FICTION

Set in a dystopian near-future in which surveillance and isolation dominate daily life.One summer's day in 2056 in the mountains of southern France, a warning siren goes off- inside the belly of the receding glacier above the spa-centre village, a large pocket of water is about to give way-just as it did 150 years earlier. Hundreds of people died in the floods that followed.My Sister is a novel about the ancestral fear of environmental disaster, and the narrator Lucie's fear for her twin sister Clemence, who has returned to the village after a thirty-year absence.The two women shelter together beneath the glacier, waiting for the worst, surviving on dwindling supplies. Day by day, Clemence becomes more controlling of Lucie, as the ultimate catastrophe looms over them.My Sister is a spine-chilling story of sibling rivalry. Emmanuelle Salasc offers us a profound examination of the future of our relationship with nature-and of those close to us.

The heartfelt and hilarious new novel from the bestselling author of The Angry Women's Choir.Callie March is fascinated by human absurdity, including the habits of the upper class. So when she pushes her screen-addicted teenage son to join a local rowing club, she is thrilled to discover a whole new world of odd behaviours, irrational obsessions and riverside rooting.Thrust into a support crew and a very silly uniform, Callie has inadvertently volunteered for a season of pre-dawn parenting, endless fundraising, and pandering to insufferable dickheads. But she also finds friendship, intrigue and lust, while her son might just find love.Callie is torn between enchantment and repulsion, until a trail of corruption and scandal leads to deep suspicion. There's something fishy in the rowing shed, and Callie is determined to find out what lurks behind the closed doors of this sports club. In doing so, she will rock the boat - or better still, capsize it altogether.This novel is set in northern Tasmania. It contains profundity, profanity, heart-ache, bum chafe, terrible winners and very good losers.'A wickedly entertaining romp that's hilarious and heart-breaking all at once.' Amanda Hampson'Spit-out-your-tea, wet-your-pants funny!' Tess Woods 'Sharply observed social satire with a slice of whodunit. Set aside a weekend because you'll want to read it in one go.' Maggie Mackellar 'Funny, incisive, clever, but sadly a marriage wrecker... my husband moved out to sleep in another room while I was reading THE GOOD LOSERS, because my snorting was keeping him awake.' Kylie Ladd

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 *

Kristin Hannah is an award-winning international number one bestselling author with over twenty-five million copies of her books sold worldwide. Her most recent titles The Four Winds, The Great Alone and The Nightingale won numerous best fiction awards and her earlier novel, Firefly Lane, is currently a blockbuster series on Netflix. The Nightingale is soon to be a major movie and is described by many as one of the most loved books of our generation. Kristin's writing has taken readers across multiple eras and to many places, but the thing that connects all of her work is the focus on what it’s like being a woman in challenging times. Kristin is a lawyer-turned-writer and is the mother of one son. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle.

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

A story of the lives of the three people who make a family, the one moment in history that shatters what held them together, and the reverberations of that event that last a lifetime 'Ferociously smart and full of surprises' Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood  'A rich generational saga that teems with intelligence' Financial Times From post-war Japan to suburban America and the North Korean regime, this is the astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of the twentieth century.   One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean emigre, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, probably drowned.  The disappearance of Louisa's father shatters their small family unit. As Louisa and her American mother Anne return to the US, this traumatic event reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened to Serk slowly unravels. 'Big, bold and surprising' Guardian  'A writer at the height of her spectacular powers' Jennifer Egan, author of The Candy House  'Susan Choi is a master of rendering relationships with utter particularity' Raven Leilani, author of Luster  'I couldn't put it down, and once I finished, I couldn't stop thinking about it' Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy

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