AustLit

'Whether it's cancer, a car accident, grief, a natural disaster or a family tragedy, we all experience trauma, and simply surviving takes everything we have. But what happens after that, when you realise that surviving survival might be harder still? With its combination of personal stories and expert information, Life Goes On shows us how to go on.

'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.' These words - attributed to American poet Robert Frost in 1954 - were hidden in the recesses of journalist and author Megan Maurice's mind after she read them as a teenager. Since she endured and survived treatment for cancer, such a life-changing and traumatic event, they became the only way for her to make sense of what came after.

'After facing her mortality, and all the fear that brought not just for her but for her young daughter, Maurice discovered that once the momentum of pure survival was gone, she had to deal with its aftermath - and there were no tools for that. No guidelines, no rulebooks. Survival seemed easier by comparison. What she wanted to know was: If she was meant to go on, how did she go on? The world around her had not changed, even if she had. There just didn't seem to be a place for her. So she made one.

'Through delving into research on trauma and recovery and discussions with a range of people with lived experiences of trauma and recovery - people who shared their darkest days and greatest worries with her - Maurice has created the very manual she needed but couldn't find, and in the process created a moving and illuminating portrait of not only the hardship of survival but the beauty too. For, when life goes on, there is so much to live for.' (Publication summary)

'The most painful of Evie Cormac's memories have been locked away, ever since she was held prisoner as a child - a child whose rescue captured hearts and headlines.

'Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven's mission is to guide her to something near normality. But today, on a British beach, seventeen bodies wash up in front of them. There is only one survivor, with two women still missing. And Evie's nightmares come roaring back . . .Whatever happened all those years ago lies at the core of this new tragedy. Because these deaths are no accident. The same dark forces are reaching out, dragging her back into the storm.

'Evie must now call upon Cyrus's unique skills, and her own, in their search for the missing pieces of this complex and haunting puzzle. But will that be enough to save them? And who will pay for the past?' (Publication summary)

'When Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, it was the worst natural disaster Australians had ever experienced. Stationed in the city with the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, Patricia Collins not only lived through Tracy but was part of the massive clean-up effort. This is her extraordinary story.

'The experience of living through a terrifying natural disaster is chillingly told by Collins as she recounts her own dark hours that Christmas along with those of her contemporaries. They sat huddled in doorways and bathtubs as the winds raged, lifting off roofs, picking up cars and sinking ships. Most of the city was destroyed. Seventy-one people died.

'The Navy suffered terrible losses. A Navy patrol boat was sunk with the loss of two crewmen and another patrol boat was driven onto rocks. A sailor lost his wife and two children, and another lost his young son.

'In the days after Tracy, the majority of Darwin's population was evacuated interstate just as the Navy's Task Force arrived to clean up and rebuild. Collins was there as a survivor of Tracy and now an integral part of the recovery.

'In Rock and Tempest, she has gathered extraordinary first-person accounts of terror and uncertainty as well as courage and survival. The cyclone's devastating aftermath tested the mettle of many.

'It is arguable that the template for Australians' responses to the ongoing natural disasters of the past few years was made in Darwin in 1974. We look for answers and stories to help us deal with those natural disasters and manage them better next time. Those answers and stories are in Rock and Tempest.

'Patricia Collins joined the Navy to serve in a time of peace, but Rock and Tempestis a testament to the courage and resolve needed by members of the Defence Force at any time. It is fascinating and moving, and absolutely essential reading.' (Publication summary)

'Snezana Wood might look like she has it all - a loving husband and four children, a degree in molecular genetics and one of the biggest influencer profiles in Australia - she's had her share of tough times. In this frank, inspiring memoir, Snezana reveals the good and the bad in her life and how she has learnt to embrace it all.

'Before she went on The Bachelor and met her now husband, Sam Wood, Snezana was a kid who helped her parents every day after school in their jobs as contract cleaners. She was a young woman who was told she couldn't pursue the career she wanted - to join the police force - because that wasn't a job for 'someone like her'. Then she was a single mother living with her parents so they could help her look after her daughter, Eve, while she worked full time and studied at university.

'And while Snezana has become one of Australia's most popular influencers, her life isn't all glamour and Instagram photoshoots. After having two daughters, Willow and Charlie, with Sam, she was pregnant with her third when everything went terribly wrong. As soon as daughter Harper was born Snezana was urgently transferred to another hospital, seriously ill, her life in the balance. But she fought to get back to her family and made it through.

'What makes Snezana beloved by so many Australians is that she is approachable and warm, but she doesn't sugar-coat the tough stuff. She makes the best of every day and in Untold, she inspires us all to do the same.' (Publication summary)

'Now that's the way to bury your old man ... he sank into his Jason recliner, wincing. A burial: a body wrapped in handwoven cloth, women dancing and wailing. Too much, in Tom's opinion, but at least they were mourning. To hell with that, at least they showed up.'

'Tom Edwards is dying, and cranky. He's made his peace with the dying part. But he'd bet his property - the whole ten thousand acres of it - that there'd be no wailing at his funeral. His kids wouldn't be able to chop down a tree, let alone build a coffin to bury him in.

'Then Tom has an idea ...

'Christine is furious, David ashen-faced, and Sophie distracted. Only Jenny listens carefully as Vince Barton, of Barton & Sons, reads their father's will. Either they build his coffin - in four days - or they lose their inheritance. All of it.

'A perceptive and unforgettable debut novel, The Deed explores the messy, sometimes volatile, complications that only the best and worst of family can bring. Sometimes greed can be good.' (Publication summary)

'Datson Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the dark heart of 1980s Australia: a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today.

'EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK HAPPENED . . .

'At seventeen, aching to begin her adult life, Anna Broinowski is precocious, naive and in her first year of Arts/Law at Sydney University. Anna's already convinced she knows how the world works, but O-week changes that. She watches Australia's drunk future captains of industry terrorise freshers and the Wesley grapevine starts buzzing with reports that a Sancta Sophia first-year has been gangbanged by the St Paul's seniors, who pinioned her to the rose garden lawn with croquet hoops.

'Nothing is what she thought it'd be . . . until the Sydney Uni Dramatic Society (SUDS) leads Anna to her people. New dreams are made. Acting, playing violin, auditioning for NIDA, losing her virginity. And then Peisley, a gentle giant with calves as muscly as the Hulk's, talks of a hitchhiking trip up north. And, after agreeing on three rules - Never split up. Remain platonic. Accept every lift that gets them closer to Darwin - Anna decides to go.

'Hitchhiking the highways leads her to a dystopian dustbowl of raging paranoia and ghastly beauty, a flyblown asylum where outsiders must adapt or perish, and women teeter on an existential knife-edge, between hatred and annihilation. Anna's is a tale of danger, unravelling sanity and blossoming love. It details the extreme things that happen when urban feminism is plucked from the Ivory Tower and forced to confront the toxic misogyny in the guts of the Australian soul. In her travels, Anna will learn that the line between victim and survivor can be as cruel as luck and as random as a shiny blue Datson on a red dirt road.

'Based on her battered travel diary, Datsun Angel is a riveting and darkly funny true story of a sex, drugs and violence-fuelled adventure through the brutal 1980s Australian outback. It is a feminist Mad Max, told through a #MeToo filter.' (Publication summary)

'We all grow up with rules. Do this, be this, don't be that. Lisa Qin was all about the rules: do your homework, be good, don't rock the boat. She was the model daughter, model student and model minority.

'But doing everything right? It made her lost and miserable. So she decided to take a spectacular risk and change everything.

'At 23, Lisa was an unhappy overachiever working for a prestigious law firm. So she quit. She didn't know what else was out there, but she wanted to find out. She changed paths, changed countries, changed her entire view of what the world could be, and who she could be - with some primal screaming and tree-hugging along the way.

'In the process, she discovered the person she truly was, not who she thought she should be.

'Model Minority Gone Rogue is a funny, sad, exhilarating and thought-provoking true story about what happens when you want to live life on your own terms, even when those terms go against everything you've ever known. It's a story of what happens when you choose love over fear and honour your authentic self: life can be bigger and brighter than anything you had ever imagined.' (Publication summary)

'Sometimes the whole truth is the death of everything.

'Caroline Breure was on holiday in Spain with her boyfriend when her skull was crushed by a speeding police car.

'A year later, following dark months in a coma and painful rehabilitation, Caroline returned to her beachside apartment in Sydney, only to find that her home was not her home, her lover was not her lover, and her friends were not her friends. Everyone and everything she'd loved had vanished.

'Physically broken and no longer able to trust her own mind, she painstakingly searched for clues to explain the cruel disparity between her past and present.

'This is the true story of how she solved her own mystery and reclaimed her life.

'An innovative work of non-fiction written by New York Times bestselling author Bradley Trevor Greive, Broken Girl is a powerful and poetic work of staggering loss and betrayal, fierce beauty, dark humour, love and rage.

'Caroline's struggle to unlock the truth is an unforgettable, inspiring story of survival and self-belief, and a defiant celebration of imperfection.' (Publication summary)

''Islanders must do everything together. We painted ngatu together. We crossed the ocean together. We settled on isles together. We took up Christianity together. We entered into new citizenships together. We became wage workers together. We lived with generations upon generations stacked in fibro houses together. We became half-White together. We got nits together. We sooked together. We stayed poor together. Together. Together. Together.

''Meadow Reed used to get confused when explaining that she had grandparents from Australia, Tonga and Great Britain. She'd say she was full-White and full-Tongan, thinking that so many halves made separate wholes. Despite the Anglo-Saxon genetics that gave Meadow a narrow nose and light-brown skin, everybody who raised her was Tongan. Everybody who loved her was Tongan. This was what made her Tongan.

'Growing up in the heat-hummed streets of Mt Druitt in Western Sydney, Meadow will face palangis who think they are better than Fobs, women who fall into other women, what it means to have many mothers, a playful rain and even Pineapple Fanta.

'For this half-White, half-Tongan girl, the world is bigger than the togetherness she has grown up in. Finding her way means pushing against the constraints of tradition, family and self until she becomes whole in her own right. Meadow is going to see that being a dirt poor Islander girl is more beautiful than she can even begin to imagine.

'Dirt Poor Islanders is a potent, mesmerising novel that opens our eyes to the brutal fractures navigated when growing up between two cultures and the importance of understanding all the many pieces of yourself.' (Publication summary)

'What happens when the fictional 'perfect guy' comes to life and is convinced you're his soulmate?

'While her parents are away for the week, sixteen-year-old Ivy McIntosh plans on binge-watching her favourite TV show and hanging out with her best friend, Henry. But things quickly go downhill on the very first morning, when Ivy wakes up to find Weston, the gorgeous lead character of her favourite show, in her bedroom.

'And, oh yeah, he thinks that she's his soulmate.

'Ivy realizes that her writing has somehow brought Weston as she's imagined him to life, and now he's living out her fanfiction dreams. But those fairytale dreams soon turn into disasters.

'Mack, Ivy's best-friend-turned-enemy who lives next door, and Henry get involved and the three of them need to figure out why Weston is here and how to get rid of him.

'As Ivy and Mack grow closer again, old feelings resurface and they finally face the fallout of their broken friendship, and question if they've both secretly always wanted something more . . .

'The new sapphic YA friends-to-enemies-to-lovers novel from bestselling author Sophie Gonzales, with her trademark humour and heart.' (Publication summary)

'A compelling, addictive novel for readers of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine told with heart, humour and insight by Anne Buist and The Rosie Project's Graeme Simsion

'Psychiatry registrar Doctor Hannah Wright, a country girl with a chaotic history, thought she had seen it all in the emergency room. But that was nothing compared to the psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital.

'Hannah must learn on the job in a strained medical system, as she and her fellow trainees deal with the common and the bizarre, the hilarious and the tragic, the treatable and the confronting. Every day brings new patients: Chloe, who has a life-threatening eating disorder; Sian, suffering postpartum psychosis and fighting to keep her baby; and Xavier, the MP whose suicide attempt has an explosive story behind it. All the while, Hannah is trying to figure out herself.

'With intelligence, frankness and humour, eminent psychiatrist Anne Buist tells it like it is, while co-writer Graeme Simsion brings the light touch that made The Rosie Project an international bestseller and a respected contribution to the autism conversation.' (Publication summary)

'We've all filled up at a servo, but what's it like behind the counter, late at night, as a plethora of unhinged and maniacal souls totter in through the parting glass? David Goodwin worked the graveyard shift for six years in his home suburb of Werribee, and this is his hilarious and darkly mesmeric account of what happens behind the anti-jump wire.

'Most of us have done our time in the retail trenches, but service stations are undoubtedly the front line, as Melburnian David Goodwin found out when he started working the weekend graveyard shift at a servo in his home suburb of Werribee.

'From his very first night shift, Goodwin absorbed a consistent level of mind-bending lunacy over his six years: giant shoplifting bees, balaclava-clad assailants hurling water bombs of different-flavoured cordial through the sunroof of a BMW blasting Roxette's Joyride, and synchronised anarcho-goths high on MDMA loosing large rats in the store from their matching Harry Potter backpacks.

'Goodwin grew to love his servo, assuming the role of nocturnal ringleader of the depraved halogen circus, handing out free pastries and slurpees as he grew a backbone and finally became street smart.

'From psycho meatheads on a steady a diet of homemade speed and strong psychedelics to guitar-strumming, self-appointed mystics trying to grift their way to a better world, the creatures that tottered through the parting glass proved that servos will always attract those a few litres short of a full tank.

'For anyone who's ever toiled under the unforgiving fluorescent lights of a customer service job, Stale Sausage Rolls is a side-splitting and darkly mesmeric coming-of-age story from behind the anti-jump wire that will have you gritting your teeth, then cackling at the absurdity, idiocy and utterly beguiling strangeness of those who only come out at night.' (Publication summary)

'From the Miles Franklin-shortlisted author of Leap comes an unforgettable new novel about fathers and sons, and the damage that can ripple through generations.

''Frank feared a reckoning, but what he feared more was that all the men in his family were cursed. And that however hard he tried to be good, he would not be able to escape his shadow.'

'Frank Herbert's family has gathered beside Tinaroo Dam for his daughter's wedding - the first time they've been together since the death of his father, Joe, a year earlier. It should be a time of celebration, but things are shaky for Frank, in his marriage and his new business. Joe never did think Frank could do or make anything worthwhile.

'Like Frank, the dam itself has seen better days. Built in the 1950s for the tobacco industry, it is lower now than ever before. As the water recedes, objects begin to emerge from below the surface - abstract and disquieting. It seems the past is always lurking. Frank's grandfather, Victor Herbert, was the butcher of Tinaroo during the dam's construction, but Joe never spoke of him. Joe was not a talker, but he could roar. What ancient wrongs was his fury concealing?

In the midst of wedding preparations, but unable to utter the words he needs to save his own marriage, Frank is drawn onto the water. Beneath the fig trees, where bloated black bream circle, he hears the echo of his father's voice, forcing him to look down - and back.

'Moving between the weekend of the wedding and the year in the mid-1950s that cursed the Herbert men for three generations, Cool Water asks what it means to be a good man, and what we risk when we allow the patterns of the past to hold us in their grip. The question is: can Frank eclipse his family's shadow, to find a way into a future of his own making?

'A breathtaking story brimming with insight and emotional power by Miles Franklin-shortlisted author Myfanwy Jones, this is an unforgettable novel about fathers and sons, and the damage that can ripple through generations.' (Publication summary) 

''I am a sexual abuse survivor, but I am also more than a survivor. I will continue fighting for justice for all victims.'

'Dassi Erlich grew up in St Kilda East, the fourth of seven children born to parents who had joined one of the strictest ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the world.

'As a girl, her life's journey was preordained - she would marry young, live a devout life, and raise her children within the strict confines of the Adass community's countless religious rules. This strict interpretation of the Torah would see Dassi and her siblings isolated from secular and immodest Australian society. She lived within the eight-block radius that made up the Adass world in Melbourne, where synagogues, schools, shops and doctors all catered for those living an ultra-Orthodox life.

'The centre of young Dassi's world was her home and her school. But the real danger for Dassi lay not in the secular world, but in her troubled home and at the very school that should have been her sanctuary.

'Dassi was only fifteen years old when the then-principal of Adass Israel Girls School, Malka Leifer, started to pay attention to her. Leifer had her favourites, bringing girls she favoured into the warm sun of her universe. As a girl who had lived without love for so long, Dassi flourished under this attention. She felt valued and important. Until Leifer betrayed her in ways that the cloistered, unworldly Dassi did not understand, but instinctively knew were very, very wrong.

'It would take her years to find the courage to tell the police what Malka Leifer did to her. And then Dassi would discover the principal had abused others, including two of her sisters. When the community supported Leifer and helped her avoid justice by putting her on a plane to Israel, Dassi embarked on a remarkable fifteen-year campaign to bring Leifer back.

'In April 2023, justice was delivered when a jury found Leifer guilty of serious sexual abuse and then sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for her crimes.

'This powerful memoir tells Dassi's story in her own unique voice. It gives extraordinary insight into a secretive sect little known to the outside world, and outlines the harsh upbringing she experienced which made her such a target for the predatory Leifer. Inspiring, harrowing and unforgettable, Dassi Erlich's story is of a courageous survivor learning to move beyond the horror she grew up with, and finding her own way.' (Publication summary)

'War is brutal. But there are lines that should never be crossed. In mid-2017, whispers of executions, and cover-ups within Australia's most secretive and elite military unit, the SAS, reached Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie. He and Chris Masters began an investigation that would not only reveal shocking truths about Ben Roberts-Smith VC but plunge the reporters into the defamation trial of the century.

'For five years, McKenzie led the investigation, waging an epic battle for the truth to be acknowledged. His fight to reveal the real face of Australia's most famous and revered SAS soldier and examine evidence of bullying, intimidation, war crimes and murder would take him across Australia and to Afghanistan.

'As he unearthed the secrets Ben Roberts-Smith had thought he'd long ago buried, McKenzie had to deal with death threats, powerful forces intent on destroying his career and attempts to silence brave SAS soldiers, who had witnessed their famous comrade commit unspeakable acts. McKenzie would break the stories that proved the man idolised by the public, politicians, the media and leading business leaders was a myth. His efforts would help deliver justice to Roberts-Smith's victims and their families.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Husband and wife GPs Alan and Heather Winterbottom have worked side by side in their idyllic rural practice for over forty years but now they've decided to hang up their stethoscopes and retire. Joy! Celebration! Or not . . . Heather dreams of exploring the Greek Islands, of escaping the shackles of her routine life and embracing an exciting new adventure. Alan dreams of growing his own vegetables.

'When things come to a head at a family lunch, Heather announces that she has decided to take a year off. From her old life, from her marriage - from Alan. Alone in beautiful Greece, Heather embarks on her very own odyssey - complete with unforgettable experiences, pitfalls and temptations. But could what's waiting for her back in Netherwood be Heather's biggest adventure yet?' (Publication summary)

'Join bestselling Australian storyteller William McInnes as he reflects on Australia's way of life and gives us his own take on our colourful and colloquial way with words. Whether we are bunging it on or behaving like a drongo, Australians have a turn of phrase for every situation that helps us.

'Our lingo helps us through life's landmark occasions. It's there in our fatalistic humour at moments of drama or heartbreak. It's there when we cut through the media hype, call out self-important BS or reflect on the ways our sporting heroes behave both on and off the field. And it's also there in the quiet conversations we have with ourselves. We use it to mark the ups and downs of our friendships and to navigate our relationships with our kids and families. Our love of plain speaking, of calling a spade a bloody shovel, communicates the essence of the thing to our mates, to those in the know - and to those at the top who should know better.

'Part memoir, part manifesto, this warm, witty, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny collection will have you thinking about what you say, how you say it and what that really says about us as a nation.' (Publication summary)

'As her mother, Mira, nears the end of her life, journalist Rachelle Unreich wants to find out more about how Mira survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed - which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. Incredibly, when she gave testimony about the Holocaust decades later, Mira said that it was during this time that she learned about 'the goodness of people'.

'Born in Czechoslovakia, Mira Blumenstock was twelve years old when World War II broke out. She would live a full life in Paris and Australia. Then, at eighty-eight, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Rachelle interviewed Mira to distract her from her illness, and what she discovered about her mother was breathtaking. Not only did Rachelle begin to understand Mira's past, but she was able to fit together the jigsaw puzzle pieces of her own life.

'A story of love, loss, wonder and the deepest kind of faith, A Brilliant Life questions the role of fate and chance, and reveals an unbreakable connection between mother and child. It will capture hearts, spark important conversations and show us that one small act of kindness can, quite literally, save a life.' (Publication summary)

'Three generations. One chance to prove themselves. Can the women of the Bricard fashion dynasty finally rewrite their history?

'French countryside, Present Day: Blythe Bricard is the daughter of famous fashion muses but that doesn't mean she wants to be one. She turned her back on that world, and her dreams, years ago. Fate, however, has a different plan, and Blythe will discover there is more to her iconic mother and grandmother than she ever knew.

'New York, 1970: Designer Astrid Bricard arrives in bohemian Chelsea determined to change the fashion world forever. And she does - cast as muse to her lover, Hawk Jones. When they're both invited to compete against the French in the fashion event of the century - the Battle of Versailles - Astrid sacrifices everything to showcase her talent. But then, at this turning point in her career, she mysteriously vanishes, leaving behind only a white silk dress.

'Paris, 1917: Parentless sixteen-year-old Mizza Bricard has made a vow: to be remembered on her own terms. Her promise drives her through decades and couture houses until, finally, her name is remembered and a legend created - one that proves impossible for Astrid and Blythe to erase themselves from.' (Publication summary)