World Literature

As the old sailor's adage goes, a woman on board invites bad luck, a superstation that turned out to be true for the enemies of notorious pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read....

In the best-selling tradition of The Girl from Munich and The Tattooist of Auschwitz, an extraordinary tale based on the true story of how the author’s mother survived World War II against all odds....

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the true story of Lale and Gita Sokolov, two Slovakian Jews who survived Auschwitz and eventually made their home in Australia....

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question.... 

Wisecracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things - her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying, and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley....

A fabulous coming-of-age debut novel that has sold over 5 million copies worldwide, and has been made into a movie starring Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okonedo, and Paul Bettany....

Ever since Colin Firth's Mr Darcy emerged from the lake in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the novels of Jane Austen have become more popular than ever, delighting millions of fans all over the world....

A Saxon raised by Vikings. A pagan fighting for a Christian King. The conflict at the heart of a hero will be played out in the fight for England....

The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number one best-selling series The Warrior Chronicles, on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg....

In Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, one of our very best writers brings the opulent world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life.... 

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason....

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong....

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career....

In the last years of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in failing health, and his heir is an untested youth. The Danes, who have failed so many times to conquer Wessex, smell opportunity....

The fourth in the best-selling Alfred series from number one historical novelist, Bernard Cornwell....

Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, Growing Up Queer in Australia assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity.... 

Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears....

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores....

A huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War....

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world....

Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons' perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity....

After a shocking discovery, Grace Woods leaves her vast Australian sheep station and travels to tumultuous postwar Paris in order to find her true identity.... 

Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within....

Chicago, 1954. When his father, Montrose, goes missing, 22-year-old army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his uncle George....

Mary Oliver has published fifteen volumes of poetry and five books of prose in the span of four decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings....