Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and Australian Book Industry Awards, Book of the Year. After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a whisper that freedom can be bought, an opportunity to start afresh. As Thornhill stakes his claim on a patch of ground by the Hawkesbury River, the battle lines...

Kate Grenville's Orange-Prize winning novel The Idea of Perfection is the story of the small town of Karakarook, and of Douglas Cheeseman and Harley Savage—two people who seem the least likely in the world to fall in love. Unlike Felicity Porcelline, a woman dangerously haunted by the idea of perfection, they come to understand that what looks like weakness can be the best kind of strength.   Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers. Her bestselling novel The Secret River has been published in more than twenty countries. It has received numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Man...

Joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2016 - Fiction category Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize She hears her own thick voice deep inside her ears when she says, 'I need to know where I am.' The man stands there, tall and narrow, hand still on the doorknob, surprised. He says, almost in sympathy, 'Oh, sweetie. You need to know what you are.' Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of nowhere. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight...

The brilliant new novel from Charlotte Wood, acclaimed author of The Natural Way of Things. Shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now . . . Despite the three women knowing each other better than their own siblings, Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they...