FICTION

Miss Burnham And The Loose Thread: A 1920s-set cosy historical mystery. When one of dressmaker Rose's clients is swindled by a deceitful suitor, Rose can't resist being drawn into the investigation... Rose had the sense of a thread being pulled. One tug and everything could unravel. South-east London, 1925. Talented, ambitious designer-dressmaker Rose Burnham knows well both the strains of her profession and the secrets it can yield. Newly established in her own business, she and her sisters are privy to the hushed conversations that unspool behind the fitting room's closed doors. So when a major client finds herself the victim of a deception, it is Rose she tells. Driven by the shortage of men following the Great War, Miss Holmes had engaged the services of a matrimonial agency, only to be cheated out of her inheritance by a fake suitor. Rose is determined to bring the swindler to justice. To begin with, playing the detective is a grand adventure, but as pressures mount and an old friend receives a troubling string of poison-pen letters, Rose discovers there is more to investigating - and these investigations - than she'd bargained for.

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.

Burn After Reading A ghostwriter is tasked with capturing the memoirs of a celebrity widely suspected of murder. Now she's locked in an interview room with a killer, and he's ready to confess. The night Jack Smyth ran into flames in a desperate attempt to save his wife from their burning home, he was tragically too late - but hailed a hero. Until it emerged that Kate was dead long before the fire began. Suspicion has stalked him ever since. After all, there's no smoke without fire. A year on, he's signed a book deal. He wants to tell his side of the story, to prove his innocence in print. He just needs someone to help him write it. Emily has never ghostwritten anything before, but she knows what it's like to live with a guilty secret. And she's about to learn that there are some stories that should never be told.

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)

A princess is chosen to fulfil the terms of an ancient treaty and finds herself travelling with an infamous monster slayer in this epic romantasy filled with legends and magical creatures  Long ago, the gods unleashed monsters to remind us of our insignificance.  But I didn't need a deity to tell me I was powerless. Being a princess had never been more than a performance.  Until the day an infamous monster hunter sailed to our shores. The day I married a stranger, signed a magical treaty, and set off across the continent to the most treacherous kingdom in all the realm.  That was the day I learned that not all myths are make-believe.  And that the only way to kill the monsters we fear was to become one . . .

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.

Framed for mass murder. Hunted by every agency on the planet. Ryan Kaine is on the run ...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders comes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.  Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well...except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.   What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom's marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple's lives-their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason's birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague-all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.   Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.

The Wind Weaver: A heart-racing enemies-to-lovers romantasy steeped in elemental magic . . . In the war-torn world of Anwyvn, where maegic is seen as a scourge, halflings like Rhya are hunted down and hanged on sight. But Rhya's execution is interrupted by an unexpected saviour. Because the strange birthmark on her chest means she is a Remnant - one of four souls scattered across Anwyvn, fated to restore the balance of maegic or die trying. Soon she is thrust into the lives of two very different men of two very different kingdoms. Both immensely powerful. Neither of whom she can fully trust with her life . . . or her heart.

From USA Today and #1 Amazon bestselling author Kandi Steiner comes a new edition of this #BestofBookTok standalone, angsty, enemies-to-lovers sports romance - bonus content included in this exclusive paperback edition!Two season tickets. One genius idea. Zero interest in a relationship.Gemma Mancini’s plan is simple. Step one: find hot, preferably funny, and definitely single men. Step two: take a new guy to each home game for the rest of the football season. It’s time for her to get back in the dating game, and besides, she can’t think of a better way to use the season tickets she bought for her ex-husband. It’s a foolproof plan, until her bartender offers to be her practice round.Zach Bowen is infuriating. Presumptuous, overbearing and absolutely, undeniably gorgeous. He’s determined to be Gemma's only date this season and is ready to do whatever it takes, even if that means sabotaging any of her potential matches. But Gemma isn't ready for anything serious, no matter how charming she finds his antics. After all, Zach can try his best to change the rules, but he can’t win if he’s playing the wrong game.

Beloved #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us returns with an unforgettable love story between a writer and his unexpected muse. Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled cross-country move. Their untimely attraction leads them to spend Fallon’s last day in Los Angeles together, and her eventful life becomes the creative inspiration Ben has always sought for his novel. Over time and amidst the various relationships and tribulations of their own separate lives, they continue to meet on the same date every year. Until one day Fallon becomes unsure if Ben has been telling her the truth or fabricating a perfect reality for the sake of the ultimate plot twist. Can Ben’s relationship with Fallon—and simultaneously his novel—be considered a love story if it ends in heartbreak?

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

Envy and desire infiltrate the lives of twin sisters in this dark, Gothic suspense set in England and New York City, perfect for fans of Laura Joh Rowland and Hester Fox.Envy and desire infiltrate the lives of twin sisters in this dark, Gothic suspense set in England and New York City, perfect for fans of Laura Joh Rowland and Hester Fox.A mirror will never show you the truth.England, 1904. Mirror twins Adelaide and Victoria have spent their lives in orbit of each other- doomed to be in the other's shadow, their lives are intertwined and inextricable as each other's identical inverse. Adelaide is dutiful and reserved, happy to remain in her childhood home, Harewood Hall, forever. Victoria wishes for a thrilling life, exploring the world and finding a great romance-but the twins cannot live apart. Visiting Lord Stanley bewitches Victoria with his talk of a life of luxury in New York, but it is obedient Adelaide whom he marries against her will and to Victoria's fury. Together, they all move to New York and begin a new life. Adelaide finds herself trapped in a gilded cage on Fifth Avenue with no one but her angry and tempestuous twin for company. Amid the glamor of the upper class, Adelaide is captivated by the independent and educated women of the elite social circle Mrs. Astor's 400. As Adelaide's star rises, tensions begin to surface between the sisters, and as Adelaide grows apart from her twin for the very first time, Victoria descends into a rage-fueled darkness that threatens everything and anyone standing in her way. Darker and darker with every turn of the page, this Gothic suspense will enrapture readers of Daphne du Maurier and Laura Purcell.