Secondhand Australian Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2699

Secondhand Australian Fiction Bargain Book Box — 18 Books

A warm, varied collection spanning literary fiction, crime, women's fiction, and memoir — with Kristina Olsson's acclaimed Shell and Marele Day's celebrated Lambs of God at the literary end, four Ilsa Evans novels delivering her trademark domestic comedy, and Peter Corris and John Dale supplying the crime. A snapshot of contemporary Australian popular and literary fiction at its most readable.

1. Kristina Olsson — Shell Olsson's luminous 2018 novel unfolds across two locations simultaneously: Sydney, where a young journalist covers the building of the Opera House, and Norway, where the glass artist shaping that extraordinary building lives with his own grief. Quietly dazzling — one of the finer Australian literary novels of recent years.
2. Ilsa Evans — Odd Socks Evans's domestic comic fiction — warm, funny, and sharply observed — follows a woman navigating the chaos of modern life with equal measures of exasperation and resilience. The first of four Evans novels in this box.
3. John Dale — Plenty Dale is one of Australian crime and literary fiction's most versatile writers, and Peter Corris's cover endorsement — "an authentic voice telling a compelling story for our times" — captures exactly what makes him worth reading.
4. Ilsa Evans — Spin Cycle Evans at her most gleefully relatable — a week of catastrophic domestic upheaval rendered with the comic timing that earned her a devoted Australian readership. The second Evans in this box.
5. Tess Evans — The Ballad of Banjo Crossing A small country town, second chances, and the question the cover poses directly: what would you give up for happiness? Evans's warm-hearted fiction in the tradition of Australian community storytelling.
6. Chester Eagle — At the Window Eagle is a quietly distinctive Melbourne literary presence — independent, unhurried, and resistant to fashion. His fiction rewards patient readers with an intelligence and observational precision all his own.
7. Joy Dettman — One Sunday Dettman has built a devoted following with her rural Victorian fiction, and this novel — "a story of small-town survival and a train that arrived too late" — shows her characteristic ability to make ordinary places feel both intimate and ominous.
8. Ilsa Evans — Broken "Some things can't be fixed" — Evans's third appearance in this box takes a slightly darker tonal turn while retaining the warmth and observational humour her readers rely on. A Great Women's Weekly Read selection.
9. Peter Corris — The Gulliver Fortune Corris — creator of Cliff Hardy, the godfather of Australian crime fiction — brings his characteristic laconic intelligence to this novel. "A great read," confirmed the Weekend Australian, and Corris rarely disappointed.
10. Ilsa Evans — Flying the Coop The fourth and final Evans in this box — a tree-change novel asking whether the seductive fantasy of a simpler life can survive contact with its reality. The Age praised her ear for the rhythms of everyday Australian women's lives.
11. Mark O'Flynn — Grassdogs (Varuna Award Winner) O'Flynn is a poet and novelist of genuine distinction. Grassdogs — a Varuna Award winner about a man hiding something in a remote location, where "everyone's hiding something" — is psychological fiction of considerable depth and atmospheric power.
12. John Dale — Detective Work Dale's second appearance — crime fiction asking who killed Renee Summers, with the same taut, purposeful prose that makes him one of the more satisfying Australian crime writers working today.
13. Marele Day — Lambs of God Three nuns whose isolated island convent has been forgotten by the outside world discover a young priest on their doorstep — and what follows is one of the strangest, most original Australian novels of the 1990s. "Clever, entertaining, rich and strange," the Sunday Age called it. An unforgettable book.
14. Marele Day — The Sea Bed Day's second appearance — further evidence of the restless imaginative range that took her from Claudia Valentine crime novels to Mrs Cook to Lambs of God. Her fiction consistently refuses to settle into the expected.
15. Alison Booth — Stillwater Creek Booth's debut novel, set in a small coastal New South Wales town in the 1950s — a community harbouring secrets, a new schoolteacher arriving to disturb old certainties, and an atmosphere that lingers in the imagination long after the last page.
16. Alison Booth — A Distant Land The continuation of Stillwater Creek's world — Booth's second novel following the lives she established in her debut, expanding the geography and the time frame of her quietly absorbing fictional territory.
17. Chris Eipper — Dieback Tim Winton's cover endorsement — "Eipper's characters are authentic country people on a living creek. I liked them" — is as reliable a guarantee of quality regional Australian fiction as any review could provide.
18. Barry Dickins — I Love to Live: The Fabulous Life of Barry Dickins Dickins is a beloved Melbourne playwright, artist, and raconteur — a genuine bohemian original whose memoir promises to be as exuberant, digressive, and warm-hearted as everything else he has produced.