Dive into summer with this selection of diverse Australian voices for your reading pile. Not a member of the library? The Vision Australia Library is a free national public library for anyone who is blind, has low vision or a print disability. Join the library today!
Critically Acclaimed Titles
My Father and Other Animals Sam Vincent
Winner of the 2023 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Sam Vincent is a twenty-something writer in the inner suburbs, when he gets a call from his mother: his father has stuck his hand in a woodchipper, but 'not to worry – it wasn't like that scene in Fargo or anything'. When Sam returns to the family farm to help out, his life takes a new and unexpected direction. Whether castrating a calf or buying a bull, Sam's farming apprenticeship is an education in grit and shit. But there are victories, too: nurturing a fig orchard to bloom; joining forces with Indigenous elders to protect a special site. Slowly, Sam finds himself thinking differently about the farm, about his father and about his relationship with both.
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Winner of the 2023 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Fiction. A young woman accompanies her mother on a holiday in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches, and walk along the canals at night. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong and the daughter’s allegiances in Australia. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken?
The Lovers by Yumna Kassab
Every couple has a story. How they met, how they fell in love - their ups, their downs. The Lovers is an enchanting fable that explores the light and dark of a relationship, It is about the private universe between two people as they try to hold to each other despite the barriers of geography, culture and class. Every couple has a beginning, a middle, and maybe an end. The Lovers was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin 2023 Award.
First Nations Voices
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Grannie Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.
Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking by Tyson Yunkaporta
Right Story, Wrong Story describes how our relationship with land is inseparable from how we relate to each other. This book is a sequence of thought experiments, which are, ‘crowd-sourced narratives where everybody’s contribution to the story, no matter how contradictory, is honoured and included...’ Tyson Yunkaporta argues that story is at the heart of everything. But what is right or wrong story? This exhilarating book is an attempt to answer that question.
Fictional favourites
Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton
A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run, but the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist of international acclaim, outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy who's waiting for her. Lola is the only person who can help make her dreams come true and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can ever do. She must look in the mirror.
The Seven by Chris Hammer
Yuwonderie's seven founding families have lorded it over their district for a century, growing ever more rich and powerful. But now one of their own is found dead in a ditch and homicide detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are sent to investigate.
Could the murder be connected to the execution of the victim's friend thirty years ago—another member of The Seven—or even the long-forgotten story of a servant girl on the brink of the Great War? What are the secrets The Seven are so desperate to keep hidden?
True Stories
Home to Biloela by Priya Nadesalingam
Home to Biloela is the dramatic inside story of the Tamil refugee family which became a cause célèbre all around Australia, and the epic fight by a small rural community to set them free. For the first time, Priya Nadesalingam shares the story of her childhood in Sril Lanka, perilous escape to Australia, and the new life she created with her husband and two daughters in Biloela. When the Australian government made multiple attempts to have the family deported, their community swung into action to keep them home.
Flawed Hero by Chris Masters
The shocking story of the case against Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG. Gold Walkley Award winning journalist Chris Masters was the first to investigate the rumours of summary executions, bloodings and bullying implicating Australia’s most highly decorated soldier. When the stories hit the headlines, and with a billionaire media baron's backing, Ben Roberts-Smith sued. So commenced the defamation trial of the century. Chris Masters tells the extraordinary story of Ben Roberts-Smith, the man at the centre of this de facto war crimes trial, from the battlegrounds of Afghanistan to the front lines of the Federal Court.
I’ll Let Myself In by Hannah Diviney
A defiant coming of age story about a young woman coming to terms with all that she is, the good, the bad and the ugly. Hannah Diviney is a young writer and disability advocate who was determined to forge her own path in a world that wasn't designed for her, and to be the representation she'd always wanted to see.