Classic Fiction

Whitehead Ann

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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In the early 1800s, none venture much farther inland than a few dozen miles from Sydney. Those who tried came back saying it could not be done, or did not come back at all. Or so it was believed until the brazen escape of Desmond Kale.

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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.

Tony Parsons.

A story of three generations of the MacLeod family battling to make a living in the rugged high country. The sequel "Return to the High Country" is listed below. 

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'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.

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.

Belle Carson was the best looker for miles around but as nutty as a fruitcake and the bush telegraph – which spread any gossip the least bit unusual or outrageous – frequently carried news of her. From rural Gundagai to the bright lights and shady underbelly of 1930s Sydney, this is an absorbing story about an unconventional family's coming of age. 424 pp.

Winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for 2001. A compelling, wild novel based on the true story of a young English woman who survives a shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia in 1835.

WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN/VOGEL LITERARY AWARD FOR 2001

'She had been left behind on an island with sealers, men who had their own rules. She felt as though she was on the edge of the world, or perhaps she had fallen off into some halfway place. It wasn't living and it wasn't quite hell.'

Shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1835, Dorothea Newell is marooned on Middle Island with other survivors. Stranded, they seek shelter in a sealers' camp. The desolate environment of the island camp is a place where men from all corners of the globe struggle to trade seal skins, and the appearance of women-rare commodities in that place and time-opens a further form of trade. As a desperate means of survival, Dorothea is forced into an alliance with the camp's fierce leader, John Anderson.

Skins is the compelling story of Dorothea's emotional and physical journey back to civilisation. Featuring an immense, wild landscape of ocean and islands untainted by human existence, Sarah Hay writes a remarkable tale of people who have fallen through the gaps of recorded history.

Rosie Highgrove-Jones grows up hating her double-barrelled name. She dreams of riding out over the wide plains of the family property, working on the land. Instead she's stuck writing the social pages of the local paper.

Then a terrible tragedy sparks a series of shocking revelations for Rosie and her family. As she tries to put her life back together, Rosie throws herself into researching the haunting true story of a 19th century Irish stockman who came to Australia and risked his all for a tiny pup and a wild dream. Is it just coincidence when Rosie meets a sexy Irish stockman of her own? And will Jim help her realise her deepest ambitions – or will he break her heart?

The Stockmen moves effortlessly between the present and the past to reveal a simple yet hard-won truth – that both love and the land are timeless . . .

A priceless 16th century locket threads two riveting stories together in this saga set in and around Darwin, Australia’s ultimate frontier town. Commissioned by a Dutch noblewoman as a gift to present to her beloved on her arrival in the East Indies, the locket becomes a symbol of strength and inspiration for the woman as she struggles to survive the tragic wreck of the Batavia off the West Australian coast, and endure the hideous events that followed. By the time the survivors were rescued from the small island on which they had sought shelter while their captain sailed away in the longboat for help, they were either speechless with horror or had been driven mad by the atrocities they had witnessed and been forced to commit by the bestial crew aflame with bloodlust. A young passenger resolves to escape and is given the locket as a good luck charm. It saves his life when he is discovered washed up on the mainland shore by a tribe of Aborigines, who take him in give him a new life.
This legendary story of disaster and depravity is told in alternating chapters with the story of the Galloway family, station owners, and the story of Darwin itself, from the day it was bombed by Japanese fighter planes during WW2 and nearly flattened, to that extraordinary Christmas Day in 1974 when Darwin was again devastated by ‘fury from the sky’: this time in the form of Cyclone Tracey. Following the course of the locket and the fortunes of the Galloway clan, Judy Nunn tells a breathtaking story of disaster, courage and passion and that Top End spirit that never says die.

(A) Town Like Alice

Neville Shute. 

The classic tale of Jean Paget who settles in Australia after WW2.

Two branches of the McAllister family lead very different lives on cattle stations in Central Australia. Rob, a stickler for correctness, manages a wealthy, company-owned property, while his easygoing brother Sandy struggles to support his wife and son on an impoverished leasehold. When tragedy throws the families together, before ultimately driving them even further apart, it's Sandy's young son Jim who suffers most. Left to rebuild his shattered world, he depends on the larger-than-life station characters and the comfort of horses.

This is tough country, where personal heartache is kept in perspective by drought, fire and isolation. The times are just as unforgiving, and as the years pass, Jim discovers that he must pay for his father's mistakes as well as his own. Yet this harshly beautiful land is full of promise, a source of strength to Jim on his road from innocence to independence.

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From the bestselling author of Pieces of Blue and The Waddi Tree comes a spellbinding novel about loyalty, friendship and first love.

Young Billy Martin runs from home, burying his past in the quest for a future.  He finds it in Queensland's spectacular Gulf Country, on the sprawling cattle runs. The Gulf breeds tough men, and Billy is quickly drawn to the excitement and adventure of working with the fiery cattleman and ex-con, Blake Reilly, and his daughter, Jo.

Billy finds mateship, danger and romance in the Gulf, but he also finds an untamed land with a history of violence.  In the brooding heat and unpredictable storms, the future he had sought unfolds - in ways as turbulent and unexpected as the country itself - and Billy discovers a place where he can at last belong.

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