Fiction > Australian Fiction

Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant. When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. Through their adventures with women and money, incarceration and democracy, writing and painting, they make an unlikely pair. But where... read more

The characters in these unsettling stories, of which there are six short and two long, want things that run counter to their sense of themselves. They're drawn outside their comfort zone into situations that are sometimes amusing, sometimes undignifying, never quite what they expect.

Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant. When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. Through their adventures with women and money, incarceration and democracy, writing and painting, they make an unlikely pair. But wh... read more

Daniel Rooke, soldier and astronomer, was always an outsider. As a young lieutenant of marines he arrives in New South Wales on the First Fleet in 1788 and sees his chance. He sets up his observatory away from the main camp, and begins the scientific work that he hopes will make him famous. Aboriginal people soon start to visit his isolated promontory, and a child named Tagaran begins to teach him her language. With meticulous care he records their conversations. An extraordinary friendship forms, and Rooke has almost forgotten he ... read more

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Alex and Andrew are friends. And Barbara... Barbara is a goddess. Here is the eternal triangle, the story of three people locked in an unhappy tangle of emotions, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. In St John's hands, what is commonplace is transformed and transcendent.

Sunday 'Sunny' Triggs is a young Australian actress hoping to make it big in Hollywood. Soon enough, she's auditioning for parts, mingling with the stars, being swept off to the Sundance Film Festival and negotiating tricky cross-cultural misunderstandings. And all the time she's trying to work out what and who is really important in her life.

A brilliant new take on the road novel. It evokes Kerouac and Nabokov in equal measure, describing an irresistible arc through the shining, translucent moment at the end of childhood.Across the heartless expanse of middle America, a teenaged girl is riding shotgun with an older man. She watches him; she sees her fascination tallied in the black looks of waitresses, the knowing smiles of motel clerks. The man can see no proper way of conducting this relationship but is bound to her by concern and tenderness, perhaps desire. The girl... read more

Lt Daniel Rooke, a young astronomer, sails on the First Fleet to a land waiting for scientific discovery. But his attention soon shifts from the stars to Tagaran, an Aboriginal child who begins to teach him her language. As words unfold, a friendship grows. When he is called to duty, Daniel faces a dilemma that reaches to the heart of his being.

At dawn, two women leave Sydney to drive over the Blue Mountains, into the dry outback landscape and the home of the late philosopher Wesley Antill. A man who thought his name too light for a philosopher, and his ears outlandish. Erica, a philosopher herself, has been asked by her university to review Wesley's work, to read his notes - the pages. They are as Wesley left them, unread, untouched, at the rural property run by Wesley's sister Lindsey and brother Roger. Sophie, a psychologist whose professional skills in listening seem ... read more

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Albion Gidley Singer creates his world as a vast collection of facts; facts he uses to support his own power and status. After an awkward childhood, aware that he is a disappointment to his father, he acquires, the trappings of respectability, success in business and a family. But in Albion's soul remains a dark place of fear and loathing

It's time to enter the world of Max Strummer, a 30-something doctor who moonlights as a stand-up comedian. His medical practice is booming, his comedy career is taking off, and his three-year relationship with Sarah is thriving. But everything crashes the night he catches Sarah in bed with another woman.

In 1787 Lieutenant Thomas Rooke sets sail from Portsmouth with the First Fleet and its cargo of convicts, destined for New South Wales. As a young officer and a man of science, the shy and quiet Rooke is full of anticipation about the natural wonders he might discover in this strange land on the other side of the world. After the fleet arrives in Port Jackson, Rooke sets up camp on a rocky and isolated point, and starts his work of astronomy and navigation. It's not too long before some of the Aboriginal people who live around the ... read more

Erica Hazelhurst, a philosopher from Sydney, has been given a project by her university to work on the papers of the late Wesley Antill (The Pages). She travels across the Blue Mountains to his country property with her psychologist friend Sophie.

When I stood up, I could not see my mother. She was not on the beach, and when I looked back across the water she was not there either. I asked, or was about to ask, where she had gone when I saw something floating a little way off, not far from the shore. In the icy elongated moment that followed I could neither move nor hear nor speak. A woman wakes from a coma, its cause unknown. She refuses to see her family; she does not say why. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she becomes stronger. Now she will walk. Where? Walking to the Moon, K... read more

Helen prepares her spare room for her friend Nicola. She is coming to Melbourne to receive cancer treatment she believes will cure her. From the moment Nicola steps off the plane, Helen becomes her nurse, her protector, her guardian angel and her stony judge.

It was just a little lie. But it has landed Nick Carmody in serious trouble. It didn't seem much, to say he was the one driving Danny Grogan's car when it was caught by a speed camera. And Danny's billionaire father has promised to make the lie worth his while. First published 2008.

An auctioneer by profession, Rilke is an acknowledged expert in antiques but also considers himself something of an expert in many other fields. When he comes upon a hidden collection of violent, and highly disturbing, erotic photographs, Rilke feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them. What follows is a compulsive journey of discovery, decadence and deviousness.

Kate Grenville's The Secret River was first published in 2005, but, now in soft cover, it remains a firm favourite - and can anyone else write such compelling and vividly mmemorable historical fiction and illustrate so clearly the issues around colonisation?