Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize

Mariana Enríquez populates contemporary urban Argentina with a macabre cast of crooked witches, unruly teenagers, homeless ghosts and hungry women. Translated by Megan McDowell.

As terrifying as they are socially conscious, the stories press into the unspoken – fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history – with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighbourhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.

From New York Times bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer comes a brand-new blockbuster fantasy series about a corrupt kingdom, a star-crossed romance and a girl who will do anything for justice.

In a kingdom where sickness stalks the streets and only the richest can afford a cure, King Harristan and his brother Prince Corrick are forced to rule with an iron fist.

Tessa Cade is a masked outlaw marked for death, but she likes it that way. Together with the mysterious, handsome Weston, she robs from the rich to help the poor, distributing food and medicine to those who need it most.

As it becomes clear that the only way to save her people is to assassinate the King, Tessa must face a deadly mission that will take her to the dark heart of the kingdom … and force her to work with the very people she intended to destroy.

Ideal for ages 13+

The highly-anticipated new novel by Irish bestseller Sally Rooney.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young-but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Klara and the Sun is the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2017.

Ishiguro explores what it means to be not quite human in this story of Klara, an AI being whose sole purpose is to provide companionship to the child who chose her. Told with Ishiguro’s signature gentle touch, this story leaves the reader pondering the essence of our humanity long after the last page is turned. – Sharon

Winner, Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2021

Shortlisted, The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, Queensland Literary Awards, 2021

Shortlisted, Age Book of the Year, 2021

Longlisted, ALS Gold Medal, 2021

Erica Marsden’s son, an artist, has been imprisoned for homicidal negligence. In a state of grief, Erica cuts off all ties to family and friends, and retreats to a quiet hamlet on the south-east coast near the prison where he is serving his sentence.

There, in a rundown shack, she obsesses over creating a labyrinth by the ocean. To build it—to find a way out of her quandary—Erica will need the help of strangers. And that will require her to trust, and to reckon with her past.

The Labyrinth is a hypnotic story of guilt and denial, of the fraught relationship between parents and children, that is also a meditation on how art can both be ruthlessly destructive and restore sanity. It shows Amanda Lohrey to be at the peak of her powers.

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2021

Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who finds himself fighting with the French during World War I. When his friend is killed on the battlefield, Alfa cannot find peace.

It’s hard to describe this novel. It is unflinching, hypnotic, and moving. It examines war, colonisation, and masculinity. It’s gruesome, but I also found it tender. It’s so hard to describe – it’s unlike almost anything I’ve read before. I loved Diop’s mesmeric, almost confessional style. Totally worthy of the International Booker. – Luka

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything.

In rural China, 1345, two children, a girl and a boy, live under constant threat of starvation and bandits. A fortune-teller gives them each a fate: for the boy, greatness. For the girl… nothingness. A fate to be expected of a dying girl. But when bandits attack the village, it is the boy who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her fated nothingness, the girl assumes the identity of her brother to seek refuge at a monastery as a monk novice. Disguised as a man and living as a monk, Zhu Chongba’s true identity—and her fate—hangs in the balance. To survive, Zhu must claim greatness, no matter the terrible price…

Definitely some of the most breathtaking fantasy I have ever read—the prose is stunning. Epic, tender, and totally intriguing. – Luka

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan’s debut novel. It is a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.

Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors – all they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind has vanished, the seas becalmed by vengeful gods, and so the warriors remain in limbo – camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, kept company by the women they stole from it.

The women of Troy.

Masterful and enduringly resonant, ambitious and intimate, The Women of Troy continues Pat Barker’s extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest classical myths, following on from the critically acclaimed and immensely popular The Silence of the Girls.

“This is a difficult piece to write. It cuts closer to the bone than most of what I have written; closer to my bones, through my blood and flesh to the bones of truth and country; there is truth here, not disguised but in the open and that truth hurts.”

In Lies, Damned Lies, acclaimed author and proud Noongar woman Claire G. Coleman explores the past, present, and future of Australia. Powerfully personal and bitingly political, it offers a keen insight into the ongoing trauma of colonisation in Australia.

Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize

Shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize

A genre-defying novel told in a kind of spiraling doom-scroll…

Hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a novel about the internet, about America, and about right now. Like her poetry, Lockwood’s novel is totally original, bizarre, sometimes obscene, but always right on the money. A seriously good read. – Julia