Debut fiction to read this month
Proving just how strong the Australian literary scene is at the moment, we have a wonderful selection of ten debut fiction and crime fiction books this month to add to your 'to be read' pile. There are also a couple of excellent international fiction titles to throw into the mix!
🦘 Australian fiction
Translations by Jumaana Abdu
Amid a series of personal disasters, Aliyah and her daughter, Sakina, retreat to rural New South Wales to make a new life. Aliyah manages to secure a run-down property and hires a farmhand, Shep, an extremely private Palestinian man and the region's imam.
During a storm, she drives past the town's river and happens upon a childhood friend, Hana, who has been living a life of desperation. Aliyah takes her in and tries to navigate the indefinable relationships between both Hana and her farmhand. Tensions rise as Aliyah's growing bond with Shep strains her devotion to Hana.
Finally, all are thrown together for a reckoning alongside Hana's brother, Hashim, and Aliyah's confidante, Billie – a local Kamilaroi midwife she met working at the hospital – while bushfires rage around them.
Read our staff review here.
The Temperature by Katerina Gibson
What brings six very different people together? Fiona is a millennial media writer; Sidney a failed poet; Tomas a thirty-something factory worker and father; Lexi a fading activist icon; Govita a non-binary visual artist; Henry a Vietnam veteran ageing out in rural isolation. On the face of it, they have nothing in common – but when a tweet goes viral, it sends their lives ricocheting off each other and upending their assumptions about each other, the world they live in, their pasts and their futures.
The Temperature describes our fragmented society as it tries to absorb the significance of climate change, social media, shifting boundaries in gender and sexuality, and deepening gaps between generations. It is about whether we can learn, personally and collectively; about the cyclical nature of grief, catastrophe and revelation.
Read our staff review here.
The Fog by Brooke Hardwick
Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers’ retreat. Plagued by memories she can’t unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers.
As the retreat’s director uses techniques that tap into the eerie mythology of the island, Kate becomes increasingly fascinated by him and her surrounds. But when the temperature plummets and the strange therapy intensifies, her memories unspool. Triggered into a series of disturbing flashbacks, Kate realises her past hides a frightening truth – but can she trust her own mind?
Diving, Falling by Kylie Mirmohamadi
It's never too late to rewrite your own story.
For years, Leila Whittaker has been the mediator in her family. She smoothes ruffled feathers between her sons; endures the volatile moods of their father, the acclaimed Australian artist Ken Black; and even swallows the bitter pill of Ken's endless affairs. All this, for the quiet hum of creative freedom her marriage provides. Or so she tells herself.
When Ken dies, leaving his artist's estate to their two sons, and the pointed amount of sixty-nine thousand dollars to his muse, Anita, Leila decides she's had enough. It's time to seek some peace (and pleasure) of her own . . .
Read our staff review here.
A Wreck of Seabirds by Karleah Olson
Both grappling with grief and loss, Briony and Ren are brought together in their hometown, where Ren has returned to care for his dying father and Briony remains hopeful of finding her missing sister, Sarah. Meanwhile, Sarah and her best friend Aria are hopelessly trapped on a remote island off the coast, and nobody has a clue where they have gone.
This tightly written, atmospheric novel captures the natural environment and explores the depths of human emotion.
The Degenerates by Raeden Richardson
Following the interwoven lives of four characters across India, Australia and the United States, the novel takes root in Melbourne and brings its streets, shopping centres and laneways to life with astounding originality – the city may never be the same again.
The Degenerates radiates with Titch's fanaticism and Ginny's obsessions. Somnath's devastating history reflects every life divided around the globe. And Maha, the heart of the novel, is an extraordinary creation, an abiding figure of modern salvation. Brimming with vitality, humour, intelligence and brilliant writing, The Degenerates engages with the realities of modern loneliness and every form of departure – from our homes, from our families and even from life itself.
🔍 Australian crime fiction
The Death of Dora Black: A Petticoat Police Mystery by Lainie Anderson
Summer, Adelaide, 1917. The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley.
When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister, and determine to take matters into their own hands. After all, who knows Adelaide better than the indomitable Miss Cocks?
Read our staff review here.
The Chilling by Riley James
Keen to flee the wreckage of her marriage, Australian scientist Kit Bitterfeld accepts a coveted winter research position at Macpherson Station in Antarctica. On the way there, Kit and her fellow researchers field a distress call from a nearby ship. By the time they reach the vessel it is on fire and the crew has vanished. A lone survivor is found, but he can't remember who he is or what has happened.
They bring the survivor, identified as geophysicist Nick Coltheart, to Macpherson but it's clear that something is wrong. More and more of Kit's colleagues are acting strangely. And she can't shake the suspicion that Nick knows more than he's letting on. With the winter darkness setting in, Kit must figure out the truth before they are completely cut off from the outside world. But is the danger lurking out on the ice, or is it closer than she thinks?
See our staff review here.
Jasper Cliff by Josh Kemp
When Toby Bowman vanishes, his little brother Lachlan retraces a road trip to the last place Toby phoned from - a remote northern town called Jasper Cliff. There, Lachlan finds himself marooned at the dying town's pub, and soon learns that his brother is just one of many to have gone missing in recent years. Like Toby, his brother becomes obsessed with finding the Rift, a deep hole in a ravine somewhere in the hills. But what will Lachlan learn, and what will he see, if he stares into the Rift too?
The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt by Mark Mupotsa-Russell
Olivia Hodges used to do horrible things – back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate – but she fled that life and moved home to Australia, building a family in the hippie, hipster community of the Dandenong Ranges.
When a small-time criminal gang brings tragedy to her family, superstitious Olivia believes it's the universe demanding payment for her crimes. She wants revenge, but has to get it without adding to her karmic debt. So she creates situations where these bad men get themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed – all while trying to mislead the cops long enough to finish what she started.
Read our staff review here.
🌎 International fiction
Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated by Heather Cleary & Julia Sanches
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices.
At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers.
The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable
Venice. 1704. In this city of glittering splendour, desperation and destitution are never far away. At the Ospedale della Pieta, abandoned orphan girls are posted every day through a tiny gap in the wall. Anna Maria is just one of the three hundred girls growing up within the Pieta's walls but she already knows she is different. Obsessive and gifted, she is on a mission to become Venice's greatest violinist and composer, and in her remarkable world of colour and sound, it seems like nothing will stop her.
But the odds are stacked against an orphan girl, so when the maestro selects her as his star pupil, Anna Maria knows she must do everything in her power to please this difficult, brilliant man. But as Anna Maria's star rises, threatening to eclipse that of her mentor, the dream she has so single-mindedly pursued is thrown into peril.
