Many people turn their attention across the ocean to British authors and their work, but there is so much great writing coming out of, and taking place in, Australia. From literary fiction to young-adult coming-of-age to nonfiction travelogues, there is something for everyone to listen to.
From the author of the award-winning The Slap. Daniel Kelly has astonishing talent in the swimming pool. It silences the rich boys at the private school he attends on a scholarship. Everything Danny and his family has done and sacrificed has been for his talent…but what happens when that talent fails?
Listen to an excerpt Barracuda
After spending years in Paris making high-end dresses, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. This darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture is also a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet.
Listen to an excerpt The Dressmaker
Abigail Ulman’s heartbreakingly tender and often darkly funny collection of short stories is a fresh take on the experiences of contemporary young women.
Listen to an excerpt Hot Little Hands
Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver whose life is routine until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. Soon he begins getting anonymous mail instructing him to help others, and he becomes the messenger. Who is behind this mission?
Listen to an excerpt I Am the Messenger
Bill Bryson reports on Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet.
Listen to an excerpt In a Sunburned Country
In a small Australian mining town, thirteen-year-old Charlie Bucktin’s life is forever changed when Jasper Jones, an outcast, knocks on his bedroom window looking for help.
Listen to an excerpt Jasper Jones
This iconic fantasy series begins with Sabriel. She has lived outside the Old Kingdom, away from Free Magic and the Dead who don’t die. But her father, the Charter-Mage Abhorsen, goes missing, and she must cross back into that world to find him, confronting evil and discovering her destiny.
Listen to an excerpt Sabriel
From the author of Big Little Lies comes a heartfelt story about whether it’s possible to start over. Alice Love is twenty-nine, in love with her husband, and pregnant with her first child. Suddenly though, she awakes on the floor of a gym after sustaining a head injury, to discover she’s actually thirty-nine, going through a divorce, and has three children. She must reconstruct the last decade of her life and decide if forgetting is a blessing or a curse.
Listen to an excerpt What Alice Forgot
Rachel and Henry, former best friends, find their way back to each other in a secondhand bookstore full of secrets, crushes, and second chances, with the help of letters hidden in the pages of books. This is a beautiful exploration of grief, hope, and love.
Listen to an excerpt Words in Deep Blue