Summer Reading Guide This season’s best books selected by your favourite independent bookseller 2 AUSTRALIAN FICTION ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES DOOM CREEK FACTORY 19 Trent Dalton Alan Carter Dennis Glover Trent Dalton took Australia by storm with December Release A satire on past, current and future his debut novel Boy Swallows Universe. Those readers who didn’t discover Alan political ideologies, Factory 19 imagines a Two years later, he has given us All Our Carter’s Marlborough Man on its release in David Walsh–like character transforming Shimmering Skies. There are similarities 2017 will be in for a treat when they read his MONA-ish site in Hobart into a town between the two – both feature the both that award-winning crime novel and straight out of 1948, complete with factory, perspective of a young person, consider life this equally impressive follow-up. Set in economy and society. Why 1948? It was on the margins, and are interwoven with New Zealand’s South Island, Doom Creek the last year it was possible to be fully elements of magical realism. But in his new follows former Geordie policeman Nick human, the eccentric billionaire declares, HarperCollins PB novel, Dalton transports the reader into the Fremantle PB Chester as he and his family, all part of a Black Inc PB a time when we weren’t under the thrall Was $32.99 past (Darwin, 1942), where the fantastical $32.99 witness protection programme, continue Was $32.99 of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and their ilk. Now $26.99 elements of his writing are amplified. to establish a new life in the Marlborough Now $29.99 Our narrator heads up the factory and This is the tale of Molly, a gravedigger’s Sounds. Nick is now a policeman with takes deep pleasures in this new 1948, daughter. On her way to lift a family curse, the NZ force, and when a gun-toting where any digital technology is banned. Molly meets Yukio, a fallen kamikaze pilot, group of American survivalists move But this (very white-bread and blokey) and Greta, an actress, and the unlikely trio into his patch, he suspects trouble will Arcadia falters. It seems that little people travel through the outback together. With ensue. Add this to the murder of a miner won’t be able to win back the world… prose as lyrical as its title, this sweeping, (for which Nick himself is a suspect), upbeat work will burnish Dalton’s already and a particularly nasty cold case to be glittering reputation. investigated, and it becomes apparent that THE FIFTH SEASON Nick has an awful lot on his plate. Philip Salom CONSOLATION Twice shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Garry Disher Award, Philip Salom again shows his THE DRESSMAKER’S SECRET serious novelistic intent with The Fifth The third volume in Garry Disher’s Hirsch Rosalie Ham Season. If you love metafiction and series cements both the likeability of its At long last we can welcome this intellectual play mixed with weighty laconic protagonist and the excellence sequel to Rosalie Ham’s bestselling The themes, this is the book for you. This of its author’s plot-driven narratives and Dressmaker. We last saw a vengeful Tilly especially applies if you’re already a pared-back prose. Consolation opens Dunnage fleeing Dungatar in despair. In Salom fan, because The Fifth Season with Hirsch tracking down an underwear The Dressmaker’s Secret, she is working in Transit Lounge PB references some of his previous work. Its thief and acting on a report of a child in Melbourne as fashionable Melburnians main concern, though, is missing people. danger. And that’s just in the morning. $29.99 are gearing up for the coronation of Jack, an author staying in a small coastal Text PB Later, he must deal with a stalker, Irish Queen Elizabeth II. Tilly is desperately town to write a book about unidentified conmen, embezzlers, allegations about Was $32.99 Picador PB trying to conceal her past, but Sergeant bodies, meets Sarah who, driven by the financial irregularities on the part of one Now $26.99 Was $32.99 Farrat from Dungatar manages to find loss of her own sister, paints large murals of the region’s big shots, and a murder. For her. And so, the adventure begins. Ham of the missing in public spaces. As well as a sparsely populated rural town, Tiverton Now $29.99 is adept at leavening serious themes (eg, the focus on the missing and the found, certainly seems to be a hotbed of crime bullying and ambition) with humour and Salom demands that we confront ideas and it’s a big load for a small-town police warmth, and here she demonstrates just about art, mortality and identity. constable to cope with. But if anyone can, how sweet having the final word can be. it’s Hirsch. Top-drawer Aussie crime, from a master of the genre. HONEYBEE EVERYTHING IN ITS Craig Silvey DEATH IN DAYLESFORD RIGHT PLACE Western Australian writer Craig Silvey Kerry Greenwood Tobias McCorkell fulfils the promise of his much-loved Based in Melbourne but beloved Ford McCullen’s life is complicated. Jasper Jones with this poignant novel globally, Kerry Greenwood has written He lives in the working-class northern of despair and tenuous hope. Sam and 21 Phryne Fisher novels and seems to Melbourne suburb of Coburg with his Vic are both contemplating leaping off have no trouble conjuring up new plots, mum and grandparents, in a pair of units a bridge when they first meet, and a characters and settings in which to plunge right near the looming figure of Pentridge friendship begins when each wants to her intrepid, generous-spirited and Prison. His dad has moved away to live save the other. Ageing Vic is grieving wonderfully chic lady detective. Heading in country Victoria, having left the family Allen & Unwin PB the loss of his wife. And 14-year-old to the Victorian spa town of Daylesford Transit Lounge PB to be with a new, male partner. Through Was $32.99 Sam has had a rough start to life, with a Allen & Unwin PB in this outing, Phryne and Dot must $29.99 his paternal grandmother, Ford gets a Now $29.99 mother whose love and good intentions $29.99 deal with the mystery of disappearing chance to attend a private school south of are overshadowed by her frequent local women, a series of murders and a the river. It may be only a few kilometres absences. The care and compassion particularly incompetent local policeman. away from Coburg, but St Anthony’s is the two show each other makes Sam’s Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, Phryne’s a completely different world that Ford tentative steps to self-realisation adopted daughters Jane and Ruth must learn to navigate. Everything in its possible. As we revisit Sam’s childhood, investigate the death of a schoolmate, Right Place is a powerful and nuanced Silvey’s portrait of a troubled teenager impressing Dot’s intended, Detective debut novel about class, growing up, and shimmers. So too do questions around Sergeant Collins, in the process. figuring out your place in the world. masculinity and gender identity. Literary Award Winners THE DISCOMFORT HAMNET SEE WHAT YOU THE WIFE AND OF EVENING MAGGIE O’FARRELL MADE ME DO THE WIDOW MARIEKE LUCAS RIJNEVELD Tinder Press PB JESS HILL CHRISTIAN WHITE Faber PB $29.99 $32.99 Black Inc PB $32.99 Affirm PB $16.99 Awarded the 2020 This fictionalised Australian investigative A dual narrative and International Booker Prize, account of the short journalist Jess Hill was awarded brilliant plot twist are the this Dutch novel is an life and death of the 2020 Stella Prize for this hallmarks of this Australian extraordinary portrait of a Shakespeare’s son powerful book, which both novel, which won the 2020 farming family distorted by Hamnet was the winner draws attention to and suggests Ned Kelly Award for Best grief, as seen through the eyes of this year’s Women’s ways of resolving the national Crime Fiction. of its 10-year-old daughter. Prize for Fiction. crisis of domestic abuse. GOOD GIRL BAD GIRL THE NICKEL BOYS TIBERIUS WITH THE YIELD MICHAEL ROBOTHAM COLSON WHITEHEAD A TELEPHONE TARA JUNE WINCH Hachette PB Fleet PB $22.99 PATRICK MULLINS Hamish Hamilton PB $19.99 This harrowing tale of Scribe PB $32.99 With this novel, Australian two boys sentenced to a $35 Wiradjuri woman Tara crime writer Michael hellish reform school in Winner of this year’s June Winch was awarded Robotham became one of 1960s Florida garnered National Biography Award, this year’s Miles Franklin the few writers to win the the author of the this book deals with the Award for her novelistic prestigious British Crime widely acclaimed The life and career of William exploration of the legacies Writer’s Association Gold Underground Railroad McMahon, the man often of colonial violence, shame, Dagger for Best Crime a second Pulitzer Prize described as Australia’s intergenerational trauma and Novel twice. for Fiction in 2020. worst prime minister. environmental destruction. AUSTRALIAN FICTION 3 INFINITE SPLENDOURS OUR SHADOWS Highly Recommended Sofie Laguna Gail Jones BLUEBIRD The latest novel by Sofie Laguna (The Eye of Despite having written eight novels, MALCOLM KNOX the Sheep) is a poignant, heart-wrenching Sydney-based writer Gail Jones has flown Allen & Unwin PB read. At 10 years old, Lawrence enchants his below the radars of many readers. Despite Was $32.99 Now $29.99 teachers, anchors his adoring little brother being highly regarded by her peers – she Set in a beachside suburb in and provides solace to his bone-weary mother.