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Fiction Hardback

Sarah Thornhill by Grenville Kate $39.95 (Text)  

Sarah Thornhill is the youngest child of William Thornhill, convict-turned-landowner on the Hawkesbury River. She grows up in the fine house her father is so proud of, a strong-willed young woman who's certain where her future lies. She's known Jack Langland since she was a child, and always loved him. But the past is waiting in ambush with its dark legacy. There's a secret in Sarah's family, a piece of the past kept hidden from the world and from her. A secret Jack can't live with. Kate Grenville takes us back to the early Australia of The Secret River and the Thornhill family. This is Sarah's story. It's a story of tangled secrets, a story of loss and unlooked-for happiness.

 

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes $29.95 (Jonathan Cape) Winner of the 2011 Mann Booker Prize 


Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career, a marriage and a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.

 

 

New Selected Stories by Alice Munro $39.95 (Chatto & Windus)

Spanning her last five collections and bringing together her finest work from the past fifteen years, this new selection of Alice Munro’s stories infuses everyday lives with a wealth of nuance and insight. Written with emotion and empathy, beautifully observed and remarkably crafted, these stories are nothing short of perfection. A masterclass in the genre, from an author who is perhaps the greatest short story writer of our times.

 

 

 

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami $39.95 (Harvill)

Aomame’s work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions, starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to the founder of a religious cult. Meanwhile, Tengo wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true? Murakami’s latest novel will not disappoint.

 

 

Forecast: Turbulence by Janette Turner Hospital $22.99 (Harper Collins)

Forecast: Turbulence is a breathtaking and exquisitely lyrical collection of nine short stories, featuring a compelling and enigmatic cast of characters: a loner obsessed with the beautiful face of a neighbour; a militant religious cult; the mute skipper of a whale-watching boat, a teenager who hasn′t set eyes on his father since the breakdown of his parents′ marriage, a child and his grandmother sitting out a hurricane; two vulnerable girls visiting their stepfathers in prison and the grief-stricken parents of an abducted child - Turner Hospital sensitively weaves their stories of raw emotion, heartbreaking vulnerability and incredible resolve, revealing their quest to hold their centres and maintain equilibrium in a turbulent and uncertain world.

 

 

Autumn Laing by Alex Miller $39.99 (Allen & Unwin)

Autumn Laing seduces Pat Donlon with her pearly thighs and her lust for life and art. In doing so she not only compromises the trusting love she has with her husband Arthur, she also steals the future from Pat's young and beautiful wife, Edith, and their unborn child. Fifty-three years later, cantankerous, engaging, unrestrainable 85-year-old Autumn is shocked to find within herself a powerful need for redemption. As she begins to tell her story, she writes, 'They are all dead and I am old and skeleton-gaunt. This is where it began...' Written with compassion and intelligence, this energetic, funny and wise novel peels back the layers of storytelling and asks what truth has to do with it. Autumn Laing is an intimate portrait of a woman and her time.

The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai $32.95 (Chatto & Windus)

In ‘The Museum of Final Journeys’ an unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures. As he is taken through the estate, wondering whether to save these precious relics, he reaches the final – greatest – gift of all. In ‘Translator, Translated’, Prema, a middle-aged woman already exhibiting the signs of a failed life, meets her successful publisher friend Tara at a school reunion. Tara hires her as a translator, but Prema, buoyed by her work and the sense of purpose it brings, begins deliberately to blur the line between writer and translator, and in so doing risks unravelling her desires and achievements. The final story is of Ravi, living hermit-like in the burnt-out shell of his family home high up in the Himalayas. These novellas are classic Desai.

 

 

Smut by Alan Bennett $24.99 (Faber)

The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes: Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother who thinks that if he must have a wife, he should have done better. But this is Alan Bennett, so no matter the importance of keeping up appearances, what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling. The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson: Mrs. Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, and finally dull. However her mundane life becomes much more stimulating ...