Popular Oceanian Contemporary Fiction Books
Find contemporary fiction books written by authors from Oceania for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (16)
1.
Devilry by Marley Valentine EN
AustraliaDescription:
Attending King University was at the top of my bucket list. Falling in love with my Professor wasn't. Earning a full scholarship to King University was my hard earned ticket out of hell. I'm happy to be away from the small town I grew up in and all the equally small minded people who live there. King was going to be my safe haven. A place where I could leave the old me behind and finally grow into the young man my family had desperately tried to hide away. Diving head first into new experiences, new friends, and parties, I didn't expect to run straight into the one thing I wasn't ready for. Hi... continue
2.
Flyaway by Kathleen jennings EN
Description:
'A superbly told tale of folklore-infused fantasy, full of rising dread, set in a sharply observed Australian outback town.' Garth Nix Strange what chooses to flourish here. Which plants. Which stories. Bettina Scott lives a tidy, quiet life in Runagate, tending to her delicate mother and their well-kept garden after her father and brothers disappear - until a note arrives that sends Bettina into the scrublands beyond, searching for answers about what really happened to this town, and to her family. For this is a land where superstitions hunt and folk tales dream - and power is there for the t... continue
3.
Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy EN
Description:
Against the backdrop of Darwin, that small, tropical hothouse of a port, half-outback, half-oriental, lying at the tip of northern Australia, 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. 'I enjoyed Maestro enormously. Besides its thoughtfulness and bright sensuality, it has a playful quality, a love of jest, which appealed to me very much.' Helen Garner, SYDNEY REVIEW On release, MAEStRO was hailed 'a splendid achievement, a wise, deeply felt novel that continues to haunt well after on... continue
4.
Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings EN
Description:
She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain's most photographed bad-boy lothario who broke her heart. But Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it. They're in the stars... just suspended in a strange kind of love that looks like hurting each other a lot of the time: She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of their every sad endeavour to get over one another, it's still each other they crawl back to. But their dysfunction is catching up with ... continue
5.
Country: Oceania / 
New Zealand
New Zealand
Description:
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding ... continue
6.
Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko EN
Description:
When Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she's hoping for a tree change, and a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbors, and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families. When Jo unexpectedly finds love on one side of the Native Title divide she quickly learns that living on country is only part of the recipe for the good life.
7.
Not Here to Make Friends by Jodi McAlister EN
Description:
In this “full-on villain romance” (The New York Times) a group of women on a reality dating show should be vying for the love of their Romeo, but it turns out one of them only has eyes for the showrunner. Murray O’Connell is standing on the greatest precipice of his career. As showrunner of the reality dating show Marry Me, Juliet, Murray is determined to make this season a success. Nothing and nobody will stand in his way. Except perhaps Lily Fireball, the network’s choice for this season’s villain. Lily has classic reality TV appeal: She’s feisty, dramatic, and never backs down from a fight.... continue
8.
Sado by Mikaela Nyman EN
VanuatuDescription:
Sado n. shadow 2. reflection 3. humiliation, dishonour ¿A New Bislama Dictionary Friday 13 March, 2015: Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Pam makes landfall with devastating consequences. Vanuatu is bruised but not broken. Reeling from the loss of livelihood and struggling to meet basic human needs, people start to reassemble their lives. Cathryn is an NGO worker from New Zealand who has a ruined home, a teenage son and a Ni-Vanuatu boyfriend she hasn¿t heard from since the phone lines went dead. Faia is a community organiser, a radio journalist and a survivor who fights for women to be heard. Toget... continue
9.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts EN
Description:
Novel based on author's life. Gregory David Roberts committed a series of robberies while addicted to heroin, and in 1980 he escaped over the front wall of Victoria's maximum-security prison, making him one of Australia's most wanted men. His subsequent journey took him to various places including Bombay, where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner and street soldier for the Bombay mafia. Explores the author's journey from being a wanted criminal in Australia to finding humanity on the wild edge of experience.
10.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood EN
Description:
THE NEW NOVEL BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE WEEKEND, NOW LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 A Guardian Book of the Summer 2024 A book of the year for the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Shortlisted for the ABIA Award for Literary Fiction Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 'A beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life' SUNDAY TIMES 'A book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks the big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enla... continue