Lovesong Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)Summary: Seeking shelter in a Parisian cafe from a sudden rainstorm, John Patterner meets the exotic Sabiha and his carefully mapped life changes forever. Resonant of the bestselling Conditions of Faith, Alex Miller's keenly awaited new novel tells the deeply moving story of their lives together, and of how each came undone by desire.
The Book of Emmett Deborah Forster (Random House)Summary: Emmett Brown was a charming young man who quoted poetry and read to his wife and young family from the great novels of the world. But failed efforts to win a fortune at the racetracks turned Emmett into a broken down gambling drunk who terrorized his wife and children. Starting at Emmett’s funeral and reflecting back, the two eldest Brown children—Louise and Rob—recount the rise and fall of their family. Each of Emmett’s children must address the fallout of Emmett, and each comes to discover that they loved and learnt from their father in both his golden and his dark days.
The Bath Fugues Brian Castro (Giramondo Publishing)Summary: This book is composed of three interwoven novellas, the first centred on an ageing art forger; the second on a Portuguese poet, opium addict and collecter; the third told by a well-connected doctor, with a cabinet of venom, and an art gallery on the north Queensland coast.
Truth Peter Temple (Text Publishing)Summary: Stephen Villani is acting head of the Victoria Police homicide squad. His first months on the job have not gone well: two Aboriginal teenagers shot dead in a botched operation he authorised in the provincial city of Cromarty; no progress on the killing of a man in front of his daughter outside a private girls' school.Now five men are found dead in horrifying circumstances on the outskirts of the city. Villani's superiors and the media are baying for arrests. To add to his woes, some of the country's richest people are alarmed by the baffling killing of a young woman in the high-security tower where they live.Villani, a man who has built his life around his work, begins to find the certainties of both crumbling. As the pressure mounts, he finds that he must contemplate things formerly unthinkable.Truth is a novel about murder, corruption, family, friends, honour, honesty, deceit, love, betrayal. And truth.
Jasper Jones Craig Silver (Allen & Unwin)Summary: Jasper Jones has come to my window. I don't know why, but he has. Maybe he's in trouble. Maybe he doesn't have anywhere else to go.Late on a hot summer night at the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by a knock on his window. His visitor is Jasper Jones. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress.Jasper takes him to his secret glade in the bush, and it is here that Charlie bears witness to a horrible discovery. In this simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth.By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, tender and wise, Jasper Jones is a novel to treasure.
Butterfly Sonya Hartnett (Penguin Group-Australia)Summary: A portrait of a suburban thirteen-year-old girl, her desperate need for her friend's approval and how far she'll go to gain it.
