New Australian fiction in April
The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop
Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her one-time professor, Patrick is much older than JB. A maverick when they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all new gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and JB is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art, that has been forever overseen by Patrick, is starting to overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them. Then a storm hits. When Patrick falls overboard, JB is left alone, as the search for Patrick's body, the circumstances of his death and the truth about their marriage begins.
Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
She first sees him in the water: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing university, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life.
As their relationship deepens, life at Sailors Beach offers her the stability she has been craving as the daughter of two drifters – a loving but impulsive mother and an itinerant father. But the arrival of Maeve, a friend from Jude's past, threatens to rock their fragile, newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something she doesn't fully understand, she finds herself questioning everything – about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants.
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people.
His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful.
Homecoming by Kate Morton
Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of a grand and mysterious house, a local delivery driver makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia.
Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital. At Nora's house, Jess discovers a book that chronicles the police investigation into a long-buried crime: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959...
Crushing by Genevieve Novak
Getting over someone is not that difficult. All you have to do is focus on every negative thing about them for the rest of your life until you forget to stop actively hoping for their slow and painful death, then get a haircut.
Serial monogamist Marnie is running late to her own identity crisis. After a decade of twisting herself into different versions of the ideal girlfriend, she's swearing off relationships for good. Forever. Done. No more, no thank you. Pretty inconvenient time to meet Isaac: certified dreamboat and the only man who has ever truly got her. It's cool, though, they're just friends, he's got someone else, and she has more important things to worry about. Like who she is, what she wants, and what the hell she ever saw in the love(s) of her life in the first place.
The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of going to Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has.
When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and through the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back.
Prettier if She Smiled More by Toni Jordan
As the eldest child in a single-parent family, Kylie's always had more important things on her mind than smiling. Controlling her job, her home, her romantic life – and most importantly, her family – takes all her concentration. She's always succeeded.
Until one Monday morning, when Kylie discovers the local pharmacy where she works is being taken over by a huge corporation, putting her stable job at risk. This leads to a cascade of disasters: her boyfriend is acting suspiciously and she finds herself caring for a high-maintenance Pomeranian. When her fiercely independent mother breaks an ankle and needs help, it's up to Kylie, as usual, to fix things. She reluctantly packs her bags, but back in her childhood home, things start to unravel. Could it be that Kylie's carefully curated life is not so perfect after all?
