Jemma has lost everything... Well, the very little she had. Her toxic boyfriend has run off with her best friend, leaving Jemma alone in their flat, and she can't afford the extortionate rent on her own. She's aimless, depressed and, above all, furious. Slowly but surely, her fury finds its focus: landlords. If only something could be done about them...

When Jemma's landlord has a fatal accident while carrying out a property repair, she stumbles across her life's mission: to punish as many landlords as possible. She begins targeting landlords who have appeared on her favourite binge-watch, a home-improvement TV show where their greed is laid bare. It's a messy job, but someone's got to do it.

Governed by her own rules, Jemma is convinced her actions are just but how long before this vigilante turns villain?

When her husband returns from rehab with a new lover, Emma bolts with her baby on a midnight train to a castle in the Scottish Highlands. A job as a live-in driver for a glamorous marchioness promises safety and the chance to reinvent herself. Everything seems to have fallen into place.

But the castle is no sanctuary. Dark secrets stalk its halls, the marchioness's behaviour spirals into the unhinged and someone, Emma suspects, is following her. She hasn't steered herself out of danger she's driven straight into it.

The only hitch? Her method: she heals the people she sleeps with in her motorhome. And she sleeps with a lot of people, it's what she does for a living. And that's precisely what's bothering the Vatican. For Luis Molina of the Savannah News, this story smells like a Pulitzer for sure. For the Vatican, it smells more like trouble. A saintly hooker isn't exactly presentable. A martyred saint, on the other hand, has a conveniently rewritten past. That's a job tailor-made for the Bronski twins the best contract killers in the business.

Provided, of course, they manage to get their hands on innocent little Stella. America is a big place. Joseph Incardona sets his new story in a dusty, wacky United States. He excels in its film noir atmosphere: travelling funfairs on the outskirts of small towns forgotten by everyone, lost motels, freaks and the disenfranchised. It's reminiscent of the Coen brothers, Tarantino and del Toro, but also a homage to the novels of Harry Crews.

Contemporary Gothic at its most inventive: at times, a psychological drama; at times, a tragedy embodying the grotesque and the horrific.

The Boy Who Loved Dolls is set in 1987 Australia, mainly at the renowned (and reclusive) French film director, Jean-Jacques Baille's secluded country residence. Susan Vaughan, an eccentric young film critic and independent documentary-maker, is granted a once-in-a-lifetime chance to conduct a series of video-taped interviews staying with her long-term 'cultural icon'. Unknown to her she learns that he is also an obsessive collector and restorer of rare and, at times, unnerving dolls.

What starts out as an in-depth investigation into the themes, techniques and patterns within his ground-breaking work many featuring his Australian-born wife Anna and a probing dissection of his most recent semi-biographical film slowly turns into a cat-and-mouse game in which we find Baille is leading Susan towards his hidden past and the truth behind his wife's disappearance.

'I don't know why [Scott] is not numbered up there with the Flanagans and Careys, because, like them, he writes across a number of genres and takes risks. And like them, he keeps me coming back for more.' Janine Rizzetti, residentjudge.com

John A. Scott, as twice winner of the Victorian Premier's Prize...'twice shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award place[s] his work among the cream of Australia's literary talent'. The Orphic Journey of John A. Scott, Peter D. Mathews.

From Nobel laureates to dissident authors, iconic mainstays to extraordinary newcomers, this global chorus of fiction, essays, poetry, and critique is a testament to the ways in which stories cross borders, bridge histories, and shape futures. With contributions by Octavio Paz, Elie Wiesel, Ngg wa Thiong'o, Toni Morrison, Dubravka Ugrei, and many others, A Compass On the Navigable Sea spans genre, time, and location to ask: What can literature do in a time of crisis?

Dante, a protestant young man, and Jude, a sadistic pastor of a small Texas church, harbor a terrible secret from the world; they're together. The two share a taboo and passionate relationship in hidden peace, until the dreams start.

God speaks to them in visions of smoke and fire, night after night, until the two of them come to a truth they cannot ignore; Dante is the Antichrist, sent by God and urged to start off the apocalypse.

Dante refuses to participate in the end of the world and the damnation of souls. But Jude is a loyal pastor, indifferent to the suffering of others, and is compelled to do what God tells him; even if it means killing the love of his life.

This queer horror love story hones in on the humanity of the Antichrist, a half-human entity as flawed, complex, and doomed as any other soul. With lyrical prose reminiscent of Clive Barker, blasphemy is redefined and love is tested. In Of Beasts, Worma explores if love is enough for someone born to be evil.

When the aspiring Canon Throcton is passed up for promotion to Dean of the Cathedral in favour of his rival Canon Simpkins, a faint knell of disorder rings out over the Close. Believing that suspicions over his scholarly work on Hebrew and Arabian mysticism led to his snubbing, Throcton nurses his pride with an experiment the invocation of a simple curse, popular in the East in ancient times, but surely no more than an antiquated trifle in the reign of Victoria? And yet a dark force answers the call something bestial and immortal, dragging pestilential vengeance and corruption to the very heart of the Cathedral.

First published in 1950, Heard's classic novel of occult horror and religious turmoil exudes a tense atmosphere of encroaching dread, its chills underpinned by Heard's expertise in world theology.

First published in 1895, The Lost Stradivarius has garnered a revered status as a true classic of strange fiction, described by the famed critic E. F. Bleiler as the novel M. R. James might have written, had he written novels.

The windows and doors were all locked from the inside, and yet Inspector Julian Rivers, trained to see the malice behind deadly accident, suspects that a murderer had a hand in the fell deed. But if this is true, Rivers is faced with both the inexplicable puzzle of motive, and the task of untangling an impossible crime in Carnac's compelling and twisting 1956 mystery exploring the demands of kinship, art-world secrets and religious mania.

"Her best yet. A classic story with well concealed and ingenious clues, sufficiently difficult to leave us properly surprised by both murderer and method." Spectator, 1953

When the body of a young woman involved in the worlds of art and adult streaming is found in the River Clyde, Lomond believes there may be echoes of a cold case from the start of his career: an unsolved death on a rural Scottish estate in the 1990s.

Then, a Swedish feminist activist, who also has a connection to Lomond's past, arrives in the city to protest against the failure of the police to find the killer.

The victims all seem to be drawn from the world of art and business. Is the cold case the answer, or just part of the key, and could the killer be about to get dangerously close to Lomond and his family?

They had cameras, alarms, lights, even guard dogs. They had storm doors and locks on their windows. They knew martial arts, they had knives to hand, and one of them even had a gun. And he still got in...

A terrifying killer is haunting Glasgow's affluent suburbs invading homes and smothering people left on their own. The tabloids have a name for the murderer based on his method of folding the bodies into tiny spaces, as well as his uncanny knack of seemingly springing out of nowhere: Jack-in-the-Box.

Inspector Lomond has an impossible case to crack. The houses involved have state-of-the-art security systems and were all securely locked at the time of death. There is no evidence of forced entry, and video footage shows no sign of any intruders. How is he getting in? How is he getting out? And who will be next?

'Pat Black has breathed new life into the police procedural in To Pay the Ferryman, the first novel in what promises to be a highly entertaining series' Mark Sanderson, The Sunday Times

With an original style and with poetic repetition, the nameless protagonists, 'My Women', bring succinct and emotionally charged stories that evoke life during war in Ukraine with an intensity that is excruciatingly difficult yet deeply moving.

My Women won the BBC Book of the Year 2024 in Ukraine and was shortlisted for EBRD Literature Prize 2025. The book has been published in the US, France, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria,Poland,Greece,Lithuaniaand Italy, with translationsforthcoming in Bulgaria, Latvia, Spain andFinland.

'Here is a book that makes music of conscience, that finds rhythm in a time of fear, that offers language in a silence after air raids and builds a raft of words to try to sail out of the bombed-out city.' Ilya Kaminsky

'A strikingly multi-faceted and intimate portrait of the experience of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.' Ainsley Morse

Iliukha has received awards including the Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary prize, the Smoloskyp Prize, Rotahorn-Literaturpreis and the BBC Book of the Year. Yuliia is currently working on a novel.

A feral shut-in discovers a disturbing internet porn video of what seems to be herself. A seance of coked-up artists summons unearthly forces in a studio apartment. The staircase of an exurban marketing company descends endlessly beneath the earth.

In Aoife Josie Clements' electric, nightmarish, intricately layered novel, the impossibility of goodness crowds in upon two young trans women barely surviving on sex work and zero-hours contracts. Below the familiar evils of capitalism and the bottomless depths of internet culture, a darker horror awaits. What curse follows these women? What are they escaping? What are they running towards?

'The year's great work of literary horror.' Gretchen Felker-Martin, author ofManhunt

As the investigation unfolds, suspicion falls on Mario, a withdrawn young man whose mother, Katja, and sister, Ines, grapple with the possibility of his guilt. Katja's maternal instincts drive her to shield her son at all costs, while Ines is torn between loyalty and a quest for truth. Through the perspectives of Katja, Ines, and the diligent yet overlooked detective Zvone, Mother of Sorrows delves into the complexities of familial bonds, moral dilemmas, and the shadows of Croatia's past. Jurica Pavii crafts a haunting narrative that intertwines personal tragedy with a portrait of a nation still healing from its historical wounds.

Mother of Sorrows follows on from the success of Pavii's Red Water published by Bitter Lemon in 2025. Red Water won the Grand prix de la literature policiere, previously awarded to such writers as Mary Higgins Clark and Michael Connelly, the Prix Mystere de la critique, and the Prix Le Point. Red Water was thriller of the summer at the Financial Times and thriller of the year to date at the Times/Sunday Times.

Called The Mediterranean Flower for its beauty, Split has a complex history that is perhaps best explored within a mystery. In 1989, beautiful Silva doesn't come home. Young cop Gorki Sain discovers that she isn't what she seemed she dabbled in drugs and dealt in heroin. But Gorki soon finds himself out of a job as Yugoslavia plunges into a fratricidal war. Silva's brother stubbornly continues the search amid the upheavals of Croatian society, from the fall of communism through the 1991-1995 war. The former cop returns to solve the 30-year-old mystery in a different role, one less than ethically tied to toxic land speculation and corruption that comes with the tourist boom on the Dalmatian Coast.

'A masterpiece.' Liberation

'As inspiring as the Swedes Maj Sjwall and Per Wahl. Pavii brilliantly resorts to thenoir novel to accompany ordinary lives caught in the collapse of communism, the rise of nationalism and the shock of wars.' Le Monde

'The city of Split is more than a setting, almost a character. A tourist mirage in the summer, the Croatian port is confronted, out of season, with the aftermath of war, deindustrialization, and all kinds of depravity. Beyond the family drama and the police investigation, the metamorphosis of Croatia interests Pavii.' Telerama

Matt Robinson, born in the UK in 1978, lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Formerly a foreign correspondent with Reuters, he now works as a freelance editor and literary translator. Red Water is the second novel he has translated.

She's Ilka Weissnix, a young Jewish refugee from Hitler's Europe, newly arrived in the United States. He's Carter Bayoux, her first American: a middle-aged, hard-drinking Black intellectual. At first, their relationship is fuelled by lust, but also by a shared sense of displacement, with Ilka having fled her homeland and Carter struggling to find his place in a society steeped in racism and prejudice.

In an effort to assimilate and discover 'the real America', Ilka hurls herself into Carter's chaotic world, helping him navigate depression, alcoholism, and the ghosts of his past and present. Will Ilka sacrifice her own needs and future for Carter's, or can she save him from the demons and traumas that are tearing him, and them, apart?

First published forty years ago to universal acclaim, called 'wonderful' by People magazine, and 'quiet, funny, slyly affecting' in a starred Kirkus review, and now featuring a new introduction by acclaimed novelist Jeffery Renard Allen, Her First American cements its place among the great American novels and introduces a new generation of readers to the brilliant Lore Segal.

Now finally published outside of India, this consummate novel of twists and turns by the International Booker Prize-winning author Geetanjali Shree, The Roof Beneath Their Feet is a contemporary novel that promises to be read for generations to come.

An electrifying debut novel about grief, power and desire and the tangles in between that make up a life.

When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague the poet his fascination soon begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn't; she has everything he wants. While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows. While he tends to his budding career, she writes from her big, white house in the woods.

Meanwhile, his homophobic and spiteful mother who cast a shadow over his childhood is continuing to make his life difficult. As he is pulled back and forth between these two different worlds, his fixation on the poet, his Kingfisher, grows into something more powerful. She becomes his sole focus. He is hypnotised.

But when simultaneous illnesses threaten to destroy the precarious reality he clings to, he's forced to question what he can and cannot take from someone.

In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves), sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.

'Swanwick's wildly imaginative and beautifully written short stories have been, for several years, one of the primary joys of the field.' Washington Post Book World

A novel of secrets and female solidarity set in post-war Milan, by one of Italy's most significant women writers.

Fausta Cialente (18981994) was a novelist, journalist, political activist, and one of the first self-declared feminist Italian writers. Though the fascists censored her early work, she continued as an active member in the anti-fascist movement while living abroad in Egypt, writing pamphlets and making daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Italian regime. She returned home after the war and eventually began publishing again, winning Italy's most important literary award, the Strega Prize, in 1976.

In A Very Cold Winter, it is 1946 and Milan is in ruins. A woman named Camilla opens her illegally occupied attic to her extended family as they rebuild their lives among the rubble. The absence of men lost to war, death, or abandonment leaves the burden of survival to the women, who use the attic to incubate fragile futures: Camilla works to carry the family toward dignity and normalcy; Lalla dreams of becoming a novelist to escape their grim reality; Regina, widowed by the war, pins her hopes on her infant daughter; Alba chases independence and love. Varying political ideologies, loyalties, and wartime secrets filter through the house, creating a thick net of tension. As the narrative roams from the thoughts of character to character, the residents of this 'hotel for the poor' consider their own complicity and moral compromises, wondering if they're able to escape the weight of what they've lived through.

Fausta Cialente's exquisite prose captures the frailty of the human heart in its desperate search for connection. An introduction from author and Italian translator Claudia Durastanti frames this classic feminist icon for the modern American reader. Tender, thought-provoking, and devastatingly beautiful, A Very Cold Winter is about the impossibility of forgetting the past and the difficulty of living with it.

In The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein sets out to tell 'a history of a family's progress,' radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of The Making of Americans, and on America.

'The Making of Americanspresents a no less radical challenge to the realist novel's concept of character thanFinnegans Wake, written twenty-eight years later; in this respect, it also predates the formal innovations of Samuel Beckett'sThe Unnamableand Alain Robbe-Grillet'sJealousyby over four decades.' Bookforum

'Indubitably the most monumental fiction to be given since the publication ofUlysses.' Saturday Review of Literature

'This sober, tender-hearted, very searching history of a family's progress, comprehends in its picture of life which is distinctively American, a psychology which is universal.' Marianne Moore,Dial

'The Making of Americansis the first announcement of what would be Stein's greatest legacy to reclaim the world of the nineteenth-century woman from such weird, smutty interlopers as Flaubert and, later, Joyce, and transform it into the most exalted ground of human potentiality available to us... It is monumental, horribly flawed, and a joy to read if you just give up and drown in it.' Matthew Stadler, The Stranger

**Tartu City Writer Laureate, 2020**

**August Sang Poetry 2020, Translation Award**

In the dog days of an Estonian summer, Liine flees to the countryside to put a conclusive end to her toxic 14-year relationship.

She undergoes every stage of separation in a lone farmstead amid forests. Physical labor and gardening help her withstand her ex-partner's threats, the incredulity of friends and family, and her own anguish. Dread is pervasive in this novel. Set in the near future, it is filled with vivid depictions of the threat of climate change. All around Liine, nature is facing acute drought and heat. No less menacing is the presence of an expanding NATO base close to the cottage at the Russian border. The world's largest military alliance is practicing for an attack. Explosions and shots ring in the distance while Liine tries to recover from fourteen years of violence. Yet she simply follows the rhythm of nature as summer unfolds. While her environment changes around her, Liine always in the garden chopping wood, weeding, sowing undergoes profound transformations, too. The Cut Line is a story of fear, self-blame, grief, numbness, and anger ultimately giving way to hope and healing, joy and lightness.

KONTRA enacts a poetics of clashing decadences, testing the tightrope between 'feminine' goodness and deviance, desire and refusal, reverence and repulsion. It casts a female gaze on the kontrabida a Filipina soap opera villain stuck in a rise-and-fall cycle. The poet reimagines the kontrabida as a figure driven not by revenge, but by wild desire. Oscillating in and out of character, Andrada navigates the tension between poet and persona. Alongside the shapeshifting, spectral force of the kontrabida, the poet invokes a chorus of voices to trace a lineage of opposition and the alternate futures it holds.

The collection is in the form of a narrative triptych. The opening section 'KONTRA' explores the power and fate of the oppositional figure. In 'OPER', two characters speak alongside each other to excise painful histories of domination and sexual assault; which moves us forward to the final section 'BIDA', to a more genuine, queer persona that is free from domination.

Praise for Eunice Andrada:

'Brilliant and devastating, TAKE CARE is no doubt one of the most important poetry releases in years, weaving complex themes with intelligence and innovation of form...A poet whose courage is necessary and whose words we all need.' Ellen van Neerven

'TAKE CARE is the live wire of poetry that does not spare us...each poem both a surrender and a severing, each page an urgent demand we do not look away from violence, from its banal to its most grotesque, and each word filled with as much purpose and energy as it is with tenderness and care.' Sara Saleh

Aliens that just want to help humanity along a little bit.

Monsters who love their fight club.

A woman who trades a piece of her future to help a child.

Guilt that serves as a door to dark visions for a young boy.

Matt Tighe's Drowning in the Dark and Other Stories is a collection of the bitter sweet, the darkly comedic, and the disturbingly confronting. Including multi-award winning and nominated tales as well as originals, the characters within will scare you, hurt you, and raise you up for the truest of reasons they are you.

Willow Close is an old-school slasher with two kick-ass, contemporary heroines. A good old-fashioned mystery wrapped in a creepy old orphanage, with cosmic horror, a monstrous killer, and several lovely cats.

Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Killer Creatures Down Under: Horror Stories with Bite (IFWG publishing) and It Was All a Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right (Hungry Shadow Press).

Newly returned from university, Tom isolates himself in his childhood bedroom, guarding the truth of his burgeoning identity.

When animal rights activists break into the cowshed one morning, Tom appears to side with the protesters. As the Calverts begin to unravel, a decades-old secret surfaces one that might rip them apart completely, or finally unite them.

A deeply moving debut about one family's struggle to find connection in a rapidly changing world, Human, Animal is an ode to the wild, a journey of self-discovery and a hopeful path to common ground.

'Beautifully, skilfully told with real tension and gorgeous characters, Human, Animal moved me to tears. Insua writes with so much kindness, empathy and wisdom...Remarkable.' Russell T Davies

'Insua probes the spaces between black-and-white-thinking with immeasurable sensitivity...Human, Animal explores the anxious convergence of the past, present and future with staggering clarity. A truly impressive debut.' Joshua Jones, author of Local Fires

'A rich and compelling debut from a writer with a striking talent for weaving together complex narrative strands in order to create a sophisticated, symphonic whole. Insua is one to watch.' Barney Norris, author of The Vanishing Hours

'A searingly powerful novel, Human, Animal grapples with questions of identity, change and family, delivering a nuanced and moving story about the desire for connection and acceptance.' Lucy Ashe, author of Clara & Olivia

'A beautiful, clever debut...Insua balances polarised worlds the young and old, the urban and rural, the expected and forbidden to create a novel so full of generosity and insight.' Abigail Dean, author of Girl A

'Blisteringly emotional, exploring the complex folds of family bonds. The last page left me haunted. Completely unmissable.' Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

'Compelling, conflicting and heartbreaking, Human, Animal had my heart pounding in my throat until I'd devoured every last page. A bold and unforgettable novel.' Awais Khan, author of No Honour

'In those days the end of the morning was always marked by the quarry whistle blowing the noon knock-off.

Since everybody was out of bed very early, morning then was a long time, or even, if you came to think about it, a round time - symmetrical anyway, and contained under a thin, radiant, dome shaped cover...'

During the years of the Great Depression, Cressida Morley and her eccentric family live in a weatherboard cottage on the edge of a wild beach. Outsiders in their small working-class community, they rant and argue and read books and play music and never feel themselves to be poor. Yet as Cressida moves beyond childhood, she starts to outgrow the place that once seemed the centre of the world. As she plans her escape, the only question is: who will she become?

The End of the Morning is the final and unfinished autobiographical novel by Charmian Clift. Published here for the first time, it is the book that Clift herself regarded as her most significant work. Although the author did not live to complete it, the typescript left among her papers was fully revised and stands alone as a novella. It is published here alongside a new selection of Clift's essays and an afterword from her biographer Nadia Wheatley.

'The End of the Morning is full of feeling, animated by that formless, aching questioning of childhood, and a fascinating glimpse of the forces that shaped Clift as a person and a writer.' - Fiona Wright

'Reading her, even a glimpsed paragraph of her, is like quaffing the finest champagne on earth.' - Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald

'Forthright, funny and with an indefinable flair, Charmian Clift's writing plays second fiddle to nobody.' - Richard Cotter, Sydney Arts Guide

After serving as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, in 1946 Clift joined the staff of Melbourne's Argus newspaper, where she met fellow journalist George Johnston. Over the next twenty-three years, the couple raised three children, produced thirty books, and created a legend.

While living in Greece, Clift wrote the travel memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus, and the novels Walk to the Paradise Gardens and Honour's Mimic. She also began the autobiographical novel titled The End of the Morning, which she regarded as her major work.

Returning to Australia in 1964, Charmian Clift set her novel aside so that she could devote her time to her weekly newspaper column and to her family commitments. Although she resumed work on The End of the Morning in 1968, she died a year later, before the book was completed.

For more information, see: www.charmianclift.com.au

Nadia Wheatley is the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected Essays of Charmian Clift and the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as 'one of the greatest Australian biographies', this was acclaimed as the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and was awarded the NSW Premier's Australian History Prize in 2002. It remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer.

For more information, see: www.nadiawheatley.com

In this novel, Charmian Clift broke the rules of the romance genre by her representation of a relationship between a middle class Australian woman and a Greek sponge diver who is an outcast even within his own society. Both are 'desperate' trapped in loveless marriages and overcome by a sense of nameless dread. But when these twin souls fall in love in the ruins of an ancient citadel above the port-town of a remote and poverty-stricken Greek island, 'honour' becomes 'mimic' a false imitation of itself and is cast aside, together with unhappiness and fear.

Honour's Mimic combines the authentic Greek setting of Charmian Clift's travel memoirs with the fine writing that has caused her to be described as Australia's greatest essayist.

'Charmian Clift broke the rules of the romance genre with this representation of a relationship between a middle-class Australian woman and a Greek sponge diver who is an outcast even within his own society.' Readings Monthly

'The [writing] is but it is distinctive in its potency, and for the way the love story is interwoven with the brutal realities of class, immigration, and mid-century morality. We devoured it.' The Paris End

'Honour's Mimic is a superbly realised portrait of the links between true love and mortality. It is about how being in another country can unmoor and perhaps free you to find "a passionate affirmation of that old lost desire to face challenge and danger, to be brave, to dare for the truth".' Declan Fry

'At the heart of Honour's Mimic is a transgressive, all-consuming love story that also offers an incisive, often chilling, indictment of the measures and strictures of class and society.' Heidi Maier, INDaily

'With the compelling flavour of a grotesque and shimmering fairytale that carries no consoling ending, Honour's Mimic casts a potent spell.' Carmel Bird, The Saturday Paper

Nadia Wheatley is the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift and The End of the Morning: The never-before-published novel by Charmian Clift. She is also the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as 'one of the greatest Australian biographies', this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and won the NSW Premier's Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer. Nadia Wheatley's other works include the award-winning memoir Her Mother's Daughter and Radicals Remembering the Sixties, written in partnership with Meredith Burgmann.

It is 1696. Louis XIV, absolute monarch in his sunset years, with his secret wife by his side, believes his grandson will succeed him and will continue the dynasty. As part of the spoils of war, he brings from Savoy, a child, a youthful bride for that grandson. In this bride the king gets more than he could ever have bargained for. She is enchanting, and he is bewitched. Has the king fallen madly in love with this Princess Marie-Adelade of Savoy? What exactly is the bond between these two?

At the court of Versailles, there is lavish magnificence including the vast gardens and the Hall of Mirrors. But it is also where dark, enchanting fairytales come to prominence. News of war is never far away. And tantalising beauty is undercut by threat. The tale is narrated in part by Sister Clare, a childhood friend of Marie-Adelade, who after losing the young man she loves to war and then the Princess to disease, becomes a nun. For Clare it is her devoted mission to tell the story of Marie-Adelade, mother of the child who will become Louis XV.

Crimson Velvet Heart is a visionary novel on Adelade's life both strange and enthralling where Carmel Bird's exquisite language and rich understanding of history and human nature capture both the spirit and the mystery of love and loss.

'This astounding novel speaks for devotion and wisdom even as it eviscerates the monstrous glory of 17th century France. Grounded in research, Carmel Bird's historical imagination is glitteringly bright.' Gregory Day

Meanwhile, she begins an unexpected romance and friendship, and these relationships help her to understand the stories of extraordinary survival she hears about during the trial. When she is called back to Australia to reckon with her own childhood, she finds she can't quite leave everything she's heard behind. Out of the Woods asks what it means to bear witness to the suffering of people who have experienced real tragedy and whether it is possible, afterwards, to resume a normal life.

'A triumph. Out of the Woods traces the complex lines of complicity and grief a deeply compelling and humane story about what it means to bear witness. This is a book that looks into your soul.' Stephanie Bishop

'This searchingly original novel counters the historical weight of human cruelty with small acts of attention and persistence. Shirm's empathy and intelligent precision exert a quiet moral authority on every page.' Delia Falconer

The Seal Woman was first published to acclaim in 1992 but has been out of print for many years. The novel explores the mind of a middle-aged Danish woman mourning the recent death of her husband at sea, in a cottage lent to her by friends in the seaside village in Victoria where she had spent her honeymoon. Farmer's prose is marked by the suppleness of its language, and its extraordinary attention to detail. Dagmar's observations of the sea and its creatures, the light, the mist, the wind, the life of plants are so intense and evocative, it is as if she has dissolved into her surroundings. On the other hand, her passivity leaves her vulnerable to the deceit of others, particularly the man she depends on as her lover. Her retreat into wonder is undercut by a persistent questioning, as to how far it might lead her into a state of submission.

The Seal Woman was originally published two years after A Body of Water, an imaginative montage of journal, commonplace book, stories and poems, which it resembles in its own use of mixed sources, from myth and legend and history. In bringing these two books back into print, alongside Farmer's first work of fiction Alone, and her last books The Bone House and This Water, Giramondo is building on its commitment, not only to this remarkable author, but to the republication of contemporary classics by Australian women authors.

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over asks how much of yourself can you lose before you are lost...and then what happens?

The heroine of this haunting, spare novel is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, our undead narrator notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. She has forgotten even her name, but she remembers with unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known - where she loved and was loved. She heads west and into mind-boggling adventures, carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest.

The joint winner of The Novel Prize, It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over is a sharp and funny tale for our dispossessed times.

'Astounding, inventive, and utterly original, Anne de Marcken has written a freakish classic with wisdom to spare about life, death, and the eerily vast space between. I was absolute putty in this book's hands.' - Alexandra Kleeman

'Anne de Marcken must write in a charmed ink that first erases the line between the living and the dead, and then - with prose as elegant as it is spooked - tells the story of what lies underneath. I have never read anything like this brilliant debut.' - Sabrina Orah Mark

Bedi and Sushma's marriage is arranged. When they first meet, they stumble through a faltering conversation about happiness and hope and agree to go in search of these things together. But even after their children Selena, Tara and Rohan are grown up and have their own families, Bedi and Sushma are still searching.

Years later, the siblings attempt to navigate life without their parents. As they travel to the Ganges to unite their father's ashes with the opaque water, it becomes clear that each of them has inherited the same desire to understand what makes a life happy, the same confusion about this question and the same enduring hope.

A Person is a Prayer plumbs the depths of the spaces between family members and the silence that rushes in like a flood when communication deteriorates. It is about how short a life is and how the choices we make can ripple down generations.

An emotionally wrenching novel tackling key themes such as generational trauma and what it means to be Black British, surviving between the gaps of knowledge around familial migrant journeys, set in today's London and Ghana in the mid-90s.

On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients' trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark.

When a dangerous encounter with the man she's dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana.

Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, her aunts Gloria and Aretha, and their house help Maame Serwaa, The Rest of You explores what happens when we try to move forward through the lacuna of our past.

'A novel that doesn't shy away from the modern issues of being Black and female. At times heartbreaking, this portrait of a family coming to terms with a tragic past is vivid and tender.' Louise Hare, author of This Lovely City

'Maame Blue's skill at crafting characters that take bits of your heart with them as you read the final pages; is a true gift. Following the characters through the intertwining of multiple timelines brought forth the force that yearning and longing actually possess. A wonderful book!' Kelechi Okafor, author of Edge of Here

'Equal parts romance and coming-of-age story, Blue's emotionally charged debut explores the highs and lows of love...Those looking for heavy emotion in their romance should jump on this one.' Publisher's Weekly on Bad Love

'What is singularly powerful about Bad Love, and commendable for this reason alone, is that the winners and losers in love are all Black. It's so unusual to have a Black woman lead in a romance story, that it is sadly still remarkable.' Words of Colour on Bad Love

Daughter. Mother. Glory. Wife of The Devil O' Th' Moor. Hope Gleason has many names. The child of a shepherd raised in the remote moors of Northern England, Hope has always understood the satanic brutality of the land.

But when an ear-splitting, unknowable sound destroys the nearby village, Hope must embark on a dangerous journey to survive through the ravaged land with a lad, newly orphaned and alone, under her wing.

As they trek the wilds together to find her husband, her violent past chases her at every turn and long-buried memories begin to resurface.

A pitch-black, magnetic, and unforgettable meditation on the nature of love, evil, and the power of redemption, Land of Hope mixes history and the myths of the English moors to tell a compelling modern English fable of serial killers at the end of the world.

'Cate Baum has exceptional talent.' Claire Fuller, author ofUnsettled Ground

'Cate Baum's writing takes you into a mysterious, murderous, sometimes frightening world and never lets go. A journey through many extraordinary emotions with one abiding feeling: hope. An extraordinary book.' Jonathan Myerson, Oscar-nominated writer of The Canterbury Tales and Nuremberg

'This muscular, disquieting twist on survival stories such as The Road asks whether the end of the world is a chance for a new beginning, or whether some acts stain the soul too deeply ever to be left behind.' The Guardian

'Land of Hope folds a dystopian fable into an Emily Bronte-like gothic novel. It's a fascinating idea for a crossover, and the central character, Hope Gleason, seems to emanate from the wild and windswept moors as if she were a ghost already.' Sydney Morning Herald / The Age

She attended UCLA to study Screenwriting, and then City University, London, gaining a Masters with Distinction in Creative Writing. There, she was mentored by Claire Fuller (The Memory of Animals), Clare Allan (Poppy Shakespeare) and Jonathan Myerson (Nuremberg). She now lives in Spain.

Nashquitten, Massachusetts, is a coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town's industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken.

Told through the eyes of ten women, Alina Grabowski's Women and Children First is an exquisite portrait of grief and a powerful reminder of life's interconnectedness. Touching on womanhood, class, sexuality, ambition, disappointment, and tragedy, this novel is a stunning rendering of love and loss, and a bracing lesson from a phenomenal new literary talent.

'A striking debut from a brilliant new voice. Alina Grabowski perfectly inhabits her characters, shining a light on the multidimensionality of both grief and adolescence with great humor and insight.' Sarah Jessica Parker

'Magnetic...The ennui of small-town life is perfectly captured in the slice-of-life vignettes, which coalesce into a riveting set of Rashomon-style retellings. Grabowski shows immense promise.' Publishers Weekly, starred review

'Craftily constructed and deeply moving.' Booklist, starred review

She was a 2019 Emerging Writer Fellow at Aspen Summer Words. She lives in Austin, Texas.