Fiction

Lola's Secret

Monica McInerney
Penguin ISBN 9781921518751
Trade paperback 2011
Price $AU 29.95
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At the Valley View Motel in South Australia's picturesque Clare Valley, eighty-six-year-old Lola Quinlan is up to her usual mischief. She has sent her family away for the holiday period and invited a number of mystery guests to come and stay. But who are all these people, and why aren't they spending Christmas with their own loved ones? As the big day draws closer and Lola's immediate family dramas threaten to unravel her plans, she discovers that at a special time of year, magic can happen in any family - especially your own. A funny and sad and particularly moving novel about memories and moments and the very meaning of life.

Smut: Two Unseemly Stories

Alan Bennett
Faber and Faber ISBN 9781846685255
Hardback 2011
Price $AU 25.00
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A new Alan Bennett book -- what are you waiting for?!

Simon Hattenstone, from the Guardian, says it's 'Beautiful and filthy'. Who are we to disagree?!

The Roving Party

Rohan Wilson
Allen & Unwin ISBN 9781742373669
Trade paperback
2011
Price $AU 28.00
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Winner of the 2011 Australian/Vogel Literary Award, Tasmanian Rohan Wilson's novel is a surprisingly beautiful evocation of horror and brutality: a meditation on the intricacies of human nature at its most raw. The Roving Party is a historical novel tackling the story of John Batman in Tasmania in the 1830s.

The roving party consists of Batman, ruthless, singleminded; four convicts, the youngest still only a stripling; Gould, a downtrodden farmhand; two free black trackers; and powerful, educated Black Bill, brought up from childhood as a white man. Their purpose is massacre, and with promises of freedom, land grants and money, each is willing to risk his life for the prize.

Passing over many miles of tortured country, the roving party searches for Aborigines, taking few prisoners and killing freely, Batman never abandoning the visceral intensity of his hunt. And all the while, Black Bill pursues his personal quarry, the much-feared warrior, Manalargena.

The Finkler Question

Howard Jacobson
Bloomsbury ISBN 9781408809938
Trade paper 2011
Price $AU 23.00
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*** Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction ***

The Finkler Question is a novel about love, loss and male friendship, and explores what it means to be Jewish today.

Said to have ‘some of the wittiest, most poignant and sharply intelligent comic prose in the English language', The Finkler Question has been described as ‘wonderful' and ‘richly satisfying' and as a novel of ‘full of wit, warmth, intelligence, human feeling and understanding'.

Sir Andrew Motion, Chair of the Man Booker judges, comments ‘The Finkler Question is a marvellous book: very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize.'

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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

Stieg Larsson
Quercus ISBN 9781849162746
Paperback
Price $AU 24.95
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The third book in Larsson's remarkable trilogy. Now available in small paperback.

The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver
Faber ISBN 9780571252671
Paperback
Price $AU 24.00
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Kingsolver (author of The Poisonwood Bible) won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction with The Lacuna. A gripping story of identity, the connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate.

Now available in small paperback for the first time.