The Shepherd’s Hut
A rifle-shot of a novel – crisp, fast, shocking – The Shepherd’s Hut is an urgent masterpiece about solitude, unlikely friendship, and the raw business of survival.
Filtered by MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION
The Bookshop Detectives 2: Tea and Cake and Death
Another case to solve for the number-one bestselling Bookshop Detectives. When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders . . .The Bookshop Detectives are on the case!
The Housemaid
The most gripping thriller of the year, The Housemaid is an international digital bestseller about the shockingly dark heart of a seemingly perfect family . . .
The Oasis
Trainee psychiatrist Doctor Hannah Wright has only just got her head above water in the acute psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital when she’s thrown into the deep end of the outpatient clinic. Keen to develop her skills in talking therapies, she finds herself up against a boss who’s focused on medication and a senior colleague with a score to settle.
One Hundred Years of Betty
Meet Betty: storyteller, feminist, eternally curious and phenomenally old. On the eve of her hundredth birthday party, Betty tells us her story.
Signs of Damage
A gripping tale of unravelling memories and moral ambiguities, Signs of Damage wrestles with the difference between understanding other people, and trying to explain them.
Nesting
It was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back.
The Boyfriend
She’s looking for the perfect man. He’s looking for the perfect victim.
Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it all- men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can’t shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.
Things Will Calm Down Soon
Welcome to the hectic world of beauty and business in this highly relatable novel following a talented hair stylist turned entrepreneur juggling family dramas, workplace near-catastrophes and relationship crises. Things will calm down soon…right?
This Kingdom of Dust
The whole world has just watched Neil and Buzz walk on the Moon. Now they are struck by terror: the lunar module’s engine has failed. There is no back-up, no other way off the surface. If the astronauts can’t fix the problem, they’ll slowly run out of oxygen and die. This Kingdom of Dust explores this harrowing scenario through the intertwined narratives of three distinct voices: Buzz on the Moon, his wife Joan back on Earth, and Aquarius, the journalist compelled to craft a story he doesn’t want to write.
Marigold Mind Laundry
We will wash away your pain and iron away any creases in your heart. Overnight, in the village of Marigold on top of a hill, old Jieun has conjured up a magical Mind Laundry, where she cleanses painful experiences from her customer’s hearts, transferring them into stains on a T-shirt and transforming them into dazzling red petals. After washing away their pain and ironing out their creases, Jieun discovers an astonishing revelation about memory, pain and moving on.
River Song
The arrival of a hotshot New York composer brings a rare touch of glamour and excitement to the peaceful country town of Fig Tree River. For Leonie, Madison, Sarita and Chrissie, four women involved in the local musical theatre, it’s a welcome distraction from the pressures of daily life.
Intermezzo
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
Juice
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.
Here One Moment
If you knew when you were going to die, what would you do differently? It all begins on a flight from Hobart to Sydney. The flight will be smooth. It will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off the plane. But almost all of them will be changed forever.
The Venice Hotel
Set over the twelve days of Christmas at a boutique Venice hotel, this deliciously twisty novel by acclaimed Australian author is ideal for fans of Nine Perfect Strangers and The White Lotus.
When the lives of four very different women become entangled in a boutique Venice hotel, dark secrets unravel and not everyone who checked into the hotel will check out again.
Death at the Sign of the Rook
The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.
Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
The Life Impossible
When retired Maths teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.
We Solve Murders
Combining the heart and humour of The Thursday Murder Club with a puzzling international mystery, welcome to the blockbusting new series from the biggest new fiction author of the decade, Richard Osman.
Fire and Bones
Called to Washington, D.C. to examine the victims of a mysterious arson attack, Tempe quickly finds her misgivings justified. The fire site is in Foggy Bottom, a neighbourhood with a colourful history, and as the pieces start falling into place, the property’s ownership becomes more and more suspicious.
Highway 13
A gripping, provocative work by one of our finest writers, the internationally acclaimed author Fiona McFarlane. In overlapping stories, Highway 13 explores the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people. A brilliant and illuminating account of loss and its extended echoes across an entire society.
By Any Other Name
No.1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult brings to life the woman many believe was the real playwright behind the work of William Shakespeare alongside a contemporary story of a New York author suffering the same fate of being silenced.
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife
Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car he’d return it washed and polished, with a full tank of petrol. The problem is, he has no one left to borrow from. At 82 he’s desperately lonely, broke and on the brink of homelessness.
I Hope This Finds You Well
As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
Darling Girls
It’s not just secrets buried at Wild Meadows. For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance of a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairytale everyone thinks it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses.
Think Twice
How can a man who’s already dead be wanted for murder? This is the question sports agent Myron Bolitar asks himself when two FBI agents visit him in New York. The man they are looking for is Myron’s former client and rival, Greg Downing. Greg’s DNA has been found at the scene of a high profile double-murder, and he is now the FBI’s main suspect. But Greg died three years previously, Myron says. He went to his funeral and gave the eulogy.
You Like It Darker
You like it darker? Fine, so do I’, writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life – both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel ‘the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind’, and in You Like it Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.
Every Last Suspect
Love or hate her, Harriet Osman is impossible to turn down. But someone in her life has finally snapped, leaving her face-down in a pool of her own blood. Harriet isn’t one to die quietly though, and she is determined to reveal her killer before she goes. Was it her devoted husband, Malek, with a violent past? Her best friend and lover, Victoria, with a deadly secret only Harriet knew? Or the new woman in her life, fellow school mum Karen? The one with an impeccable reputation … or so she says.
The Little Clothes
Audrey Mendes is a clever lawyer but has never made partner. Her weeks are filled with long hours in the office, visits to her ageing parents, trivia nights at the local and evenings at home with her pet rabbit, Joni. When Audrey tries to buy wine at the pub she is ignored and walks out without paying. One thing leads to another, and soon she starts rebelling in small and creative ways against a world in which she is unseen – until a painful reminder from her childhood pushes her into a reckoning.
Funny Story
Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story. How they met, fell in love, and moved back to his hometown to begin their life together. Too bad it turned out to be more of a prequel to Peter’s actual love story with his childhood best friend, Petra.
The Drowning Woman
Lee Gulliver never thought she’d find herself living on the streets – no one ever does – but when her restaurant fails, and she falls deeper into debt, she leaves her old life behind with nothing but her clothes and her car. Parked in a secluded spot by the beach, she sees a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean. Lee hauls the woman back to the surface but, instead of appreciation, she is met with fury. The drowning woman, Hazel, tells her that she wanted to die. She’s trapped in a toxic, abusive marriage, and is a prisoner in her own home.
Bright Objects
January 1997: In the small town of Jericho, New South Wales, Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible above Jericho.
My Favourite Mistake
Anna Walsh had a dream life – according to everybody else. She lived in New York, had a long-term boyfriend, and had The Best Job In The World working as a highly successful beauty PR. So why did she decide to take a flamethrower to the lot? Because now she’s back Dublin, living with her parents. She’s undeniably forty-eight, with no partner, no job, and no direction. Anna’s lost her purpose. She needs a new challenge to help her fall back in love with life again.
Day One
Marty told the reporters that she saw it happen. She saw the gunman enter the hall. She saw her mother die trying to protect them all. That’s the version of Day One Marty wishes was true. But strange inconsistencies in her story begin to surface. Details that don’t add up. Questions she can’t answer. The story ignites. Amidst the media frenzy, conspiracy theorists become obsessed with exposing what really happened. And at the epicentre of it all is a small community changed forever. Survivors crushed by guilt. Families torn in half. Outsiders consumed by the hunt for truth.
It Takes a Town
Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs. At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Langridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel.
A Calamity of Souls
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.
Sisterhood
As the waves crash on to a wild Atlantic beach, Lou is at a crossroads. For the first time ever, just giving up seems like an option. In just one night, at her own 50th birthday, her world has imploded. Her mother has kept a secret hidden all her life. And it changes everything. Before Lou can take another step, she needs to get to the bottom of the shocking truth that alters who she really is.
Whenever You’re Ready
An unexpected death finds Lizzie, Alice and Margot at various crossroads in their lives, torn between looking back and moving on. Lizzie is reeling from her discovery of a decades-old secret that changes everything she thought she knew about her friends, her family and her marriage. Alice has always been the good-time girl, as charismatic presenting the weather on television as she is working as a life model.
The Women
‘Women can be heroes, too’. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California’s idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.
The Roadmap of Loss
It’s 1997 in Melbourne, Australia, and Mark Ward is struggling to make sense of the world following the sudden death of his mother. His father, Dylan, had abandoned him and his mother when Mark was still a child, and Mark has always believed he died in a car accident shortly afterwards. For most of his life, he has carried an unjustifiable sense of guilt about his father’s absence, overlaid with memories of him as a cruel and unloving man.
Good Woman’s Guide to Making Good Choices
Loyal country girl Libby Popovic lives a golden life with her confident financier husband Ludo and their two children, Harrison and Ava. When Ludo is jailed for financial fraud, and her friends and family lose tens of thousands of dollars as a result, Libby feels agonizingly complicit for hosting the final investor pitch in their home. Matters go from atrocious to worse when her possessions and home are repossessed, Libby is sacked and a priceless family heirloom is wrecked. While camping out at the rural goat farm where she was raised, she’s forced to re-evaluate her life choices.
The Night Tide
A secluded, peaceful and diverse waterside community faces turmoil as corporate greed threatens to undo generations of heritage and tradition. Tensions mount as the community’s way of life is threatened. Meanwhile, in the city, Dominic Cochrane is at a crossroads. He is made redundant and retreats to the quiet Sydney bay.
Love and Other Scores
Gabriel is a global tennis superstar and heart-throb. As he eyes his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, the pressure is getting to him. After an intense practice session, Gabriel finds refuge in a bar, where he meets Noah. Oblivious to sports, Noah doesn’t recognise Gabriel, but there is an instant connection. The more time they spend together in the blazing heat of a Melbourne summer, the more their feelings and attraction grow.
The Broken Wave
In the small seaside town of Queenscliff, two boys from opposite sides of the world forge a friendship over a summer of sun, adventure and brotherhood. Until a catastrophic event shatters their idyllic childhoods. Two lives are lost. A lie is told.
Boy Swallows Universe [Tv Tie-In]
Brisbane, 1985: A lost father, a mute brother, a junkie mum, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It’s not as if Eli Bell’s life isn’t complicated enough already. He’s just trying to follow his heart and understand what it means to be a good man, but fate keeps throwing obstacles in his way – not the least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.
Stone Yard Devotional
A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn’t know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can’t forget.
Burn
When a tragic bushfire puts two kids in hospital, Indigenous teenager Andrew knows the police will come after him first. But Andrew almost wants to be caught, because at least it might make his dad come and rescue him from suburban Brisbane and his neglectful mother.
Growing up in small-town Tasmania, Andrew struggled at home, at school, at everything. The only thing that distracted or excited him was starting little fires. Flames boosted his morale and purified his thoughts, and they were the only thing in his life he could control. Until one day things got out of hand, and Andrew was forced to leave everything behind.
Something Bad is Going to Happen
Adella is facing the dawn of a new year and the end of her twenties – and she’s in a psychiatric unit recovering from a mental breakdown. A decade earlier, her life held such promise; she had every option in her hand. How did it come to this?
The Soulmate
Gabe is alone at the cliff’s edge. His arms are outstretched, palms facing the empty air. He said she jumped. He wouldn’t lie. Before the woman went over the cliff, Pippa and Gabe were happy. They had the kind of marriage that everyone envies, as well as two sweet young daughters, a supportive family, and a picturesque cliff-side home – which would have been idyllic had the tall beachside cliffs not become so popular among those wishing to end their lives.
The Shot
Producer Mara Bolt is the queen of reality TV. Ambitious to the point of ruthlessness, Mara will do anything for ratings. When she meets Kristy Shaw, Mara is certain she’s found the star of her newest series, The Shot. Kristy is languishing in her small hometown and a dead-end job, pining for her first love, Max Irving. The Shot offers her a Total Body Transformation – extreme plastic surgery to render her unrecognisable – as a way to recapture Max’s affections under a new identity. But there’s a catch: if she doesn’t secure his heart in thirty days, she must have her surgeries reversed, and go back to her previous life.
Black River
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.
The Heart is a Star
Layla Byrnes is exhausted. She’s juggling a demanding job as an anaesthetist, a disintegrating marriage, her young kids, and a needy lover. And most particularly she’s managing her histrionically unstable mother, who repeatedly threatens to kill herself. But this year, it’s different. When her mother rings just before Christmas, she doesn’t follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there’s something she needs to tell her about her much-loved father.