Spydus Search Results - Debut Fiction

Vladimir / Julia May Jonas.

"When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me." And so we meet our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose husband, a charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who's just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. With her bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured literary debut, Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the strictures of morality (so sensible, so sober!) bump up against the impulses of the human heart (so mercurial, so vain!) Propulsive, darkly funny, and surreptitiously moving, Vladimir maps the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the messy contradictions of power and desire.
Author: Jonas, Julia May
Published: London : Picador, 2023.
Published: ©2022
238 pages ; 20 cm

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JONA - Available - 010515258
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JONA - Available - 010945642
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JONA - Available - 010945697
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JONA - Available - 010820109

Funny ethnics / Shirley Le.

I looked at the streets of Yagoona through eyes stinging with melted Maybelline liquid liner. Yagoona looked back at me, the wannabe hipster who dreamed of moving to a share house in the inner west, and cackled. Funny Ethnics catapults readers into the sprawling city-within-a-city that is Western Sydney and the world of Sylvia Nguyen: only child of Vietnamese refugee parents, unexceptional student, exceptional self-doubter. It's a place where migrants from across the world converge, and identity is a slippery, ever-shifting beast. Jumping through snapshots of Sylvia's life - from childhood to something resembling adulthood - this novel is about square pegs and round holes, those who belong and those on the fringes. It's a funhouse mirror held up to modern Australia revealing suburban fortune tellers, train-carriage preachers, crumbling friendships and bad stand-up comedy. In Funny Ethnics, Shirley Le uses a coming-of-age tale to reveal a side of Australia so ordinary that it's entirely bizarre.
Author: Le, Shirley
Published: Boon Wurrung Country ; South Melbourne, VIC : Affirm Press, 2023.
Published: ©2023
261 pages ; 24 cm
Average rating: (1 review)

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - LE - Onloan - Due: 29 Apr 2024 - 010829973
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - LE - Available - 010830009

The collected regrets of Clover [Paperback] / Mikki Brammer.

In her work as a 'death doula', Clover Brooks ushers people peacefully through their last days, collecting their final words into three notebooks: Advice, Confessions And Regrets. But Clover spends so much time with the dying that she's forgotten how to live... Can her clients' hard-won wisdom -- and the inspiring love story of a spirited old woman named Claudia -- show Clover the way to a happy ending? After all, what's the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can't give yourself a beautiful life?
Author: Brammer, Mikki
Published: [Melbourne, VIC] : Viking, 2023.
Published: ©2023
314 pages ; 24 cm.

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRAM - Available - 010700210
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRAM - Onloan - Due: 01 Jun 2024 - 010700227
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRAM - Onloan - Due: 28 May 2024 - 010700234
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRAM - Onloan - Due: 20 Jun 2024 - 010723141
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRAM - Available - 010698609
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRAM - Available - 010699033

Anam / André Dao.

Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile. A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story? A detective tale? Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten. The grandson mines his family and personal stories to turn over ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, legacy and expectation, ambition and sacrifice. As he sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about -- a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?
Author: Dao, André, 1988-
Published: [Melbourne, VIC] : Hamish Hamilton, 2023.
Published: ©2023
344 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - DAO - Available - 010820185
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - DAO - Available - 010820192
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - DAO - Available - 010725954

The albatross [Paperback] / Nina Wan.

Primrose Li is torn - between her past and her present, her first love and her current love, duty and desire, fear and freedom. One day, as she's almost come apart at the seams, she takes an unexpected detour to her local golf course. Slowly, this sport - which she is terrible at - becomes her meditation and her cure.
Author: Wan, Nina
Published: Sydney, New South Wales : Macmillan, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2023.
Published: ©2023
310 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - WAN - Available - 010820840
Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - WAN - Available - 010820833
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - WAN - Available - 010717362
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - WAN - Available - 010717379
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - WAN - Available - 010717355
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - WAN - Available - 010820826

Search history / Amy Taylor.

After fleeing to Melbourne in the wake of a breakup, all Ana has to show for herself is an unfulfilling job at an overly enthusiastic tech start-up and one particularly questionable dating app experience. Then she meets Evan. Charming, kind and financially responsible, Evan is a complete aberration from her usual type, and Ana feels like she has finally awoken from a long dating nightmare. As much as she tries to let their burgeoning relationship unfold IRL, Ana just can't resist the urge to find Evan online. When she discovers that his previous girlfriend, Emily, died unexpectedly in a hit-and-run less than a year ago, Ana begins to worry she's living in the shadow of his lost love. Soon she's obsessively comparing herself to Emily, trawling through her dormant social media accounts in the hope of understanding her better. Online Evan and Emily's life together looked perfect, but just how perfect was it? And why won't he talk about it?
Author: Taylor, Amy
Published: Cammeraygal Country ; Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2023.
Published: ©2023
313 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - TAYL - Onloan - Due: 13 Jun 2024 - 010714170
Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - TAYL - Available - 010714187
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - TAYL - Available - 010712473

Sad girl novel / Pip Finkemeyer.

A young woman tries to figure out if she's the best (a creative genius) or if she's maybe just the worst (completely delusional). I'd be in heaven but on the edge of a deeper misery than ever, I'd be on top of the world and then they'd ask me, did you make the right choice Kim? Are you currently, still, making the right choices Kimberley Mueller? Over the course of a year in Berlin, an aspiring novelist, Kim, and her historian best friend, Bel, confront their twin acts of creation. Kim is becoming a writer, and is determined to write a bestseller. She's been convinced of this idea by Matthew, an American literary agent who is as emotionally unavailable as he is handsome (very). Kim lives in her own carefully constructed reality, which her imagination is constantly pumping full of hot air. As she attempts to buoy herself using other people for external motivation, they poke holes in her fantasies, leading her to wonder if she's going to come crashing down or somehow stay afloat. Meanwhile Bel is becoming a mother, and gives birth to a baby, certain it will fulfil her in ways her career does not seem to. Kim and Bel support and deceive each other as only the best of friends can. In the face of probable failure, how do we convince ourselves to try and become something anyway? And how do we live with the choices we make?
Author: Finkemeyer, Pip
Published: Gadigal Country ; Ultimo, NSW : Ultimo Press, 2023.
Published: ©2023
x, 308 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - FINK - Available - 010725213
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - FINK - Available - 010725206
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - FINK - Available - 010725190

The pit / Peter Papathanasiou.

With DS Manolis on leave in Greece, Senior Constable Sparrow receives a phone call from a man who wants to turn himself in. Bob is sixty-five years old, confined to a Perth nursing home. But thirty years ago, he killed a man in the remote northern Kimberley mining region. He offers to show Sparrow where the body is, but there's a catch: Sparrow must travel north with him under the guise of being his carer. They are accompanied on the drive by another nursing home resident: Luke, thirty years old, paralysed in a motorbike accident. As they embark on their road trip through the guts of Western Australia, pursued by outback police and adrenaline-soaked miners, Sparrow beings to suspect that Bob's desire to head north may have sinister motivations. Is Luke being held against his will? And what lies in store for them when they reach their goal?
Author: Papathanasiou, Peter
Published: London : MacLehose Press, 2023.
Published: ©2023
296 pages ; 24 cm

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - PAPA - Available - 010841289
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - PAPA - Available - 010841333
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - PAPA - Onloan - Due: 11 Jun 2024 - 010841326

At the foot of the cherry tree / Alli Parker.

Gordon Parker is just an eager eighteen-year-old Australian boy desperate to fight for his country, and Nobuko 'Cherry' Sakuramoto is a sixteen-year-old girl struggling to survive in Japan in the aftermath of World War II. But when they fall in love, they change the course of history. When Gordon arrives in Japan, he expects ruthless samurai, angry Japanese men ready to kill Australians at every corner. Instead, he finds Cherry, terrified of ex-enemy soldiers, a 16-year-old survivor of the atomic bomb. Against all the rules and against all odds, they fall in love. But when Gordon discovers the White Australia Policy prevents Cherry coming home with him as his war bride, Gordon does what any 20-year-old soldier would do. He vows to fight. Leaving Cherry alone and pregnant in post-war Japan, Gordon somehow has to convince his family to accept his marriage and wage a desperate campaign against a xenophobic and war-scarred government to allow his wife and his family to come home. A story spanning seven years and two countries reeling from the aftermath of war, At the Foot of the Cherry Tree is a sweeping and moving novel about faith, trust, and the power of a love that alters history - written by Gordon and Cherry's granddaughter, accomplished scriptwriter, Alli Parker.
Author: Parker, Alli
Published: Gadigal Country ; Sydney, NSW : HarperCollins Australia, 2023.
Published: ©2023
324 pages ; 24 cm
19 reserves

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - PARK - Onloan - Due: 03 Jun 2024 - 010838173
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - PARK - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 11 May 2024) - 010850380
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - PARK - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 16 May 2024) - 010838180
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - PARK - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 15 May 2024) - 010838197
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - PARK - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 10 May 2024) - 010850373

The visitors [Paperback] / Jane Harrison.

1788, Gadigal country. On a steamy hot day in January, seven Aboriginal men, Elder statesmen representing the tribes from around Sydney, gather at Warrane. Ships of a type which have never seen before are anchored in the harbour. They meet to discuss their response to these Visitors. All day, they talk, argue, debate. Where are these Visitors from? What do they want? Might the Visitors just warra warra wai back to where they come from? Or should they be welcomed? Or - should they be made to leave? The decision of the men must be unanimous - and will have far-reaching implications for all. Throughout the day the weather is strange; with mammatus clouds, unbearable heat, and a pending thunderstorm... somewhere, trouble is brewing. From award-winning indigenous playwright, author and festival director, Jane Harrison, comes a reimagining of a crucial moment in Australia's history. Based on her smash-hit play of the same name that had a sold-out season in January 2020, this extraordinary novel is powerful, fresh, playful, audacious, imaginative and moving, a radical re-imagining of history and an unputdownable work of fiction - think Twelve Angry Men meets Lincoln in the Bardo, but with an authentic, earthy Australian humour.
Author: Harrison, Jane, 1960-
Published: Sydney, NSW : Fourth Estate, 2023.
Published: ©2023
292 pages ; 24 cm
1 reserve

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - HARR - Available - 010857822
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - HARR - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 13 May 2024) - 010857808

Firelight / John Morrissey.

In this striking collection of stories, the award-winning John Morrissey investigates colonialism and identity without ever losing sight of his characters' humanity. Brilliantly imagined and masterfully observed, Firelight marks the debut of a writer we will be reading for decades to come.
Author: Morrissey, John
Published: Wurundjeri Country ; Melbourne, VIC : Text Publishing, 2023.
Published: ©2023
237 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MORR - Available - 010840466
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MORR - Available - 010840473

One day we're all going to die [Paperback] / Elise Esther Hearst.

"At 27, Naomi is just trying to be a normal person. A normal person who works at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, who cares for lost things, found things, sacred things and her family. A person who finds herself going on bad blind dates, having cringe-worthy sex, a tumultuous, toxic affair, and falling for a man her parents won't (or can't) approve of. Being a normal person would be easy and fine if she didn't bear the weight of the unspoken grief of Cookie, her Holocaust-survivor grandmother. It would all be fine if she just knew how to be, without feeling the pull of expectation, the fear of disappointing others (men, friends, her parents, humanity), and that pesky problem of being attracted to all the wrong people (according to her parents, anyway). By endlessly trying to please everyone around her, Naomi can't seem to figure out what she wants for herself, or how to get it. With echoes of the dead and dying all about her, in objects, in story, in her grandmother's firm grasp, Naomi isn't quite sure she knows how to be a normal person, but she is going to try."--Back cover.
Author: Hearst, Elise Esther
First Australian paperback edition.
Published: Sydney, NSW : HQ Fiction, 2023.
Published: ©2023
307 pages ; 24 cm
Average rating: (1 review)
6 reserves

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - HEAR - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 15 May 2024) - 010857877
Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - HEAR - Onloan - Due: 24 May 2024 - 010936435
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - HEAR - Onloan - Due: 15 Jun 2024 - 010857853
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - HEAR - Onloan - Due: 04 Jun 2024 - 010857846

But the girl [Paperback] / Jessica Zhan Mei Yu.

Girl is spending the spring at an artist's residency in Scotland. Far from her home in Australia and her tight-knit Malaysian family, she is meant to be writing a postcolonial novel and working on a PhD on the poetry of Sylvia Plath. But she can't stop thinking about her upbringing and the stories of her parents and grandmother who raised her. How can she reconcile their dreams for her with her lived reality? Did Sylvia Plath have this problem? What even is a 'postcolonial novel'? And what if the story of becoming yourself is not about carving out a new identity but learning to understand the people who shaped you?
Author: Yu, Jessica Zhan Mei
Published: Camberwell, VIC : Hamish Hamilton Australia, 2023.
Published: ©2023
220 pages ; 24 cm
2 reserves

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - YU - Onloan - Due: 02 Jun 2024 - 010840022
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - YU - Onloan - Due: 30 May 2024 - 010840039

The modern / Anna Kate Blair.

Set in the pristine, precarious world of MoMA, The Modern is a brilliantly wry and insightful debut about art, sexuality, commitment and whether being on the right path can lead to the wrong place. Things seem to be working out for Sophia in New York: having come from Australia to be at the centre of modernity, she's working at the Museum of Modern Art, living in a great apartment with a boyfriend interviewing for Ivy League teaching positions. They're smart, serious, dine in the right restaurants and have (a little unexpectedly) become engaged just before he leaves to hike the Appalachian Trail. Alone in the city, Sophia begins to wonder what it means to be married -- to be defined, publicly -- in the 21st century. Can you be true to yourself and someone else? In a bridal shop she meets Cara, a young artist struggling to get over her ex-girlfriend, and the two begin a connection that leads Sophia to question the nature of her relationships, her career and the consequences of being modern. Both playful and profound, inhabiting the gap between what we feel about ourselves and how we behave, Anna Kate Blair's debut novel is a sparklingly insightful queer exploration of desire, art and her generation's place in the world. It announces an exceptional new literary voice.
Author: Blair, Anna Kate
Published: Cammeray, NSW : Scribner, 2023.
Published: ©2023
329 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BLAI - Available - 010859017
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BLAI - Available - 010859024
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BLAI - Onloan - Due: 31 May 2024 - 010859000

After the forest / Kell Woods.

1650: The Black Forest, Wurttemberg. Fifteen years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their father and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people recovering in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in her ear, and the recipe inside that makes the most sinfully delicious - and addictive - gingerbread. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her intoxicating gingerbread is a source of ever-growing suspicion and vicious gossip. And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta's own power - magic she is still trying to understand - may be the only thing that can save her ... If it doesn't kill her first.
Author: Woods, Kell
Published: Gadigal Country ; [Sydney, NSW] : HarperVoyager, 2023.
Published: ©2023
371 pages ; 24 cm
1 reserve

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Fantasy - WOOD - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 17 May 2024) - 010961932
Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Fantasy - WOOD - Onloan - Due: 27 May 2024 - 010961949
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Fantasy - WOOD - Onloan - Due: 04 Jun 2024 - 010961895

The opposite of success / Eleanor Elliott Thomas.

Council employee Lorrie Hope has a great partner, two adorable kids and absolutely no idea what to do with her life. This Friday, she's hoping for change: it's launch day for her big work project, and she's applied for a promotion she's not entirely sure she wants. Meanwhile, her best friend, Alex, is stuck in a mess involving Lorrie's rakish ex, Ruben--or, more accurately, his wife. Oh, and Ruben's boss happens to be the mining magnate Sebastian Glup, who is sponsoring Lorrie's project. As the day spirals from bad to worse to frankly unhinged, Lorrie and Alex must reconsider what they can expect from life, love and middle management. The Opposite of Success is a riotously funny debut novel about work, motherhood, friendship--and the meaning of failure itself.
Author: Thomas, Eleanor Elliott
Published: Wurundjeri Country ; Melbourne Vic : The Text Publishing Company, 2023.
Published: ©2023
268 pages ; 24 cm
12 reserves

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - THOM - Onloan - Due: 11 Jun 2024 - 010965046
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - THOM - Onloan - Due: 20 May 2024 - 010965060
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - THOM - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 03 May 2024) - Under repair (Set: 07 May 2024) - 010982180
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - THOM - Onloan - Due: 30 May 2024 - 010965053

So close to home / Mick Cummins.

Eighteen-year-old Aaron is charismatic, resourceful and addicted to heroin. His mum has kicked him out of home in a last-ditch move to help him get straight, and he wanders the streets of South Melbourne, living on his wits and sleeping rough, all the while chasing drugs, dreams and love. Desperate to fund his addiction, Aaron climbs into the car of The Man, a distinguished elderly gentleman willing to pay for a certain kind of relationship. This regular cash could be the lifeline Aaron needs to start again, but The Man keeps raising spectres from Aaron's past that he'd rather forget. As Aaron gathers the courage to confront the events that derailed his life, his rage grows and the consequences could be fatal.
Author: Cummins, Mick
Published: Boon Wurrung Country, South Melbourne, VIC : Affirm Press, 2023.
Published: ©2023
295 pages ; 24 cm
Average rating: (1 review)

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - CUMM - Onloan - Due: 06 Jun 2024 - 010938279
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - CUMM - Available - 010938286
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - CUMM - Onloan - Due: 01 Jun 2024 - 010938309

Green dot [Paperback] / Madeleine Gray.

A witty, profound and painfully relatable debut novel exploring solitude, desire, and the allure of chasing something that promises nothing. Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers, and a dog-eared novel collection. While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she's actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.
Author: Gray, Madeleine
Published: Cammeraygal Country ; Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2023.
Published: ©2023
376 pages ; 24 cm
34 reserves

13 copies

Songs for the dead and the living [Paperback] / Sara M Saleh.

When the ground beneath your feet is always shifting, how can you ever know where you belong? Jamilah has always believed she knows where her home is: in a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut, with her large, chaotic, loving family. But she soon learns that as Palestinian refugees, her family's life in Lebanon is precarious, and they must try to blend in even as they fight to retain their identity. When conflict comes to Beirut, Jamilah's world fractures, and the family is forced to flee to Cairo: another escape, and another slip further away from Palestine, the homeland to which they cannot return. In the end, Jamilah will have to choose between holding on to everything she knows and pursuing a life she can truly call her own. Songs for the Dead and the Living is a coming-of-age tale played out across generations and continents, from Palestine to Australia. Through stunning prose, acclaimed writer and human-rights activist Sara M Saleh offers a breathtaking portrait of the fragilities and flaws of family in the wake of war, and the love it takes to overcome great loss.
Author: Saleh, Sara M.
Published: Boon Wurrung Country ; South Melbourne, VIC : Affirm Press, 2023.
Published: ©2023
278 pages ; 24 cm

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - SALE - Onloan - Due: 06 Jun 2024 - 010855132
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - SALE - Onloan - Due: 27 May 2024 - 010855125

Prima facie / Suzie Miller.

Tessa is a thoroughbred. A young, brilliant barrister. She has worked her way up from a working-class background to be at the top of her game: defending, cross-examining and lighting up the shadows of doubt in any case. Her masterful line of questioning in the courtroom has netted Tessa win after win, freeing men accused of rape and sexual assault. As controversial as it is, this is her job - it's just about the facts and who can game the system. Working late one night, Tessa falls into a casual relationship with Julian, a coworker, an attorney who comes from an elite, wealthy family. A light-hearted affair, with a man she admires. She begins to wonder if perhaps there is a future for the two of them. One sickening night, though, Julian makes a choice and Tessa finds herself in a position countless women - one in three - have before her. And she's faced with a gut-wrenching, life-changing decision: will she take the stand to testify about her rape, with the full awareness that the system has not been built to protect her? Drawn from the internationally acclaimed play, Prima Facie is a propulsive, raw look at the price victims pay for speaking out and the system that sets them up to fail. With breakneck prose and a devastating emotional intensity, this is a novel for our times, by one of Australia's most important writers.
Author: Miller, Suzie
Published: Sydney, New South Wales : Picador, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2023.
Published: ©2023
345 pages ; 24 cm
Average rating: (1 review)
10 reserves

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - Onloan - Due: 11 Jun 2024 - 010965596
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 15 May 2024) - 010965572
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - Onloan - Due: 17 May 2024 - 010965589
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 13 May 2024) - 010943372
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - Onloan - Due: 31 May 2024 - 010925040
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 07 May 2024) - 010993124
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - On Reserve Shelf - Awaiting collection within 10 days of this date. (Set: 17 May 2024) - 010993148
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - Onloan - Due: 11 Jun 2024 - 010981060
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MILL - Onloan - Due: 28 May 2024 - 010981015

Black river [Paperback] / Matthew Spencer.

"A long, burning summer in Sydney. A young woman found murdered in the deserted grounds of an elite boarding school. A serial killer preying on victims along the banks of the Parramatta River. A city on edge. Adam Bowman, a battling journalist who grew up as the son of a teacher at Prince Albert College, might be the only person who can uncover the links between the school murder and the 'Blue Moon Killer'. But he will have to go into the darkest places of his childhood to piece together the clues. Detective Sergeant Rose Riley, meanwhile, is part of the taskforce desperately trying to find the killer before he strikes again. Adam Bowman's excavation of his past might turn out to be Rose's biggest trump card or it may bring the whole investigation crashing down, and put her own life in danger." -- Back cover.
Author: Spencer, Matthew
Published: Crows Nest, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2022.
Published: ©2022
349 pages ; 24 cm.

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - SPEN - Available - 010619789
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - SPEN - Onloan - Due: 14 Jun 2024 - 010572930
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - SPEN - Onloan - Due: 22 May 2024 - 010572886
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - SPEN - Available - 010619796
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - Crime - SPEN - Available - 010572923

Happy stories, mostly [Paperback] / Norman Erikson Pasaribu ; translated by Tiffany Tsao.

"Happy Stories, Mostly is a playful, charged and tender collection of twelve stories - a blend of speculative fiction and dark absurdism, often drawing on Norman Erikson Pasaribu's Batak and Christian cultures. Pasaribu's stories ask what it means to be almost happy - almost to find joy, almost to be accepted, but never quite grasp one's desire. Joy and contentment shimmer on the horizon, just out of reach. In one story, an employee is introduced to their new workplace - a department of Heaven devoted to archiving unanswered prayers. In another, a woman on holiday in Vietnam attempts to find solace following the suicide of her son. In a third, a young man befriends a university classmate obsessed with verifying the existence of a mythical hundred-foot-tall man. Throughout the collection, queerness is a fact of life from which tragicomic events spring, amidst the forces that keep people from those whom they yearn for most, and the miraculous, melancholy ability to survive such loneliness. In the words of one of the stories' narrators, 'I work in the dark. Like mushrooms. I don't need light to thrive.'" -- Back cover.
Author: Pasaribu, Norman Erikson, 1990-
Published: Artarmon, NSW : Giramondo Publishing, 2022.
Published: ©2022
143 pages ; 21 cm.
Southern latitudes

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - PASA - Available - 010514336

Forty nights : a novel / Pirooz Jafari.

'This story came to me and entered my soul. It did not need a key or an invite, for it already belonged. It walked in, shook my foundation and set my heart on fire. We danced around the flames and with every twirl, I grabbed a few words until I was burnt to ashes.' Tishtar runs a small legal practice in Melbourne where he has a new client, Habiba, who seeks to bring her orphan nieces to Australia from war-torn Somalia. He is also a migrant, having left the civil unrest in Iran to find a new life in a new country. As Tishtar becomes consumed with Habiba's tales of war-torn Somalia, his own childhood memories return and he reflects on the time he spent at his grandmother's house to escape the atrocities that unravelled post the Islamic Revolution. While at his grandmother's house he comes to know Gretel, another lost soul who has experienced a community torn apart by division. Tishtar embarks on a journey in search of peace -- for Habiba, for Gretel, for himself.
Author: Jafari, Pirooz
Published: Ultimo, N.S.W. : Ultimo Press, 2022.
Published: ©2022
308 pages ; 23 cm.

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JAFA - Available - 010590132
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JAFA - Available - 010590118
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JAFA - - (Set: 18 Oct 2022) - 010738664
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - JAFA - Onloan - Due: 03 Jun 2024 - 010590125

Sixty-seven days [eBook] / Yvonne Weldon.

'We don't say any words - everything has been said through two sets of eyes, two entangled souls and endless kissing.' Evie has been raised in the heart of Aboriginal Redfern, by a proud trailblazing Wiradjuri family. She remembers so much about the previous world - the Dreamtime, the ancestors, and the knowing - but she also harbours a dark pain that is becoming almost too much to bear. And then Evie meets James, a young man radiating pure love who fills her life with light. On the cusp of adulthood, with their whole lives ahead of them, they travel to Evie?s beloved country, the central west of New South Wales and the Riverina regions. Swimming in the waters of the Kalare, as known by the Wiradjuri, and in the Murrumbidgee, singing with her ancestors, listening to the spirits. The new world created between Evie and James is one they did not know they were missing. Now they can?t leave it alone. They are no longer separate - they are one, they are whole together - until a sudden event leaves them seeking answers to one of life?s most eternal questions: is love strong enough to withstand anything? An intense and mesmerising story of first love and longing, suffused with Wiradjuri Dreaming, family and culture, about a future dreamt and a future taken, by an important new voice in Australian fiction.
Author: Weldon, Yvonne
Published: [North Sydney, NSW] : Penguin eBooks, 2022.
Available online: Access eBook online

Web - (Bayside Library Service) - Ebooks - DOWNLOADABLE - check availability online (Set: 10 Oct 2022) - Access resource

Olga dies dreaming / Xochitl Gonzalez.

"A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane María. It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets... Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream-all while asking what it really means to weather a storm"--
Author: Gonzalez, Xochitl, 1977-
Published: London : Fleet, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, 2022.
Published: ©2021
373 pages ; 23 cm.

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - GONZ - Onloan - Due: 02 Jun 2024 - 010475439
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - GONZ - Available - 010612964

Wahala [Paperback] / Nikki May.

This novel of female friendship follows three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group. Ronke, Simi, Boo are three mixed-race friends living in London. They have the gift of two cultures, Nigerian and English. Not all of them choose to see it that way. Everyday racism has never held them back, but now in their thirties, they question their future. Ronke wants a husband (he must be Nigerian); Boo enjoys (correction: endures) stay-at-home motherhood; while Simi, full of fashion career dreams, rolls her eyes as her boss refers to her urban vibe yet again. When Isobel, a lethally glamorous friend from their past arrives in town, she is determined to fix their futures for them. Cracks in their friendship begin to appear, and it is soon obvious Isobel is not sorting but wrecking. When she is driven to a terrible act, the women are forced to reckon with a crime in their past that may just have repeated itself.
Author: May, Nikki
Published: London : Doubleday, 2022.
Published: ©2022
372 pages ; 24 cm

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MAY - Onloan - Due: 25 May 2024 - 010488422
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - MAY - Available - 010488415

The keepers / Al Campbell.

This daring and dazzling debut shines a light on those who are let down by the systems that are supposed to care for them, or by parents who can't love, revealing the unsung heroes of our communities. Jay's life is devoted to the care of her twin teenage sons, who view the world as differently as it views them. Frank is sweet, overweight and bullied, while Teddy is whip-sharp, despite needing an iPad to speak. With an absent husband, and embroiled in an endless battle with social services, Jay comes to depend on Keep, her lifelong half-real friend. But in the corner of her eye lurks her mother, and a childhood Jay knows she can't ever outrun. Jay believes she is managing things quite well, with a half-grip on this half-life of hers. That is, until Teddy starts to get sick, refusing to eat, while doctors refuse to listen, confounding everything Jay thought she knew about what lies ahead. The Keepers is an incredible and fiercely honest debut about the damage done by parents who can't love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold.
Author: Campbell, Al
Published: St Lucia, Queensland : University of Queensland Press, 2022.
Published: ©2022
335 pages ; 24 cm.

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - CAMP - Available - 010467502
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - CAMP - Available - 010467519
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - CAMP - Available - 010467526

28 questions [Paperback] / Indyana Schneider.

They say it takes 28 Questions to fall in love. Then what? 'Reader, imagine yielding to someone with a power so strong she has the ability to slice time. Before. Her. After.' When first-year music student Amalia stumbles into her Oxford college bar, she has no idea that everything is about to change. Seated across from her is Alex, a velvety-voiced fellow Australian with eyes the colour of her native sky. They strike up a friendship that is immediate - its intensity both thrilling and terrifying. As the days and weeks go by, they spend more and more time together: philosophising, hypothesising, questioning everything. There is nothing they cannot talk about, except the one thing that matters most. Dare they risk a romantic entanglement if it threatens this most perfect of friendships? Set across four years and five cities, and suffused with music, literature, art, dance, sex, and the exquisite pain and pleasure of first love, 28 Questions is a passionate and unforgettable first novel about love in all its guises, growing up, and figuring out who you are along the way.
Author: Schneider, Indyana
Published: London : Scribner, 2022.
Published: ©2022
467 pages ; 24 cm.

Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - SCHN - Available - 010485001
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - SCHN - Onloan - Due: 31 May 2024 - 010484998

The islands [Paperback] / Emily Brugman.

There are few places wilder than Little Rat, a small island in an archipelago off the coast of Western Australia. Beautiful, harsh and lonely, the landscape is still haunted by the many ships that have wrecked on its reefs across the centuries. Yet it is here that the Saari family try to build their future, thousands of miles from the cold lowlands of Finland. A crayfishing family, Onni and his wife Alva work hard. Against this spectacular and brutal backdrop, small tragedies and immense joys are shared by the fishing families of Little Rat: Alva makes a perilous journey across rough seas with a tiny newborn baby, where, against all odds, she feels safe; their young daughter Hilda watches as a small boy tumbles from a jetty and very nearly drowns; an old story of shipwreck and mutiny intrigues two adolescent boys; a mysterious and tortured fisherman rows into the eye of a storm; and Hilda, on the brink of womanhood, comes to know the cruelty and the ecstasy of desire, while distances expand between her and her migrant parents.
Author: Brugman, Emily
Published: Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2022.
Published: ©2022.
300 pages : maps ; 24 cm.

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRUG - Available - 010466901
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRUG - Available - 010466895
Sandringham Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - BRUG - Onloan - Due: 22 Jun 2024 - 010466918

Hovering [Paperback] / Rhett Davis.

The city was in the same place. But was it the same city? Alice stands outside her family's 1950s red brick veneer, unsure if she should approach. It has been sixteen years, but it's clear she is out of options. Lydia opens the door to a familiar stranger - thirty-nine, tall, bony, pale. She knows her sister immediately. But something isn't right. Meanwhile her son, George, is upstairs, still refusing to speak, and lost in a virtual world of his own design. Nothing is as it was, and while the sisters' resentments flare, it seems that the city too is agitated. People wake up to streets that have rearranged themselves, in houses that have moved to different parts of town. Tensions rise and the authorities have no answers. The internet becomes alight with conspiracy theories. As the world lurches around them, Alice's secret will be revealed, and the ground at their feet will no longer be so firm.
Author: Davis, Rhett
Published: Sydney, NSW : Hachette Australia, 2022.
Published: ©2022
293 pages ; 24 cm.
Average rating: (1 review)

Beaumaris Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - DAVI - Available - 010525462
Brighton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - DAVI - Available - 010525486
Hampton Library - (Bayside Library Service) - Adult Fiction - General - DAVI - Available - 010525479