Top picks for book clubs this month
Australian Fiction | Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton
A girl and her mother are on the lam. They've been running for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in the kitchen with the knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River.
The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as a groundbreaking artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy in the brown suit who's waiting for her in the middle of the bridge that stretches across a flooding and deadly river. A life far beyond the bullet that has her name on it.
International Fiction | Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop & Sam Taylor (trans.)
The Door of No Return, on the island of Goree off the coast of Senegal, is where millions of Africans last touched their home continent's soil, before they were transported to slavery in the Americas. When French naturalist Michel Adanson travels to Senegal in 1749, he hears the story of a woman who passed through the door... but then returned. He begins to search for this fabled woman, and soon his search becomes an obsession that leads him on a desperate journey through a land torn apart by slavery.
Set against the backdrop of the Age of Enlightenment and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Beyond the Door of No Return is a thrillingly subversive story of romance and adventure.
Crime Fiction | The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama & Louise Heal Kawai (trans.)
Minoru Aose is an architect whose greatest achievement is to have designed the Yoshino house, a prizewinning and much discussed private residence built in the shadow of Mount Asama. Aose has never been able to replicate this triumph and his career seems to have hit a barrier, while his marriage has failed. He is shocked to learn that the Yoshino House is empty apart from a single chair, stood facing the north light of nearby Mount Asama.
How can he live with the rejection of the work he had put his heart and soul into, the dream house he would have loved to own himself? Aose determines that he must discover the truth behind this cruel and inexplicable dismissal of the Yoshino house and in doing so will find out a truth that goes back to the core of who he is.
Romance Fiction | The Wake-Up Call by Beth O'Leary
It's the busiest time of the year, and Forest Manor Hotel is quite literally falling apart. So when sworn enemies Izzy and Lucas are given the same shift on the hotel's front desk, they have no choice but to put their differences aside.
The hotel won't stay afloat without some sort of miracle. But when Izzy returns a guest's lost wedding ring, the reward convinces management this might fix everything. With four rings still sitting in lost property, the race is on for Izzy and Lucas to save their beloved hotel - and their jobs.
As their bitter rivalry turns into something much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas begin to wonder if there's more at stake here than the hotel's future.
Sci-fi, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction | After the Forest by Kell Woods
1650: The Black Forest, Wurttemberg. Fifteen years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people recovering in the aftermath of a brutal war.
Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in her ear, and the recipe inside that makes the most sinfully delicious - and addictive - gingerbread. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat.
Debut Fiction | Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers, and a dog-eared novel collection.
While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she's actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.
LGBTQIA+ | Herc by Phoenicia Rogerson
This should be the story of Hercules: his twelve labours, his endless adventures...everyone's favourite hero, right?
Well, it's not. This is the story of everyone else: Alcmene: Herc's mother (She has knives everywhere). Hylas: Herc's first friend (They were more than friends). Megara: Herc's wife (She'll tell you about their marriage). Eurystheus: Oversaw Herc's labours (He never asked for the job). His friends, his enemies, his wives, his children, his lovers, his rivals, his gods, his victims. It's time to hear their stories.
Told with humour and heart, Herc gives voice to the silenced characters, in this feminist, queer (and sometimes shocking) retelling of classic Hercules myth.
Young Adult | The Thief (Queen's Thief, Book 1) by Megan Whalen Turner
Eugenides, the queen’s thief, can steal anything - or so he says. Then his boasting lands him in the king’s prison, and his chances of escape look slim.
So when the king’s magus invites him on a seemingly impossible quest to steal a legendary object and win back his freedom, Gen is in no position to refuse.
The magus has plans for his king and his country. Gen has plans of his own.
