The Australian Long Story
Editor: Mandy Sayer
9781926428000 $39.95

In this collection, acclaimed writer Mandy Sayer brings together nine of the best Australian examples of the long story - tales that combine the intensity of the short story with the complexity of a novel.

Showcasing the talents of some of our most loved and awarded authors, this invigorating collection is an excellent introduction to an often overlooked art form, promising to enchant all lovers of Australian fiction.

Access Road
Maurice Gee
9780670074020 $29.95

The old family home in Access Road, where Lionel, Roly and Rowan grew up, is crumbling away - but after more than fifty years Lionel and Roly are back. Rowan too, otherwise safe in her 'upper crusty' suburb, is drawn more and more strongly 'out west'.

The past is dangerously alive. Clyde Buckley - violent as a boy; enigmatic, subterranean as an old man - returns to his childhood territory. What does he want? What crimes does he hide? And how is Lionel involved? Rowan must abandon safety if she is to find out...

Banquo’s Son
T.K. Roxborogh
9780143202493 $32.95

Fleance, the 21-year old son of Scottish thane Banquo has been living rough in the woods of northern England since he escaped on that fateful night ten years ago when his father was brutally murdered.

An epic tale of love, loss and revenge set amidst the turmoil of Scotland after Macbeth.

Visit T. K. Roxborogh's blog at banquosson.blogspot.com

The Tall Man
Chloe Hooper
9780143010661 $24.95

The story of a death, a policeman, an island and a country.

'The country's finest work of literature so far this century.  A haunting moral maze, described with such intimate observation and exquisite restraint that I kept pausing to take a breath and silently cheer the author.  in her tale of the fatal collision between two 36-year-old males, black Cameron Doomadgee and white Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, Hooper . . . has produced an Australian classic.'

ROBERT DREWE, THE AGE

The Brightest Star in the Sky
Marian Keyes
9780718155490 $32.95

Welcome to 66 Star Street...

In the top-floor flat lives music exec Katie.  She spends her days fighting off has-been rock stars. Below her, a pair of muscular Poles share with a streetwise cabbie named Lydia.

On the first floor is Fionn - a gardener who prefers the company of parsnips to people. And at the bottom of the house live Matt and Maeve, who are Very Much In Love and who stave off despair by doing random acts of kindness.

But a mysterious visitor has just landed at 66 Star Street, bringing love, friendship and heartbreak, and a new-found optimism. Old secrets are working their way to the surface and all their lives are about to change in the most unexpected of ways.

The Hunter’s Wife
Katherine Scholes
9780143202431 $24.95

Mara, a young Australian, marries a big-game hunter who lives on the spectacular grasslands of East Africa. Three years later, their safari lodge is in trouble - and so, too, is their marriage.

When a Hollywood movie crew descends to film on location, Mara knows this could be the lodge's salvation. She thrives on her sudden responsibility and independence, but she also finds herself dangerously attracted to the film's leading man.

From an internationally bestselling author comes this poignant love story set against the breathtaking backdrop of Tanzania. The Hunter's Wife is a powerful and moving story of a young woman's heartfelt struggle to reconcile duty and desire.

Stones Into Schools
Greg Mortenson
9780670918720
23 November 2009 $32.95

From the author of the phenomenal No.1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian's efforts to promote peace through education.

Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, and shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women – all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Fishing For Stars
Bryce Courtenay
9780143011347
Jan 2010 $24.95
(also available in hardback)

Fishing for Stars has, at its heart, two passionate, unforgettable – but very different – women. One is exotic, damaged, and shrewd; the other beautiful, determined and zealous. Both are bitter rivals for the love of the same man.

Visit brycecourtenay.com

The Boat
Nam Lee
9780143009610 $24.95

'Nam Le is... a disturber of the peace.

'Consider the subjects of his stories: a child assassin in Colombia ('Cartagena'), an ageing New York artist desperate for a reconciliation with his daughter ('Meeting Elise'), a boy's coming of age in a rough Victorian fishing town ('Halflead Bay'), before the first atomic bomb falls in Japan ('Hiroshima'), The suffocations of theocracy in Iran ('Tehran Calling').  This astonishing range is topped and tailed by accounts of the uneasy reunion of a young Vietnamese writer in America with his ex-soldier father, and by the title story – the escape of a group of exhausted refugees from the Vietcong in a wallowing boat.

'One might be permitted to think, after all this high seriousness and intensity, Nam Le can't do funny.  But this criminally talented 29-year-old can do that as well.'

BARRY OAKLEY, Australian Literary Review

The Help
Kathryn Stockett
9781905490431 $32.95

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step...

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend is perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. But she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

White Woman on a Green Bicycle
Monique Roffey
9780670073504 $32.95

When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England as young newlyweds, they have with them just a couple of suitcases and Sabine's prized green bicycle.  Their intention is to stay for not more then three years, but George falls in love with the island.  Sabine, however, is ill at ease with the racial segregation and unrest in her new home, and takes solace in the freedom of her green bicycle.

George and Sabine become more entangled in their life on the island – in all its passion and betrayals – and Sabine's bicycle takes her places she wouldn't otherwise go.  One day George make a discovery that forces him to realise that extent of the secrets between them, and is seized by an urgent, desperate need to prove his love for her – with tragic consequences.

Parrot and Oliver in America
Peter Carey
9781926428147 $49.95

Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant. A dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, Parrot and Olivier in America brilliantly evokes the Old World colliding with the New. Above all, it is a wildly funny, tender portrait of two men who come to form an almost impossible friendship, and a completely improbable work of art.

Visit thetallman.com.au