Read Around Oceania Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Oceania.
Best books from Oceania (281)
151.
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville EN
AustraliaDescription:
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.
152.
How to Bee by Bren MacDibble EN
Description:
A story about family, loyalty, kindness and bravery, set against an all-too-possible future where climate change has forever changed the way we live. In a world where real bees are extinct, the quickest, bravest kids climb the fruit trees and pollinate the flowers by hand. Peony lives with her sister, Magnolia, and her grandfather on a fruit farm outside the city. All Peony really wants is to be a bee. Even though she is only nine — and bees must be ten — Peony already knows all there is to know about being a bee and she is determined to achieve her dream. Life on the farm is a scrabble, but t... continue
153.
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
154.
My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier EN
Description:
"Beats The Silence of the Lambs for suspense—it's the kind of book that had me literally gasping aloud as it rattled to its incredible conclusion." —Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author of Homeland What if the most terrifying person you know is your ten-year-old sister? Seventeen-year-old Aussie Che Taylor loves his younger sister, Rosa. But he’s also certain that she’s a psychopath—clinically, threateningly, dangerously. Recently Rosa has been making trouble, hurting things. Che is the only one who knows; he’s the only one his sister trusts. Rosa is smart, talented, pretty, and ve... continue
155.
Road No Good by Bridget Isichei EN
Description:
What happens when a young New Zealand woman feels the need to escape the online reality that is her life and goes in search of 'real' life experience in poverty-stricken Vanuatu? Bridget Isichei wanted to make a difference in the world; she wanted to help people. However, she didn't know what she was in for when she accepted a two-year volunteer humanitarian post to set up preschools and train women to be teachers in the popular tourist destination of Vanuatu. Instead of cocktails by the sea in a luxury resort, Bridget found herself in Luganville, a shanty town whose inhabitants were still pra... continue
156.
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
157.
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright EN
Description:
The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute teenager called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawle... continue
158.
Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson EN
Description:
For fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz, a fiendishly fun locked room murder mystery from the author of the indie darling Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone --this time set on a train full of mystery writers, agents, editors, and fans. Ernest Cunningham returns in a deliciously witty locked room (train) mystery. When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each o... continue
159.
A Remarkable Rotuman Woman by Jacinta Tonga EN
FijiDescription:
Petera Veu was born out of wedlock and into a time when girls lived lives of quiet, domestic servitude. But Petera Veu had other ideas. Like the Fijian island of Rotuma in which she was raised, Petera didn't quite fit in with her surroundings. She picked fights, stole food, rebuked priests and generally spoke her mind whenever possible. Determined, independent and, at times, downright intractable, Petera Veu lived life on her own terms. A Remarkable Rotuman Woman is Jacinta Tonga's memoir of her late grandmother, the indomitable Petera Veu, and speaks of traditional life in the South Pacific, ... continue
160.
Of Baluka and Nibong Palm by Mikaele Mataika Kolinio Yasa, Pasifika Education Centre EN
Description:
This fully illustrated biography of Rev. Mikaele Yasa covers his early life in Fiji, military service and his struggle with his faith in later life. It also contains a collections of writings by Rev. Yasa in both English and Fijian.