Historical fiction books set in Australia (29)
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1.
AustraliaDescription:
From award-winning author Tim Winton comes an epic novel that regularly tops the list of best-loved novels in Australia. After two separate catastrophes, two very different families leave the country for the bright lights of Perth. The Lambs are industrious, united, and--until God seems to turn His back on their boy Fish--religious. The Pickleses are gamblers, boozers, fractious, and unlikely landlords. Change, hardship, and the war force them to swallow their dignity and share a great, breathing, shuddering house called Cloudstreet. Over the next twenty years, they struggle and strive, laugh ... continue
2.
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay EN
Description:
St. Valentine's day 1900 and a party of schoolgirls go for a picnic at Hanging Rock, some never return.; This title is also available as a film.
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The Secret River by Kate Grenville EN
Description:
'Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and Australian Book Industry Awards, Book of the Year. After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a de...
5.
Description:
In The Strays, Evan Trentham is the wild child of the Melbourne art world of the 1930s. He and his captivating wife, Helena, attempt to carve out their own small niche, to escape the stifling conservatism they see around them, by gathering together other like-minded artists. They create a utopian circle within their family home, offering these young artists a place to live and work, and the mixed benefits of being associated with the infamous Evan. At the periphery of this circle is Lily Struthers, the best friend of Evan and Helena's daughter Eva. Lily is infatuated by the world she bears wit... continue
6.
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey EN
Description:
'I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silence...' To the authorities in pursuit of him, outlaw Ned Kelly is a horse thief, bank robber and police-killer. But to his fellow ordinary Australians, Kelly is their own Robin Hood. In a dazzling act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey brings the famous bushranger wildly and passionately to life.
7.
The Yield by Tara June Winch EN
Description:
Winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Shortlisted for the VPLA. Winner, Book of the Year, People's Choice, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at NSW Premier's Literary Award. Shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Just tell the truth and someone will hear it eventually. The yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the language of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things- baayanha. Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murru... continue
8.
Morgan's Run by Colleen McCullough EN
Description:
Colleen McCullough captivated millions with her beloved worldwide bestseller The Thorn Birds. Now she takes readers to the birth of modern Australia with a breath-taking saga brimming with drama, history, and passion. It was one of the greatest human experiments ever undertaken: to populate an unknown continent with the criminals of English society. For Richard Morgan, twelve months as a prisoner on the high seas would be just the beginning in a soul-trying test to survive in a hostile new land where, against all odds, he would find a new love and a new life. From the dank cells of England's p... continue
9.
The White Earth by Andrew Mcgahan EN
Description:
“The saga of the McIvors is nothing less than a grim and supremely entertaining take on colonialism in Australia and the tortured, stained hearts of all its New World cousins. A-.”—Entertainment Weekly After his father’s death, young William is cast upon the charity of an unknown great-uncle, John McIvor. The old man was brought up expecting to marry the heiress to Kuran Station—a grand estate in the Australian Outback—only to be disappointed by his rejection and the selling off of the land. He has devoted his life to putting the estate back together and has moved into the once-elegant mansion... continue
10.
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott EN
Description:
The much-anticipated third novel by award-winning Australian author Robbie Arnott, Limberlost is a story of family and land, loss and hope, fate and the unknown, and love and kindness
11.
Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright EN
Description:
In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grand-mother's suffering. Mary's return re-ignites community anxieties... continue
12.
Dornenvögel by Colleen McCullough DE
Description:
Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts macht sich Paddy Cleary mit seiner vielköpfigen Familie von Irland auf, um nach Australien auszuwandern. Seine Schwester hat dort eine Farm, die Arbeit und Wohlstand verspricht. Trotz familiärer Spannungen und den Anforderungen, die das raue Land an seine Bewohner stellt, scheinen die Clearys mehr oder weniger in Frieden zu leben. Doch der Schein trügt - Paddys jüngste Tochter Meggie liebt den attraktiven Priester Ralph de Bricassart. Und als sie zur Frau heranreift, kann auch Ralph sich ihrem Zauber nicht mehr entziehen...
13.
Description:
The highly anticipated new novel from the New York Times and #1 Globe and Mail bestselling author of The Clockmaker’s Daughter, a sweeping saga that begins with a shocking crime that echoes across continents and generations. Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959 At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia. Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a... continue
14.
The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough EN
Description:
In Missalonghi, on Missy Wright's family's pitifully small homestead in Australia's Blue Mountains, It's a brand new century--the twentieth--a time for new thoughts and bold new actions. And Missy is about to set every self-righteous tongue in the town of Byron wagging!
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Remembering Babylon : A Novel (Man Booker Prize Finalist) by David Malouf EN
Description:
Winner of the IMPAC Award and Booker Prize nominee In this rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, one of Australia's greatest living writers gives an immensely powerful vision of human differences and eternal divisions. In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans, among hopeful yet terrified settlers who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place. To them, Gemmy stands as a ... continue
16.
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey EN
Description:
Peter Carey's Booker Prize winning novel imagines Australia's youth, before its dynamic passions became dangerous habits. It is also a startling and unusual love story. Oscar is a young English clergyman who has broken with his past and developed a disturbing talent for gambling. A country girl of singular ambition, Lucinda moves to Sydney, driven by dreams of self-reliance and the building of an industrial Utopia. Together this unlikely pair create and are created by the spectacle of mid-nineteenth century Australia. Peter Carey's visionary brilliance, and his capacity to delight and surprise... continue
17.
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott EN
Description:
Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, not until he was pretty well a grown man. Sure, he grew up doing the Dead Man Dance, but with him it was a dance of life, a lively dance for people to do together... Told through the eyes of black and white, young and old, this is a story about a fledgling Western Australian community in the early 1800s known as the 'friendly frontier'.Poetic, warm-hearted and bold, it is a story which shows that first contact did not have to lead to war.It is a story for our times.
18.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton EN
Description:
"A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, a mystery. A captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory. Cassandra is lost, alone and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident ten years ago, feels like she has lost everything dear to her. But an unexpected and mysterious bequest from Nell turns Cassandra's life upside down and ends up challenging everything she thought she knew about herself and her family. Inhe... continue
19.
Description:
Prussia, 1836 Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature - she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity ... until she meets Thea. Ocean, 1838 The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their King's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love fo... continue
20.
The Art of Taxidermy by Sharon Kernot EN
Description:
• Shortlisted for the 2017 Text Prize, The Art of Taxidermy is a lyrical YA verse novel exploring love and grief and the strange and wonderful art of taxidermy • Lottie, the daughter of German migrants, develops a fascination for death after losing her mother at a young age. When Lottie begins collecting dead animals, her aunt tries to redirect her energies into more 'feminine' activities, but her father encourages her interest believing she has a scientist's curiosity • A novel that explores ideas of beauty and art, and of finding comfort in unexpected places • For fans of Steven Herrick, The... continue
21.
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville EN
Description:
Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence. Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able - despite the cost - to make a life she could call her own.
22.
Women and Children by Tony Birch EN
Description:
It's 1965 and Joe Cluny is living in a working-class suburb with his mum, Marion, and sister, Ruby, spending his days trying to avoid trouble with the nuns at the local Catholic primary school. One evening his Aunty Oona appears on the doorstep, distressed and needing somewhere to stay. As his mum and aunty work out what to do, Joe comes to understand the secrets that the women in his family carry, including on their bodies. Yet their pleas for assistance are met with silence and complicity from all sides. Who will help Joe's family at their time of need? Women & Children is a novel about the ... continue
23.
The White Girl by Tony Birch EN
Description:
Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. When a new policeman arrives in town, determined to enforce the law, Odette must risk everything to save Sissy and protect everything she loves. In The White Girl, Miles-Franklin-shortlisted author Tony Birch shines a spotlight on the 1960s and the devastating government policy of takin... continue
25.
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright EN
Description:
Steeped in myth and magical realism, this story exposes the heartbreaking realities of Aboriginal life as indigenous tribes fight to protect their natural resources, sacred sites, and above all, their people.
26.
A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle EN
Description:
"The prose is textured, viscous almost, an ooze of sweet honey shot through with golden light . . . A Language of Limbs is a novel of (impeccable) vibes and mood, a gay hymnal written from inside the guts of the two protagonists." —Yves Rees, Australian Book Review A breathtaking, sliding-doors, will-they-won’t-they love story and a tender epic that explores the weight of a choice, the love of community and how joy is found in even the darkest corners. Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unk... continue
27.
Benevolence by Julie Janson EN
Description:
"How good it is to hear a Darug voice speaking of Darug history."--Kate Grenville, author of The Secret River, winner of the Commonwealth Prize Blending the mythical power of Téa Obreht and the epic scope of Min Jin Lee, a searing historical novel that tells a story of colonization, survival, and resistance in a way never done before--a beautiful, brilliant, and brutal reimagining of the first contact between Indigenous people and white British settlers and the far-reaching consequences for one Aboriginal girl coming of age in an unsteady and dangerous world. For all known time, Muraging's peo... continue
28.
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) by Anita Heiss EN
Description:
'There are books you encounter as an adult that you wish you could press into the hands of your younger self. Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray is one of those books - a novel that turns Australia's long-mythologised settler history into a raw and resilient heartsong.' - Guardian *** WINNER 2022 NSW PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD INDIGENOUS WRITER'S PRIZE*** ***2022 ABIA SHORTLIST*** ***2021 ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE SHORTLIST*** *** 2022 STELLA PRIZE LONGLIST*** ***2022 INDIE BOOK AWARDS LONGLIST*** ***2022 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS HIGHLY COMMENDED*** _________________________________________... continue
29.
Lyrebird Hill by Anna Romer EN
Description:
From the bestselling author of Thornwood House When all that you know comes crashing down, do you run? Or face the truth? Ruby Cardel has the semblance of a normal life – a loving boyfriend, a fulfilling career – but in one terrible moment, her life unravels. The discovery that the death of her sister, Jamie, was not an accident makes her question all she’s known about herself and her past. Travelling back home to Lyrebird Hill, Ruby begins to remember the year that has been forever blocked in her memory . . . Snatches of her childhood with beautiful Jamie, and Ruby’s only friendship with the ... continue