Classic Australian Fiction

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Ann Whitehead.

Friday the thirteenth of February 1948 is Hannah Gordon's thirty-sixth birthday. Her daughter Allie turns sixteen on the very same day. What's more, it's a full moon. Hannah doesn't need Grandma Ade's warning that bad luck is coming to realise the odds are against them.

Hannah Gordon has always wanted to be someone important, yet she's stuck in an inner-city back street, fighting to keep hold of her children, her home and her sense of self. Then a devastating accident sets off a chain of events that will rock the family foundations to the core and change lives forever.

Full of wonderfully colourful characters and evocative period details, Australia Street is a vivid domestic drama about a turbulent year in the life of an unforgettable family of battlers.

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Barra Creek

Di Morrissey

An outback family saga that will knock your hat off. It's funny, poignant and completely unexpected. You won't be able to stop thinking about it.

Di's 12th novel opens in New Zealand in the 1960s. The Mitchell family has run a prosperous sheep farm for generations and the youngest daughter, Sally, has just turned 20. She rides to the hounds and leads an indulged life. That is until she shocks her parents by becoming involved with an older man.

Scandalised, they try to pack her off to England, but Sally doesn't make it. After a wild spree in Sydney she's cashed in her ticket and, hell bent on adventure, takes a job as a governess on a remote cattle station – Barra Creek – in the Gulf country of Cape York. Untamed and crocodile infested, it's a land of deserts, jungles and wide rivers. Then the great stations were run by men who were loners and women who had to cope or leave.

Decades later, in 2003, Sally learns a secret that will change many lives – including her own – and leave readers horrified on one hand, and smiling and crying on the other.

Keith De Lacy. 

In the early 1960s Peter Mooney innocently accepts a position as a paid footballer in the mining town of Mt Isa. He is soon caught up in one of the great industrial struggles of Australian history, a struggle which transfixed the nation. 290pp.

Rachael Treasure.

Born on the rugged Dargo High Plains and raised by her cattleman father, Emily Flanaghan has lost her way in life. Locked in an unhappy marriage in the suburbs, Emily misses the high country with a fierce ache. To make matters worse, her heritage is under threat.  A government bill to evict the mountain cattlemen is about to be passed, and the Flanaghans could be banned from the mountains their family has looked after for generations. When a terrible accident brings Emily to the brink of death, she realises she must return to the high country to seek a way forward in life; healing herself, her daughters and her land. Along the way, she finds herself falling in love with a man who works for the government -  the traditional opposition of the cattlemen  - new Parks ranger, Luke Bradshaw. But just as she sees that the land and Luke are the keys to regaining her life, Emily faces losing them both in the greatest challenge of all . . .

Adrian Hyland

Judy Nunn

'The denuded earth of the iron-ore loading yards, the huge jetties thrusting their way out into the clear blue sea, the endless ponds of the solar salt farm, stretching stark and white over hundreds of hectares . . . all appeared a hideous invasion upon nature. But to Mike McAllister, there was something faintly ludicrous about it. Man's interference seemed petty in the face of such unconquerable timelessness. In millions of years, mankind would cease to exist, but this terrain would not. This was the Pilbara.…

Floodtide is a brilliant observation of turbulent times in the mighty 'Iron Ore State' - Western Australia. The novel traces the fortunes of four men and four families over four memorable decades: The prosperous post-war 1950s when childhood is idyllic and carefree in the small, peaceful city of Perth . . . The turbulent 60s when youth is caught up in the conflict of the Vietnam War and free love reigns . . . The avaricious 70s when Western Australia's mineral boom sees the rise of a new young breed of aggressive entrepreneurs . . . The corrupt 80s and the birth of 'WA Inc', when the alliance of greedy politicians and powerful businessmen brings the state to its knees, even threatening the downfall of the federal government.

Each of the four who travel this journey has a story to tell. An environmentalist fights to save the primitive and beautiful Pilbara coast from the careless ravaging of mining conglomerates; a Vietnam War veteran rises above crippling injuries to discover a talent that gains him an international reputation; and an ambitious geologist joins forces with a hard-core businessman to lead the way in the growth of Perth from a sleepy town to a glittering citadel. But, as the 90s ushers in a new age when innocence is lost, all four are caught up in the irreversible tides of change, and actions must be answered for.

Floodtide is a character-driven, merciless rush of blood from the pen of Judy Nunn, one of Australia's master storytellers.

Marcus Clarke.

The classic novel of convict Australia. This is a powerful narrative, but also of great suffering and inhumanity. There is no attempt made to soften the truth of degradation and cruelty towards the convicts of the time.

Rachael Treasure.

After a terrible argument with her father over their family property, 'Waters Meeting', Rebecca Saunders throws her swag in the ute and heads north with her three dogs. A job as a jillaroo takes her into the rowdy world of B&S balls, Bundy rum and boys. When she at last settles down to a bit of study at agricultural college, her life is turned upside down by the very handsome but very drunken party animal Charlie Lewis . . .

Will she choose a life of wheat farming on vast open plains with Charlie? Or will she return to the mountains, to fight for the land and the river that runs through her soul?

It's only when tragedy shatters her world that Rebecca finds a strength and courage she never knew she had, in this action packed novel of adventure, dreams and determination.

Judy Nunn.

During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided ... without its people's knowledge. A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men - a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956. MARALINGA is the story of British Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a twelve-month posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion; Harold Dartleigh, Deputy Director of MI6 and his undercover operative Gideon Melbray; Australian Army Colonel Nick Stratton and the enigmatic Petraeus Mitchell, bushman and anthropologist. They all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape, infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates. MARALINGA is also a story of love; a love so strong that it draws the adventurous young English journalist Elizabeth Hoffmann halfway around the world in search of the truth. And MARALINGA is a story of heartbreak; heartbreak brought to the innocent First Australians who had walked their land unhindered for 40,000 years. Maralinga ... a desolate place where history demands an emerging nation choose between hell and reason.

Rachael Treasure.

Kate Webster is a loveable larrikin who likes to play hard now and worry about the consequences later. She can't help mucking up the opportunities life gives her. Rocked by the death of her mother, she takes on a dare at one of Australia's wildest rural social events - a Bachelors & Spinsters ball - to 'scalp' gorgeous farm boy Nick McDonnell. It's a dare that changes everything. For just as Kate is ready to start her new life, away from her grieving father and the pressures of the family farm, she discovers she is pregnant. Now, several years later, with toddler Nell by her side, it's time for Kate to come home to face the music - and the father of her child . . .