiseog, to trawlermen's talk of sunken gold off the coast of Donegal.Selected by Friel himself, and introduced by acclaimed author Louise Kennedy, this delightful, heartful collection truly offers some of the best stories ever written.

Second Chance Family A moving and heart-warming new rural romance from internationally acclaimed author Barbara Hannay that proves it's never too late to start over. Callie Madden, a grieving widow and single mother of three, is stunned to learn she's inherited one half of Hawkridge, a beautiful acreage in the Misty Mountains of Far North Queensland. A potential family scandal surrounds the reasons for this bequest and there are additional complications. Callie is to share the inheritance with Ben Galbraith, a Scotsman, who'd helped Hawkridge's owner in his final years. Also, the property can't be sold for twelve months. Callie's life is in Townsville with her teenage twin daughters and six year old son. Ben plans to return to Scotland. How can they negotiate an entire year of caring for Hawkridge? And as they try to work together, is there more at stake than the property's future? Set on the picturesque hinterland of Australia's tropical far north, this is a deeply moving and uplifting story about making the most of the unexpected opportunities life throws your way. Ideal for fans of Tricia Stringer and Fiona Lowe.

A Thousand Blues From a massive rising star in the world of Korean female sci-fi comes the gripping, heartrending tale of how two sisters train a worn-out racehorse to run the slowest race of its life - for fans of KLARA AND THE SUN and CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN THE #1 KOREAN INSTANT BESTSELLER AND PRIZEWINNER Discover the original and uplifting sensation for fans of CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN and KLARA AND THE SUN 'A stunning story of love, care and sacrifice' - Bora Chung, author of Cursed Bunny  'Feels like a feather softly descending and tickling my heart' - Reader review ***** 'A breath of fresh air' - Reader review ***** 'Full of human warmth' - ***** From its perch on top of a pile of junk inside a shed, Coli, a robot with powerful observational qualities, waits patiently for someone to find it. Coli is special among AI robots. This is because Coli has the capacity for emotion. Today, Coli is feeling particularly in awe - of the sky in all its wondrous shades of blue. Luckily for Coli, a young girl is about to pass by. She is obsessed with robots. Together, they will save a life. But first, they must make friends, put themselves at risk, and pull off the mother of all deceptions. 'Engaging, touching, subtly disturbing' - K-Lit Review 'A stunningly crafted novel, evoking a myriad emotions' - Kim Bo-young 'A dazzling, warm novel that shows us how to move forward as a society without leaving anyone or anything behind' - Choi Jin-young, author of To the Warm Horizon