Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
AUTHOR
TITLE
PAGES
The white tiger
Adiga, Aravind
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant.
Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer.
321
The five people you meet in heaven
Albom, Mitch
New York Times bestseller for 95 weeks
Go to heaven and find out how your turning points
influenced your life.
230
House of the spirits
Allende, Isabel
Anderson, Jessica
Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's family
saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric,
cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits,
the forces of nature and of history, converge in a
brilliantly realised novel.
Tirra lirra by the river
Australian classic,
Winner Miles Franklin Award 1978
Account of one woman’s life.
Life after life
Atkinson, Kate
Page | 1
368
202
POPULAR
What if you had the chance to live your life again and
again, until you finally got it right? During a
snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies
before she can take her first breath. During a
snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born
and lives to tell the tale. What if there were second
chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite
number of chances to live your life? Would you
eventually be able to save the world from its own
inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?
477
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The Handmaids Tale
Atwood, Margaret
Atwood, Margaret
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the
Republic of Gilead, It was founded by a racist, male
chauvinist, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup
as an ideologically driven response to the pervasive
ecological, physical and social degradation of the
country.
Alias Grace
Years have passed since Grace was locked up, at the
age of 16, for the murders of her employer Thomas
Kinnear and his housekeeper/lover Nancy
Montgomery. Grace claims to have no memory of the
murders. Should Dr Simon Jordan, an expert on
amnesia, wake the part of Grace's mind which lies
dormant?
Year of the flood
Now Crake's plague has wiped out most of mankind
and as Toby and Ren fight for survival they look back
on their lives.
324
469
434
Emma
Austen, Jane
Emma, a young woman who imagines herself an
authority on matters of the heart. With the best of
intentions, Emma plays matchmaker for her friends,
most notably her friend Harriet.
498
Pride and Prejudice
Austen, Jane
Page | 2
Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the
most famous sentences in English Literature, is an
ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and emptyheaded Mrs Bennet has only one aim - that of finding
a good match for each of her five daughters. In this
she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband.
With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its
irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved
one of the most enduringly popular novels in the
English language.
435
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
New York trilogy
Auster, Paul
A set of 3 interlocking detective mystery stories: City
of glass -- Ghosts -- The locked room.
314
The pages
Bail, Murray
Looks at the relationship between ideas and
experience, philosophy and psychology, and city and
country life.
199
The sea
Banville, John
Winner Man Booker 2005
A reconciliation with loss and a meditation on identity
& remembrance.
262
The infinities
Banville, John
The Godley family gather at their sick father's bedside
in rural Ireland and what follows takes place over one
hot midsummer's day as the family's strained relations
are tested.
The elegance of the hedgehog
Barbery, Muriel
Barnes, Julian
Beckett, Samuel
Page | 3
299
POPULAR
In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we
encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and
cultured concierge who masks herself as the
stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion
from the building’s pretentious inhabitants.
The sense of an ending
This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middleaged man, as he contends with a past he never
thought much about—until his closest childhood
friends return with a vengeance: one of them from
the grave, another maddeningly present.
Waiting for Godot: a tragicomedy in two acts
The story line revolves around two seemingly
homeless men waiting for someone or something
named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree
on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun
from their own consciousness. The result is a comical
wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense.
320
150
87
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Quicksands (Non Fiction)
Bedford, Sybille
Bonyhady, Tim
Boo, Katherine
Page | 4
In this magnificent memoir, she moves from Berlin
during the Great War to the artists' set on the Cote
d'Azur of the 1920s, through lovers, mentors,
seducers and friends, and from genteel yet shabby
poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea.
Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a
home-cooked meal or tracing the heart-rending
outline of an intimate betrayal, she offers spellbinding
reflections on how history imprints itself on private
lives.
Good living street (Non Fiction)
POPULAR
Tim Bonyhady's great-grandparents were leading
patrons of the arts in fin de siecle Vienna. In Good
Living Street he follows the lives of three generations
of women in his family in an intimate account of
fraught relationships, romance, and business highs
and lows.
In 1938, his family fled Vienna for a small flat in
Sydney, taking with them the best private collection of
art and design to escape the Nazis.
Behind the beautiful forevers : Life, Death and hope
in a Mumbai undercity (Non Fiction) POPULAR
Katherine Boo spent three years among the residents
of the Annawadi slum, a sprawling, cockeyed
settlement of more than 300 tin-roof huts and shacks
in the shadow of Mumbai’s International Airport.
From within this “sumpy plug of slum” Boo unearths
stories both tragic and poignant--about residents’
efforts to raise families, earn a living, or simply
survive. These unforgettable characters all nurture
far-fetched dreams of a better life. Boo’s writing is
superb and the depth and courage of her reporting
from this hidden world is astonishing. At times, it’s
hard to believe this is nonfiction.
370
456
256
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
1835 : The Founding of Melbourne and the conquest
of Australia (Non Fiction) POPULAR
Boyce, James
Boyne, John
Winner, 2012 Age Book of the Year Award (Overall)
Winner, 2012 Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the History Prize in the 2012 Prime
Minister’s Literary Award
James Boyce traces the power plays in Hobart, Sydney
and London, and describes the key personalities of
Melbourne's early days. He conjures up the Australian
frontier – its complexity, its rawness and the way its
legacy is still with us today. And he asks the poignant
question largely ignored for 175 years; could it have
been different?
The boy in the striped Pyjamas.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a fictional tale of the
unlikeliest of friends: the son of a Nazi commandant
and a Jewish concentration camp inmate.
257
215
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
Bronte, Charlotte
Brooks, Geraldine
Page | 5
Set in the 24th century, it tells the story of the
protagonist, Guy Montag. At first, Montag takes
pleasure in his profession as a fireman, burning
illegally owned books and the homes of their owners.
However, Montag soon begins to question the value
of his profession and, in turn, his life.
Jane Eyre
Raised by her aunt Sarah, Jane is later shipped off to a
boarding school. Jane finds work as a governess at
Thornfield. It doesn't take long for Jane to fall in love
with the charming master Mr. Rochester. However, a
scandalous secret is revealed, and the emotionally
shattered governess takes flight.
Foreign correspondence (Non Fiction)
Autobiography
Born in the Australian suburbs in the Fifties and went
onto become an award winning foreign
correspondent covering war and famine.
184
490
244
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
People of the book
Brooks, Geraldine
When Hanna Heath gets a call in the middle of the
night about a precious medieval manuscript recovered
from the ruins of war-torn Sarajevo, she knows she is
on the brink of the experience of a lifetime.
Caleb's Crossing
Brooks, Geraldine
390
POPULAR
In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became
the first Native American to graduate from Harvard
College. A luminous tale of love and faith, magic and
adventure.
369
Year of wonders
Brooks, Geraldine
The moving story of a community afflicted by plague
in 1666.
321
Band-aid for a broken leg : Being a doctor with no
borders (and other ways to stay single) (Non Fiction)
POPULAR
Brown, Damien
Burroughs,
Augusten
Byatt, A. S.
Page | 6
A powerful, heart-breaking, surprisingly funny, honest
and ultimately uplifting account of life on the medical
frontline, and a moving testimony of the work done by
Medecins Sans Frontieres (doctors without borders)
and the extraordinary and sometimes eccentric
people who work for it.
Dry (Non Fiction)
Autobiographical : Young, good-looking and raking in
the cash as a successful advertising executive,
Augusten has everything going for him...except for his
drinking.DRY is his hilarious and moving account of
coming off the booze and attempting to live his
drunken life sober. It's also a story of love, loss and
Starbucks as a higher power.
Children’s book
A famous writer, interviewed with her children
gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a
separate private book …
344
293
617
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The outsider
Camus, Albert
Explores the predicament of the individual who
refuses to pretend and is prepared to face the
indifference of the universe, courageously and alone.
118
First man
Camus, Albert
Capote, Truman
Told as a novel, this is a moving account of the
author's poverty-stricken childhood in Algeria, the
love of his mother and the old schoolteacher who
saved him from ignorance. The book acts as a novel
on Algeria, on the relationship between man and the
land, and between French and Arabs.
In cold blood (Non Fiction)
The book that made Capote’s name, a seminal work of
modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic
skill and powerfully evocative narrative.
261
336
Bliss
Carey, Peter
The dilemma of Harry Joy is both funny and terrifying,
for Harry wakes up in Hell, tortured by those he loves,
and by the dreams and nightmares he once created
for profit.
394
Diary of a foreign minister (Non Fiction)
Carr, Bob
Cashman, Maureen
Page | 7
Six years after vacating his position as the longestserving Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr
returned to politics in his dream job: as Foreign
Minister of Australia and a senior federal cabinet
minister. For 18 months he kept a diary documenting
a whirl of high-stakes events on the world stage.
Charlie and me in Val-Paradis (Non Fiction) POPULAR
"How my dog learned to bark in French...”
With a poodle clutched in one arm and notes for her
epic historical novel under the other, Maureen
Cashman escaped the bushfires of Canberra for a
valley of paradise in the south-west of France.
502
351
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The Luminaries
Catton, Eleanor
POPULAR
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his
fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the night
of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of
twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a
series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has
vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an
enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of
a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the
mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as
complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
832
Wild swans: Three Daughters of China
Chang, Jung
Through the lives of three different women grandmother, mother and daughter - this book tells
the story of 20th-century China. At times scarcely
credible in the details it reveals of the suffering of
millions of ordinary Chinese people, it is an
unforgettable record of tyranny, hope and ultimate
survival under conditions of extreme harshness.
The Party and Other Stories: The Tales of Chekhov
Volume 4
524
Chekhov, Anton
Includes The Party, Terror, A Woman's Kingdom, A
Problem, The Kiss, "Anna on the Neck," The Teacher of
Literature, Not Wanted, Typhus, A Misfortune, A Trifle
from Life.
Vincenzos garden
167
Clanchy, John
Steele Rudd Short Story Award 2005
Short stories by a Canberra author.
235
Diary of a bad year
Coetzee, J. M.
Three narratives, one of them a series of essays
written by the novel's central character, running
concurrently across each page.
178
Disgrace
Coetzee, J. M.
Page | 8
After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical
University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged
and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a
student. The affair sours; he is denounced and
summoned before a committee of inquiry.
224
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Cormac McCarthy
Cotton, Peter
Croome, Andrew
Cusk, Rachel
Page | 9
Thrilled readers across England when it debuted in
1860. It famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie
encounter on a moonlit road. Engaged as a drawingmaster to beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into
the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his
charming friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for
white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison.
Road, The
A father and his young son walk alone through burned
America, heading slowly for the coast. Nothing moves
in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind.
They have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves
against the men who stalk the road, the clothes they
are wearing, a cart of scavenged food - and each other
Dead cat bounce
POPULAR
A federal election campaign is thrown into chaos
when a popular government minister goes missing
and then turns up dead on the shores of Lake Burley
Griffin. With Detective Darren Glass and the
Australian Federal Police on the case, the investigation
into the minister’s murder quickly becomes entangled
in a game of high-stakes politics.
Midnight Empire
Las Vegas, Nevada. Young Australian computer
programmer Daniel Carter has arrived at the heart of
the American war machine - the drone program at
Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs. Naive, untested,
but keen to make a difference, he is plunged headlong
into America's surreal battle against its enemies in the
Middle East - a battle fought at a distance of 7,000
miles from a city where nothing is real.
A life’s work: on becoming a mother (Non Fiction)
A fascinating exploration of what it means to become
a mother and the profound effect motherhood has on
Cusk’s identity.
502
307
313
241
212
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress
Dai, Sijie
1971: Mao’s Cultural Revolution - two doctors sons
sent to re-education camps have only their sense of
humour to keep them going.
172
Dalrymple, William
Nine lives: in search of the sacred in modern India
(Non Fiction)
Three brothers from a remote village in the Himalayas
are driven by poverty to become monks.
284
The pleasures and sorrows of work (Non Fiction)
de Botton, Alain
We spend most of our waking lives at work, in
occupations often chosen by our unthinking 16 year
old selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we
got there or what it might mean for us.
The People Smuggler (Non Fiction)
De Crespigny,
Robin
de Kretser,
Michelle
Page | 10
329
POPULAR
The True Story of Ali Al Jenabi, the 'Oskar Schlindler of
Asia. At once a non-fiction thriller and a moral maze,
this is one man's epic story of trying to find a safe
place in the world. When Ali Al Jenabi flees Saddam
Hussein's torture chambers, he is forced to leave his
family behind in Iraq. What follows is an incredible
international odyssey through the shadow world of
fake passports, crowded camps and illegal border
crossings, living every day with excruciating
uncertainty about what the next will bring. Through
betrayal, triumph, misfortune – even romance and
heartbreak – Ali is sustained by his fierce love of
freedom and family. Continually pushed to the limits
of his endurance, eventually he must confront what
he has been forced to become.
Questions of travel
POPULAR
Charts two very different lives. Laura travels the world
before returning to Sydney, where she works for a
publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a
tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating
events. Around these two superbly drawn characters,
a double narrative assembles an enthralling array of
people, places and stories.
351
517
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The hare with amber eyes
De Waal, Edmund
Defoe, Daniel
Didion, Joan
Winner of 2010 Costa of the Year award
De Waal became the fifth generation to inherit the
intriguing collection of 264 Japanese wood and ivory
carvings and this book is an account of his pursuit of
the story of the carved people, animals and objects as
they moved through history and the generations of his
family.
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll
Flanders
Commonly known simply as Moll Flanders is a novel
by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. It purports to
be the true account of the life of the eponymous Moll,
detailing her exploits from birth until old age.
Daniel Defoe (the author) also wrote Robinson Crusoe
in 1719
The year of magical thinking POPULAR
Memoir about the sudden and unexpected loss of her
husband and their only daughter.
354
454
227
Anecdotes of Destiny
Dineson, Isak
Do, Anh
Page | 11
In the classic "Babette's Feast," a mysterious
Frenchwoman prepares a sumptuous feast for a
gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so,
introduces them to the true essence of grace. In "The
Immortal Story," a miserly old tea-trader living in
Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he
turns an oft-told sailors' tale into reality for a young
man and woman. And in the magnificent novella
Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet
restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian
beauty and a rakish artist.
The Happiest Refugee (Non Fiction) POPULAR
Anh Do nearly didn't make it to Australia after
escaping the war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded
boat. Life in Australia was hard, an endless succession
of back-breaking work, crowded rooms, ruthless
landlords and make-do everything. But there was a
loving extended family, and always friends and play
and something to laugh about for Anh, his brother
Khoa and their sister Tram.
244
229
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky,
Fyodor
Drabble, Margaret
The story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student
tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle
between good and evil. Believing that he is above the
law, and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile
means, he brutally murders an old woman — a
pawnbroker whom he regards as "stupid, ailing,
greedy…good for nothing." Overwhelmed afterwards
by feelings of guilt and terror, Raskolnikov confesses
to the crime and goes to prison. There he realizes that
happiness and redemption can only be achieved
through suffering.
The Red Queen (Non Fiction)
The story of the wife of the Crown Prince of Korea 200
years ago.
537
356
The Rip
Drewe, Robert
Duras, Marguerite
These short stories are subtle and domestic in tone,
but epic in scope. Rob Drewe returns to a familiar
genre with this exquisite collection of short stories
dealing with the complexities of human relationships,
with many of the stories set against landscapes that
are as threatening as they are beautiful.
The lover
A love affair between a poor French girl and a wealthy
Chinese boy that defies all of the conventions of their
society, set in Saigon in the 1930s.
240
123
Zeitoun (Non Fiction)
Eggers, Dave
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast
into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind
and water.
399
Middlemarch
Eliot, George
Page | 12
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable
character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who
almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader
through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and
conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and
happiness.
852
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Careful He might Hear You
Eliott, Sumner
Locke
"The story of a bitter strugle between two women for
the possession of a six-year-old boy, written with
tenderness, humour and irony."
495
The gathering
Enright, Anne
The 9 surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in
Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. A
novel about love & disappointment, thwarted lust &
limitless desire.
The Marriage Plot
Eugenides, Jeffery
Eugenides, Jeffrey
Page | 13
261
POPULAR
The new novel from the bestselling author of
Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.
Brown University, 1982. Madeleine Hanna, incurable
romantic, is writing her thesis on Jane Austen and
George Eliot – authors of the great marriage plots.
Leonard Bankhead, brilliant scientist and charismatic
loner, attracts Madeleine with an intensity that she
seems powerless to resist. Meanwhile, her old friend
Mitchell Grammaticus, a theology student searching
for some kind of truth in life, is certain of at least one
thing – that he and Madeleine are destined to be
together.
My mistress's sparrow is dead : Great Love Stories
from Chekhov to Munro
A wide-ranging and eclectic collection of short stories
on the theme of love in its various forms: romantic,
erotic, impossible, undying and exhausted. No other
aspect of the human experience regularly inspires
such an outpouring of poetry, prose and philosophy as
love. From passionate declarations to clinical analysis,
writers of every age have been fascinated, tormented
and inspired by love. This beautifully produced
collection of short stories will combine the best of
contemporary and classic fiction on the theme of love,
from Catullus to Alice Munro.
406
539
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
A Time of Gifts (Non Fiction)
Fermor, Patrick
Leigh
Finkel, Michael
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off
from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk
to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account
of his adventures as far as Hungary. Leigh Fermor’s
book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler
has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he
walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—
through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic
and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of
the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to
the Danube.
True story : murder, memoir, mea culpa
In February 2002, New York Times Magazine writer
Michael Finkel received a startling piece of news: a
young man named Christian Longo, wanted for killing
his entire family, had been captured in Mexico, where
he'd taken on a new identity: Michael Finkel of the
New York Times. The next day, on page A-3 of the
Times, came another troubling item: a note from the
editors explaining that Finkel, having falsified parts of
an investigative article, had been fired. Nonetheless,
the only journalist Longo would speak with was the
real Michael Finkel, and so Finkel placed a call to
Oregon's Lincoln County jail, intent on getting the true
story. So began a bizarre and intense relationship a
reporting job that morphed into a shrewd game of
cat-and-mouse.
The great Gatsby
Disillusion of Post war America and moral failure of a
society obsessed with wealth and status.
Wanting
Flanagan, Richard
Page | 14
POPULAR
321
312
170
POPULAR
A novel about art, love, and the way in which life is
finally determined never by reason, but only ever by
wanting.
256
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Narrow road to the deep north
Flanagan, Richard
Flannery, Tim
POPULAR
August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp
on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon
Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his
uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to
save the men under his command from starvation,
from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that
will change his life forever.
The weather makers
The Weather Makers is both an urgent warning and a
call to arms, outlining the history of climate change,
how it will unfold over the next century, and what we
can do to prevent a cataclysmic future.
467
332
Canada
Ford, Richard
Fowler, Karen
Fowles, John
Page | 15
When fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a
bank, his sense of a happy, knowable life is forever
shattered. A family friend spirits Dell across the
Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a
better life. There, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger,
an enigmatic American whose suave reserve masks a
violent nature. Undone by the calamity of his parents'
arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to
remake himself and define the adults he thought he
knew and loved
We are completely beside ourselves
POPULAR
Rosemary's young, just at college, and she's decided
not to tell anyone a thing about her family. So we're
not going to tell you too much either: you'll have to
find out for yourselves, round about page 77, what it
is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other. It’s
funny, clever, intimate, honest, analytical and swirling
with ideas that will come back to bite you.
Collector
Withdrawn,
uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies
and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a
beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he
wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and
calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to
love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must
struggle to overcome her own prejudices and
contempt if she is understand her captor, and so gain
her freedom.
420
322
282
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Freedom
Franzen, Jonathan
Frey, James
Freedom follows several members of an American
family, the Berglunds, as well as their close friends and
lovers, as complex and troubled relationships unfold
over many years. The book follows them through the
last decades of the twentieth century.
A million little pieces
A partially-fabricated memoir. It tells the story of a 23year-old alcoholic and drug abuser and how he copes
with rehabilitation in a Twelve Steps-oriented
treatment centre.
All that I am
Funder, Anna
Gabriel Garcia
Marquez
Page | 16
562
381
POPULAR
"When Hitler came to power I was in the bath. The
wireless in the living room was turned up loud, but all
that drifted down to me were waves of happy
cheering, like a football match. It was Monday
afternoon..." Ruth Becker, defiant and cantankerous,
is living out her days in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
Based on real people and events, All That I am is a
masterful and exhilarating exploration of bravery and
betrayal, of the risks and sacrifices some people make
for their beliefs, and of heroism hidden in the most
unexpected places.
One hundred years of solitude
A band of adventurers find a town in the heart of the
South American jungle. Their leader is Jose Arcadio
Buendia, the town is called Macondo. The occasion
marks the beginning: of the world, of a great family,
and of a century of extraordinary events.
369
422
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Cuckoos calling
Galbraith (Rowling)
Galbraith, Robert
Garcia Marquez,
Gabriel
POPULAR
The Cuckoo's Calling is a 2013 crime fiction[1] novel by
J. K. Rowling, published under the pseudonym "Robert
Galbraith". After losing his leg to a land mine in
Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a
private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and
creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with
his long-time girlfriend and is living in his office. Then
John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing
story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula
Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously
fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled
it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case
plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire
beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate
designers, and it introduces him to every variety of
pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known
to man.
The Silkworm
POPULAR
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls
in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs.
Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself
for a few days--as he has done before--and she wants
Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike
investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to
Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes.
Living to tell the tale (Non Fiction)
Autobiography of this Columbian author.
449
455
483
The feel of steel (Non Fiction)
Garner, Helen
Cities, friends, lost loves, Antarctica, the joy of being a
grandmother, weddings, fencing... Such is the array of
subjects in Helen Garner's second non-fiction
collection.
223
The spare room
Garner, Helen
Page | 17
A heart breaking tale of a dying friend who comes to
stay.
195
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Still Alice
Genova, Lisa
Ghosh, Amitav
Alice Howland, married with 3 grown children, and a
celebrated Harvard professor notices a forgetfulness
creeping into her life. She receives a devastating
diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely
independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle
In an antique land (Non Fiction)
Indian writer Ghosh reconstructs a 12th-century
master-slave relationship that confounds modern
concepts of slavery.
293
393
Cold comfort farm
Gibbons, Stella
Finding herself orphaned at 19, and intrigued by
Judith's letter which speaks of 'her rights' and the
promise that she will 'atone' for the wrong done to
Flora's father on the condition that Flora must never
ask her why, Flora armed with a copy of the Higher
Common Self, makdes her way to Howling, Sussex.
232
Eat, pray, love : one woman's search for everything
Gilbert, Elizabeth
Goldsworthy, Peter
Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult
choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern
American success (marriage, house in the country,
career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from
life
Everything I knew
Robbie Burns, the precocious only child of the local
cop, is on the cusp of adolescence and high school.
349
294
Maestro
Goldsworthy, Peter
Page | 18
Against the backdrop of Darwin a young and newly
arrived southerner encounters the 'maestro', a
Viennese refugee with a shadowed past. The occasion
is a piano lesson, the first of many.
149
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Burger's daughter
Gordmer, Nadine
Grenville, Kate
The story of a young woman's slowly evolving identity
in the turbulent political environment of present-day
South Africa. Her father's death in prison leaves Rosa
Burger alone to explore the intricacies of what it
actually means to be Burger's daughter.
Idea of Perfection
A story about two people who seem the least likely in
the world to fall in love.
Sarah Thornhill
Grenville, Kate
Grenville, Kate
361
401
POPULAR
Sarah Thornhill is the youngest child of William
Thornhill, convict-turned-landowner on the
Hawkesbury River. She grows up in the fine house her
father is so proud of, a strong-willed young woman
who’s certain where her future lies. She’s known Jack
Langland since she was a child, and always loved him.
But the past is waiting in ambush with its dark legacy.
There’s a secret in Sarah’s family, a piece of the past
kept hidden from the world and from her. A secret
Jack can’t live with. A secret that changes everything,
for both of them.
The Lieutenant
A compelling story about friendship and self-discovery
set in New South Wales at the time of the First Fleet.
307
307
The secret river
Grenville, Kate
Winner Commonwealth Writers Prize 2006,
Australian.
A story of transportation, emancipation and conflict
with Aborigines on the Hawkesbury.
334
Marley and Me (Non Fiction)
Grogan, John
Page | 19
A family learns important life lessons from their
adorable, but naughty and neurotic dog.
291
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Haddon, Mark
Winner Whitbread Book of the Year; Long listed Man
Booker Award 2003
A boy with special needs solves a mystery and
uncovers the truth about his family.
271
The Watch Tower
A beautifully written and constructed novel about a
Harrower, Elizabeth menacing and domineering man who bullies, bribes
and brags himself into power over his young,
abandoned wife and her teenage sister.
335
Surrender
Hartnett, Sonya
Hazzard, Shirley
Winner Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards prize for
fiction 2005.
Gabriel is dying; haunted by a tragic mistake he made
when he was a child. He has only two friends, his dog
Surrender and Finnigan, a wild boy with whom he
made a boyhood pact. A powerful tale of lovelessness,
loss and regret.
The great fire
Winner Miles Franklin Award 2004
People reinventing their lives post WWII.
245
314
The transit of Venus
Hazzard, Shirley
Heiss, Anita
Page | 20
National Book Critics Circle Award.
Two sisters born in Australia and orphaned at an early
age, the two make their way to England. There Grace
opts for marriage and its securities; Caroline reaches
for more and loves, not always wisely, but well.
Not meeting Mr Right
With a little help from her mum, dad, brothers,
colleagues and neighbours, Alice sets out to find Mr
Right.
337
342
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Ugly: My memoir (Non Fiction)
Hoge, Robert
Hollinghurst, Alan
Hooper, Chloe
Hosseini, Khaled
Huggan, Isabel
Page | 21
Robert Hoge was born with a giant tumour on his
forehead, severely distorted facial features and legs
that were twisted and useless. His mother refused to
look at her son, let alone bring him home. But home
he went, to a life that, against the odds, was filled
with joy, optimism and boyhood naughtiness.
Line of beauty
In the summer of 1983, 20-year-old Nick Guest moves
into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the
Feddens: Tory MP Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel,
and their two children, Toby - whom Nick had idolised
at Oxford - and Catherine, always standing at a critical
angle to the family and its assumptions and ambitions.
As the Thatcher boom-years unfold, Nick, an innocent
in the worlds of politics and money, finds his life
altered by the rising fortunes of the glamorous family
he is entangled with.
The tall man: death and life on Palm Island (Non
Fiction)
One morning Cameron Doomadgee swore at a
policeman and forty minutes later lay dead in a watchhouse cell. It is the story of that policeman, the tall,
enigmatic Christopher Hurley who chose to work in
some of the toughest and wildest places in Australia,
and of the struggle to bring him to trial.
And the mountains echoed
POPULAR
novel about how we love, how we take care of one
another, and how the choices we make resonate
through generations.
In this tale revolving around not just parents and
children but brothers and sisters, cousins and
caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which
families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice
for one another; and how often we are surprised by
the actions of those closest to us, at the times that
matter most.
Belonging
Traces one woman’s journey towards understanding
the mysterious ways in which chance and choice
shape our lives.
293
501
258
404
329
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Steve Jobs (Non Fiction)
Isaacson, Walter
Isherwood,
Christopher
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Jacobson, Howard
James, Clive
Steve Jobs, who founded Apple with Stephen Wozniak
and Ronald Wayne in 1976, began his career as a
seemingly contradictory blend of hippie truth seeker
and tech-savvy hothead.
Mr. Isaacson knows how to explicate and celebrate
genius: revered, long-dead genius. But he wrote
“Steve Jobs” as its subject was mortally ill, and that is
a more painful and delicate challenge.
A Single Man
Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern
California. George is a gay middle-aged English
professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death
of his young partner. He is determined to persist in
the routines of his former life. "A Single Man "follows
him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours.
A pale view of hills
The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living
alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her
daughter. In a story where past and present
intertwine, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in
the wake of World War II.
The Finkler Question
POPULAR
The Finkler Question is a scorching story of friendship
and loss, exclusion and belonging, and of the wisdom
and humanity of maturity. Funny, furious, unflinching,
this extraordinary novel shows one of the finest
writers at his brilliant best.
Unreliable Memoirs (Non Fiction)
James set out to put his childhood in Australia behind
him by rendering it as part novel, part memoir.
630
154
183
307
174
Cover her face
James, P.D.
Page | 22
Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is embroiled
in the complicated passions beneath the calm surface
of an English village.
217
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Snake
Jennings, Kate
Irene is clever, ambitious, easily seduced and tempted
by everything beyond the confines of her life on a
remote Australian farm.
153
The Trojan dog
Johnston, Dorothy
Joint winner ACT Book of the Year 2001
White collar crime set in Canberra.
268
My brother Jack
Johnston, George
Jonasson, Jonas
Page | 23
David and Jack Meredith grow up in a patriotic
suburban Melbourne household during the First
World War, and go on to lead lives that could not be
more different. through the story of the two brothers,
George Johnston created an enduring exploration of
two Australian myths: that of the man who loses his
soul as he gains worldly success, and that of the
tough, honest Aussie battler, whose greatest ambition
is to serve his country during the war.
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the
Window and Disappeared POPULAR
Desperate to avoid his 100th birthday party, Allan
Karlsson climbs out the window of his room at the
nursing home and heads to the nearest bus station,
intending to travel as far as his pocket money will take
him. But a spur-of-the-moment decision to steal a
suitcase from a fellow passenger sends Allan on a
strange and unforeseen journey involving, among
other things, some nasty criminals, a very large pile of
cash, and an elephant named Sonya. It’s just another
chapter in a life full of adventures for Allan, who has
become entangled in the major events of the
twentieth century, including the Spanish Civil War and
the Manhattan Project.
367
400
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Burial rites
Kent, Hannah
King, Stephen
Koch, Christopher
Koch, Christopher
Page | 24
POPULAR
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent
brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged
with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent
to an isolated farm to await execution. Horrified at the
prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family
at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has
mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian,
seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms,
the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is
another side to the sensational story they've heard.
On writing (Non Fiction)
Find out what books and films influenced the young
writer, his first idea for a story and the true life tale
that inspired Carrie. For the first time, here's an
intimate autobiographical portrait of his home life, his
family and his traumatic recent accident. Citing
examples of his work and those of his contemporaries,
King gives an excellent masterclass on writing and tells
readers how he got to be a No. 1 bestseller for a
quarter of a century with fascinating descriptions of
his own process, the origins and development of, e.g.
Carrie and Misery.
Highways to a war
When Mike Langford, a war photographer with a
reputation for unusual risk-taking, disappears inside
Cambodia, he becomes a mythic figure in the minds of
his friends. The search for him which is at the heart of
this novel explores the personal highways that led him
to war, and to his ultimate fate.
The memory room
What is a spy? Are they born or are they made? With
these words, Vincent Austin analyses his future
occupation.
338
291
450
432
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Summer house with swimming pool
Koch, Herman
Kosinsky, Jerzy
Kremmer,
Christopher
Koch returns with another unreliable, and mostly
unlikable, narrator Dr Marc Schlosser whose patients
are the rich and famous of the creative industries. One
of Dr Schlosser’s equally unlikable patients actor Ralph
Meier has died as a result of a medical procedure and
Schlosser now faces the board of medical examiners.
Was it a case of malpractice, or something more
sinister, like murder?
Being There
About a man named Chance whose experience of the
world is limited to his work as a gardener and what he
has seen on television. Over the course of seven days,
Chance leaves his employer and navigates his way
through high society. His encounters with
businessmen, world leaders, and the media are
colored by his observations of life as seen in his
former garden and on television.
Inhaling the Mahatma
An assassination and a romance. A hijacking, several
nuclear explosions and a religious experience.
256
142
593
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Kundera, Milan
A young woman in love with a man torn between his
love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of
his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover..
314
One foot wrong
Laguna, Sophie
A child is imprisoned in a house by her reclusive
religious parents; her companions are Cat, Spoon,
Door, Handle, Broom, and they all speak to her. Her
imagination is informed by one book.
249
The boat
Le, Nam
Page | 25
A breathtakingly assured collection of stories in a
debut from Vietnamese – Australian author, Nam Le.
313
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman
Lee, Harper
London, Jack
London, Joan
London, Joan
Mackay, Hugh
Page | 26
Read the two books together to better understand
how these two works relate. Does the new book live
up to the status of To Kill a Mockingbird? Publishers
decided not to publish Go Set a Watchman when they
first read it in the 1950s.Was that a mistake?
Call of the Wild, White Fang and other Stories
This volume of Jack London's famed stories of the
North also includes "Batard", in which an abused dog
takes revenge on his owner; and "Love of Life", in
which an injured prospector, abandoned by his
partner, must struggle home alone through the
wilderness, stalked by a lone wolf.
The good parents
A tender and compelling tale of mother love and the
harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her
wings and vanishes from her parents' orbit. Maya de
Jong is an eighteen-year-old country girl who moves
to Melbourne and begins an affair with her new boss.
When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a
visit, Maya is gone--no one knows where.
Golden age Miles Franklin Longlist 2015
He felt like a pirate landing on an island of little
maimed animals. A great wave had swept them up
and dumped them here. All of them, like him,
stranded, wanting to go home. It is 1954 and thirteenyear-old Frank Gold, refugee from wartime Hungary, is
learning to walk again after contracting polio in
Australia.
Good life (Non Fiction) POPULAR
Social researcher and psychologist Hugh Mackay has
spent 40 years asking Australians about their lives,
loves, hopes, ambitions, fears and passions. In 'The
Good Life', he asks and answers the ultimate question:
What makes a life worth living? His conclusion is
provocative and passionately argued.
323
278
410
349
242
364
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Island: collected stories
MacLeod, Alistair
MacLeod, Alistair
Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton,
Nova Scotia, these stories are all concerned with the
complexities and mysteries of the human heart.
Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine
and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea,
they celebrate a passionate engagement with the
natural world and a continuity of the generations in
the face of transition - in the face of love and loss.
No great mischief
Life in Canada for a Scottish immigrant family.
433
260
Craft for a dry lake (Non Fiction)
Mahood, Kim
Malouf, David
Kim Mahood's memoir Craft for a Dry Lake was
published in 2000 and won the 2001 NSW Premier's
Award and The Age non-fiction Book of the Year.
Her father, an alcoholic Irish pastoralist dies in an
accident, and she, having led a city life as an artist,
retraces his steps in outback NT and the east.
Johnno
Australian
Set in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, Malouf's
debut effort follows the life of the ne'er-do-well title
character as seen through the eyes of an old friend.
266
169
Great world
Malouf, David
Malouf, David
Page | 27
Ranging over seventy years of Australian life, from
Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil
backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a
remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost
innocence, of survival and witness.
Ransom
Retells Homer's Iliad. Focusing on the unbreakable
bonds between men, Priam and Hector, Patroclus and
Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired to retrieve
Hector's body. Pride, grief, brutality, love and
neighbourliness are explored. And, this retelling has a
few surprises.
332
224
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Mantel, Hilary
Mantel, Hilary
Bring up the bodies
Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry
is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to
give him a son and her sharp intelligence and
audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble
families of England. When the discarded Katherine
dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly
exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. Hilary
Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic
trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and
treason.
Wolf Hall
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009
A tale of political intrigue with Thomas Cromwell set
during the reign of King Henry VIII.
411
653
Beyond Duck River
Martin, Angela
A woman’s experience with life from childhood to
adulthood as affected by both world wars.
300
Game of thrones
Martin, George
Massy, Charles
Page | 28
Martin--dubbed the "American Tolkien" by Time
magazine--has created a world that is as rich and vital
as any piece of historical fiction, set in an age of
knights and chivalry and filled with a plethora of
fascinating, multidimensional characters that you
love, hate to love, or love to hate as they struggle for
control of a divided kingdom.
Breaking the Sheep’s Back (Non Fiction)
The untold story of the events that led to Australia's
biggest industry disaster. It has taken the author
Charles Massy ten years to research and write this
book. In the process he spoke to most of the major
players and gained access to the key documents and
correspondence. He has gone inside cabinet and
political offices, the Wool Corporation, the
boardrooms of international wool buyers, wool
processors and designers, and the living rooms of
farmers across the country.
694
432
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Member of the wedding
McCullers, Carson
McFarlane, Fiona
McGahan, Andrew
Tells the story of the three phases of a weekend crisis
in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within
the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish
Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her
elder brother's wedding. Through a perilous skylight
we look into the mind of a child torn between her
yearning to belong and the urge to run away.
Night guest
POPULAR
The debut of a remarkable Australian talent, The Night
Guest is a mesmerising novel about trust, love,
dependence, and the fear that the things you know
best can become the things you're least certain about.
One morning Ruth wakes thinking a tiger has been in
her seaside house. Later that day a formidable woman
called Frida arrives, looking as if she's blown in from
the sea, but in fact she's come to care for Ruth. Frida
and the tiger: both are here to stay, and neither is
what they seem. Which of them can Ruth trust? And,
as memories of her childhood in Fiji press upon her
with increasing urgency, can she even trust herself?
Described as a psychological thriller.
Wonders of a godless world
The witch, the virgin, the archangel, the duke and an
orphan meet.
163
275
260
White earth
McGahan, Andrew
Page | 29
Voted to represent the Queensland in the National
Year of Reading 2012 collection
Winner Miles Franklin Award 2005
Australian
History of a pastoral family in QLD and the treatment
of Aborigines.
376
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Lost art of sleep (Non Fiction)
McGir, Michael
McGregor, Fiona
McInnes, William
and
Watt, Sarah
Mears, Gillian
Page | 30
The arrival of baby twins sent Michael McGirr in
search of an ancient practice for which bed is the ideal
setting. It's called sleep. In this warm, witty and
engaging book, McGirr muses on the many benefits of
sleep; mourns its demise; explains aspects of its
strange personality; observes what the brain really
gets up to in the small hours, and makes acquaintance
with some of the great sleepers and wakers of history,
from Aristotle to Thomas Edison, from Homer to
Florence Nightingale, from Shakespeare to Peter Pan.
Indelible ink
POPULAR
59 year old Marie King has grown accustomed to life
on Sydney's affluent North Shore. But now she's
divorced from her husband and her kids have moved
out. Her separation from her husband leaves her
directionless and financially stretched, and the family
house needs to be sold.
Marie ends up in a bar in Kings Cross, and on a
drunken whim she walks into a tattoo parlour and
gets a tattoo. Maria's first encounter with the tattoo
experience is the beginning of a liberation that will
lead to a reconsideration of the meaning of family, of
affluence, of the very meaning of being a woman in
contemporary Australian society.
Worse things happen at sea (Non Fiction) POPULAR
Australian actor William McInnes and his wife,
filmmaker and animator Sarah Watts, speak about
their relationship and family life in their latest book,
Worse Things Happen at Sea.
In the face of a number of challenges, they both have
a remarkable ability to find joy and humour in daily
life.
Foal’s Bread
Tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow
family and the high-jumping horse circuit prior to the
Second World War. A love story of impossible beauty
and sadness, it is also a chronicle of dreams 'turned
inside out', and miracles that never last, framed
against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.
296
425
251
361
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Chasing bohemia: a year of living dangerously in Rio
de Janeiro
Michael, Carmen
Miller, Alex
A travel industry executive ditches her job in London
and visits the city of Rio de Janeiro for a holiday. Wary
of the allure of glossy brochure promises, she starts
out very much as a jaded jetsetter.
Journey to the stone country
Winner Miles Franklin Award 2003
Australian
A woman’s journey back into her childhood on the
land & with the Jangga tribe...
256
364
Bone clocks
Mitchell , David
Moore, Brian
Moorhouse, Frank
Page | 31
One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway
Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a
small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will
pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of
asylum the woman was seeking..
Lonely passion of Judith Hearne
A socially isolated woman of modest means, she
teaches piano to a handful of students to pass the
day. Her only social activity is tea with the O'Neill
family, who secretly dread her weekly visits. Judith
soon meets wealthy James Madden and fantasises
about marrying this lively, debonair man.
Grand days
Moorhouse takes a stab at historical fiction with
brilliant results. The basic story: the education of a
young Australian woman at the League of Nations in
Geneva in the 1920s, barely hints at all the strange,
insightful, and moving places the novel goes. This is a
story about idealism and corruption, both personal
and on the world stage, that it unlike anything else
you've read. It's long and it's very very smart, still the
fact that it's not better known and acclaimed is very
puzzling.
608
255
527
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Cold Light
Moorhouse, Frank
Morrison, Toni
Intelligent, poignant and absorbing, Cold Light is a
remarkable stand-alone novel, which can also be read
as a companion to the earlier Edith novels Grand Days
and Dark Palace.
It is 1950, the League of Nations has collapsed. Edith
Campbell Berry, who joined the League in Geneva
before the war, is out of a job, her vision shattered.
When her communist brother, Frederick, turns up out
of the blue after many years of absence, she becomes
concerned that he may jeopardise her chances of
becoming a diplomat. After pursuing the Bloomsbury
life for many years, Edith finds herself fearful of being
exposed. Unexpectedly, in mid-life she also realises
that she yearns for children. When she meets a man
who could offer not only security but a ready-made
family, she consults the Book of Crossroads and the
answer changes the course of her life.
Beloved
Winner Pulitzer Prize for fiction 1988
Mid 1800s in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery
comes under attack from abolitionists.
Runaway
Munro, Alice
719
273
POPULAR
A set of short stories about women facing pivotal
moments in their lives, exploring the themes of
women’s lives and of the interaction with lovers,
husbands, parents and children.
335
Too much happiness
Munro, Alice
Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved
and admired writers & the winner of the 2009 Man
Booker International Prize.
303
Reading Lolita in Tehran (Non Fiction)
Nafisi, Azar
Page | 32
Life of a teacher and her 7 literature students in
revolutionary Iran.
418
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Things I've been silent about (Non Fiction)
Nafisi, Azar
Autobiography, Life in Iran during a time of revolution
and change.
336
Suite Francaise
Némirovsky, Irène
Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in
1940 Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men
and women thrown together in circumstances beyond
their control.
403
Death of a whaler
Newton, Nerida F
Niffenegger,
Audrey
second last day before the whaling station is closed
down for good, Flinch, the young spotter, is involved
in a terrible accident. Over a decade later, Flinch has
become a recluse. It is only after crossing paths with
Karma, a girl living in one of the hinterland's first
hippie communes, that Flinch gradually and
reluctantly embarks upon a path towards healing,
coming to terms with his past, present and future
The time traveler’s wife
An extraordinary love story where Henry, because of a
genetic condition, time travels into his past or future.
306
516
12 years a slave (Non Fiction)
Northup, Solomon
Obama, Barack
Page | 33
In Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup tells the
story of his captivity. His account is distinguished from
the some 150 slave-authored narratives published
before the Civil War, as Northup had been born free.
It is a brutal story, which provides an unvarnished
view of the inhumanity inherent in the system of
chattel bondage.
Dreams from my father : story of race and
inheritance (Non Fiction)
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law
Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the
intellectual journey he planned to recount became
instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual
life.
256
442
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Tiger's wife
Obreht, Tea
The story of a young doctor working in a war-scarred
Balkan country and reaching back to World War II and
then to wars that came before, it illustrates the
complex history of a mysterious region, the
undercurrents of suspicion and loss and the age-old
secrets and superstitions that haunt contemporary
life.
335
Anil’s ghost
Ondaatje, Michael
Winner of Irish Time Literature Prize 2001
Human Rights forensic anthropologist risks her life
investigating organised murder campaigns in war torn
Sri Lanka.
307
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell, George
Winston Smith - The 39 year old protagonist of the
novel whose rebellion against Big Brother and the
Party and love for Julia is completely wiped out by
O’Brian at the Ministry of Love.
325
The white castle
Pamuk, Orhan
A young Italian scholar captured by pirates and put up
for auction at the Istanbul slave market and acquired
by a brilliant Turkish inventor.
145
Past the shallows
Parrett, Favel
The book is set in Tasmania in the 1980s. It is the story
of three brothers; Joe, Miles and Harry. Their mother
was killed in a car accident when they were younger
and their belligerent father takes his hard life out on
his kids.
Favel deftly captures the harshness and beauty of life
at the edge of Australia and her writing will stay with
you long after you put the book down.
254
Truth and beauty (Non Fiction)
Patchett, Ann
Page | 34
Explores the world of women’s friendships.
257
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Hazel: my mother's story (Non Fiction)
Pieters-Hawke, Sue
Plath, Sylvia
Proulx, Annie
Page | 35
Hazel Hawke is one of our most loved and respected
Australians. As the wife of a prime minister she
brought a down-to-earth warmth to Canberra that
influenced everyone she came into contact with. We
all felt her energy, her practicality and her immense
capacity for humour and enjoyment. Public love and
support for Hazel reached in 2003 when she publicly
announced she'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's
disease. This intimate, beautiful biography of an
extraordinary woman is written by Hazel's eldest
daughter, Sue Pieters-Hawke. Candid, revealing and
fascinating it explores Hazel's life as she navigated
personal challenges and profound social changes, and
celebrates her value as a mother, wife, role model and
tireless worker for the rights and welfare of others.
The bell jar
The world in which the events of the novel take place
is a world bounded by the Cold War on one side and
the sexual war on the other ...This novel is not political
nor historical in any narrow sense, but in looking at
the madness of the world and the world of madness it
forces us to consider the great question posed by all
truly realistic fiction: What is reality and how can it be
confronted?
Bird Cloud (Non Fiction)
Proulx′s first non-fiction in more than twenty years,
Bird Cloud is the story of building a house - solar
panels, a Japanese soak tub, a concrete floor, elk horn
handles on kitchen cabinets - and an enthralling
natural history and archeology of the region,
inhabited for millennia by Ute, Arapaho and Shoshone
Indians.
470
234
234
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Smoke and Mirrors
Robertson, Kel
Robinson,
Marilynne
Robinson,
Marilynne
POPULAR
Brad Chen is a member of the Australian Federal
Police who is called back from sick leave (arising from
events in the first book) to help in the investigation of
the murders of a former Whitlam Government
Minister and the editor who was helping him finalise
his memoirs. The manuscript of the almost completed
book is missing. Could there be anything explosive
enough in the memoirs – perhaps something
concerning the dismissal of the Whitlam Government
– to kill for? Or are more personal factors likely to be
the motive?
Housekeeping
The story of Ruth and Lucille, orphans growing up in
the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast
northwest of America. Abandoned by a succession of
relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of
Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead
mother.
Home
A moving book about families, love, death and faith.
326
219
325
Austerlitz
Sebald, Winfried
Sebald, Winfried
Page | 36
In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to
England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster
parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the
boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up
ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an
architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all
clues that might point to his origin - finds the past
returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore
what happened fifty years before.
Emigrants
The Emigrants is composed of four long narratives
which at first appear to be the straightforward
accounts of the lives of several Jewish exiles in
England, Austria, and America. But gradually, Sebald's
prose, which combines documentary description with
almost hallucinatory fiction, exerts a new magic, and
the four stories merge into one.
414
237
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Shaffer, Mary Ann
Shreve, Anita
Shteyngart, Gary
Simsion, Graeme
Page | 37
A remarkable correspondence with the society’s
members, learning about their island, their taste in
books, and the impact the recent German occupation
has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories,
Juliet sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will
change her forever.
Sea glass
The year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her
husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage
and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While
Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for
bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything
they own to buy the house they both love. Along with
millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the
stock market crash and finds himself penniless.
Little failure: a memoir (Non Fiction)
A candid and deeply poignant story of a Soviet family's
trials and tribulations, and of their escape in 1979 to
the consumerist promised land of the USA, Little
Failure is also an exceptionally funny account of the
author's transformation from asthmatic toddler in
Leningrad to 40-something Manhattanite with a
receding hairline and a memoir to write.
The Rosie effect
The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are
happily married and living in New York. But they’re
about to face a new challenge. Rosie is pregnant.
Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a
father, but his unusual research style gets him into
trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene
is on hand to offer advice: he’s left Claudia and moved
in with Don and Rosie.
Get ready to fall in love all over again.
280
356
349
415
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The Rosie project
Simsion, Graeme
Smith, Patti
POPULAR
Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged
professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he
found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based
manner with which Don approaches all things, he
designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner.
Rosie Jarman is all these things. And while Don quickly
disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as
a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie
on her own quest: identifying her biological father.
When an unlikely relationship develops as they
collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to
confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—
and the realization that, despite your best scientific
efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.
Just Kids (Non Fiction)
In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people
led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would
carry each to international success never dreamed of.
329
288
White teeth
Smith, Zadie
The lives in London, of 3 families, 3 cultures, over 3
generations
Light Between Oceans
Stedman, M.L.
Page | 38
540
POPULAR
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom
Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the
lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s
journey from the coast. To this isolated island Tom
brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years
later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the
grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat
has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a
living baby. Tom wants to report the man and infant
immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her
breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as
their own.
362
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Crossing to Safety
Stegner, Wallace
Earle
Summers, Anne
Temple, Peter
The story is one of marriage and of friendship. At its
centre are two couples: the Morgans, Larry and his
angelic wife Sally; and the Langs, the weak but
charming Sid, and the vibrant and impossibly bossy
Charity. We journey with them into the problems that
beset their lives: the physical challenges that Larry's
wife, Sally, faces, and the threads that weave
themselves thickly through the Langs' relationship.
The lost mother: a story of art and love (Non Fiction)
After her mother's death in 2005, Anne Summers
inherits a portrait of her mother as a child.
Mesmerised by this image, she finds herself drawn
into the story of how the portrait was painted and
eventually found its way into her family. She soon
learns the artist painted another portrait of her
mother; this time as the Madonna.
The broken shore
Crime writing at its best - a novel about place, politics
and power.
327
354
345
Truth
Temple, Peter
Page | 39
At the close of a long day, Inspector Stephen Villani
stands in the bathroom of a luxury apartment high
above the city. In the glass bath, a young woman lies
dead, a panic button within reach.
Villani’s life is his work. It is his identity, his calling, his
touchstone. But now, over a few sweltering summer
days, as fires burn across the state and his superiors
and colleagues scheme and jostle, he finds all the
certainties of his life are crumbling.
387
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
1788
Tench, Watkin
Thomson, Rupert
Watkin Tench stepped ashore at Botany Bay with the
First Fleet in January 1788. He was in his late twenties,
a captain of the marines, and on the adventure of his
life. Insatiably curious, with a natural genius for
storytelling, Tench wrote two enthralling accounts of
the infant colony - A Narrative of the Expedition to
Botany Bay and A Complete Account of the
Settlement at Port Jackson. Tench brings to life the
legendary figures of Bennelong, Arabanoo and
Governor Phillip, and records the voices of convicts
trying to make new lives in their new country.
Secrecy
POPULAR
It is Florence, 1691. The Renaissance is long gone, and
the city is a dark, repressive place. The Enlightenment
may be just around the corner, but knowledge is still
the property of the few, and they guard it fiercely.
320
312
Shadow of the Silk Road
Thubron, Colin
Thwe, Pascal Khoo
Toibin, Colm
Page | 40
A journey along the greatest land route on earth: out
of the heart of China into the mountains of Central
Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of
Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers
some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making
his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and
camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow
Emperor to the ancient port of Antioch.
From the land of green ghosts: a Burmese odyssey
(Non Fiction)
In 1988 Dr John Casey, a Cambridge don visiting
Burma, was told of a waiter in Mandalay with a
passion for the works of James Joyce. Intrigued by this
unlikely story, he visited the restaurant, where he met
Pascal Khoo Thwe. The encounter was to change both
their lives.
Blackwater lightship
It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Helen, her mother, Lily,
and her grandmother, Dora have come together to
tend to Helen's brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS.
With Declan's two friends, the six of them are forced
to plumb the shoals of their own histories and to
come to terms with each other.
363
304
273
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Non Fiction)
Tolstoy, Leo
The story of a man facing his death and confronting
his life.
106
Anna Karenina
Tolstoy, Leo
The sweeping love story of two people who defy the
conventions of their age to follow the dictates of their
hearts
1002
Fraction of the whole
Tolz, Steve
Tsiolkas, Christos
Viggers, Karen
Page | 41
From his prison cell, Jasper Dean tells the unlikely
story of his scheming father Martin, his crazy Uncle
Terry and how the three of them upset - mostly
unintentionally - an entire continent. Incorporating
death, parenting (good and bad kinds), one labyrinth,
first love, a handbook for criminals, a scheme to make
everyone rich and an explosive suggestion box, Steve
Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole is a hilarious,
heartbreaking story of families and how to survive
them.
The slap
Australian
At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is
not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect
on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly
or indirectly influenced by the event.
The Grass Castle
POPULAR
The daughter of a pastoralist, Daphne grew up in a
remote valley of the Brindabella Ranges where she
raised her family with her husband Doug in a world of
horses, cattle and stockmen. But then the government
forced them off their land and years later, Daphne is
still trying to come to terms with the grief of her
departure from the mountains and its tragic impact on
her husband.
720
485
407
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Age of Miracles
Walker, Karen
Thompson
Walsh, Kerry-Anne
Watson, Don
POPULAR
On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California
suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along
with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the
earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights
grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the
environment is thrown into disarray. As Julia adjusts
to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.
Stalking of Julie Gillard (Non Fiction)
How much of a role did the media play in the latest
leadership change, which last week saw Kevin Rudd
return as Australia's Prime Minister? Kerrie-Anne
Walsh's new book "The Stalking of Julia Gillard" looks
at how the whole destabilisation campaign worked its
way to the Federal Government's nerve centre,
effectively paralyse it. Walsh argues that the Fourth
Estate became a pawn in the relentless campaign by
Team Rudd to oust Julia Gillard.
American journeys (Non Fiction)
Winner of 2008 Walkley Nonfiction Book Award
On a sudden impulse, Don Watson took a train called
The Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles.
373
305
332
Happy Valley
White, Patrick
Page | 42
Happy Valley is a place of dreams and secrets, of snow
and ice and wind. In this remote little town, perched
in its landscape of desolate beauty, everybody has a
story to tell about loss and longing and loneliness,
about their passion to escape. I must get away, thinks
Dr Oliver Halliday, thinks Alys Browne, thinks Sidney
Furlow. But Happy Valley is not a place that can be
easily left, and White's vivid characters, with their
distinctive voices, move bit by bit towards sorrow and
acceptance. "Happy Valley" is the missing piece in the
extraordinary jigsaw of Patrick White's work.
407
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Stoner
Williams, John
Williams, Niall
Wintin, Tim
Winton , Tim
Winton, Tim
Page | 43
POPULAR
William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at
nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English
literature changes his life, and he never returns to
work on his father's farm. "Stoner" tells of the
conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that
pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the
significance of an individual life. A reading experience
like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature,
it is a novel to be savoured.
History of the rain
POPULAR
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep
alive those who only live now in the telling. In Faha,
County Clare, everyone is a long story... .. Bedbound in
her attic room beneath the rain, plain Ruth Swain is in
search of her father.
Dirt music
Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in
ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a
fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead
mother she can never replace. One morning, in the
boozy pre-dawn gloom, she sees, a shadow drifting up
the beach below - a loner called Luther Fox, with
danger in his wake. Full of unforgettable characters,
Dirt Music is Tim Winton's classic love song to land
and place.
Eyrie
POPULAR
Tom Keely has lost his bearings. His reputation in
ruins, he finds himself holed up in a flat at the top of a
grim high-rise, looking down on the world he's fallen
out of love with. He has cut himself off, and intends to
keep it that way, until one day he runs into some
neighbours: a woman from his past and her
introverted young boy.
Breath
Australian
Bruce Pike, recounts his boyhood friendship with Ivan
"Loonie" Loon.
The main action of the novel takes place in the 1970s.
278
368
465
423
264
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Cloudstreet
Winton, Tim
Winton, Tim
Wood, Charlotte
Wood, Charlotte
Wyld, Evie
Xinran
Page | 44
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award in 1992.
Australian
Chronicles the lives of two working class Australian
families who come to live together at One Cloud
Street, over a period of twenty years, 1943 - 1963.
The Turning
Australian
17 overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life
regret.
Animal people
Sharply observed, hilarious, tender and heartbreaking,
Animal People is a portrait of urban life, a meditation
on the conflicted nature of human-animal
relationships, and a masterpiece of storytelling. Filled
with shocks of recognition and revelation, it shows a
writer of great depth and compassion at work.
The Children
The illness of a family member is what brings them
together as they revisit their family home and the
country town they grew up in. A realistic depiction of
an Australian country town and family and the issues
they face.
All the birds, singing
POPULAR
Jake Whyte is the sole resident of an old farmhouse
on an unnamed British island, a place of ceaseless
rains and battering winds. It's just her, her untamed
companion, Dog, and a flock of sheep. Which is how
she wanted it to be. But something is coming for the
sheep every night...
Sky burial (Non Fiction)
POPULAR
The story of a woman’s 30-year search for the truth of
her husband’s death in Tibet, where he disappeared in
1958.
426
317
264
269
229
164
Independent Book Clubs Reading List 2016
Revolutionary road
Yates, Richard
Page | 45
The story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright,
beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the
assumption that greatness is only just around the
corner. With heartbreaking compassion and
remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank
and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying
not only each other, but their best selves
337