Transit: 114 books

A Guardian Best Book of 2017 “Every once in a while a novel does not record reality but creates a whole new reality, one that casts a light on our darkest feelings. Kafka did that. Bruno Schulz did that. Now the Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it with the terrifying Such Small Hands.”-Edmund...

"A magnificent novel."—The New Yorker "This is a book to relish."—The Guardian A woman moves to a London suburb near the River Lea, without knowing quite why or for how long. Over a series of long, solitary walks she reminisces about the rivers she has encountered...

When Mark Heyward first went to Indonesia, to teach at a small school in East Kalimantan, little did he realise how life changing his decision would prove to be. Within three years his Australian life would be behind him and he would be travelling, with fellow adventurers, across remote Indonesian Borneo....

It's 1872 and China still bruised from its defeat in the two Opium Wars sends a group of boys, including seven-year-old Chen Mu, to America to study and bring back the secrets of the West. But nine years on Chen Mu becomes a fugitive and flees to Umberumberka, a mining town in outback Australia. He...

From Carnation Kid and early pop stardom, to LA songsmith and actor, to producer and manager, to Idol judge, to barrister, Mark Holden's memoir is always startlingly honest, a unique portrait of the music and TV industries, of family and ageing in the public eye.In 2006 Mark had a premonition that...

Tell it to the Dog. is an exquisitely written memoir that is at once playful, heartbreaking and affirming. From a Dublin childhood to London, then on to Europe, to Asia and Australia, there is a deep engagement with the world in this book about growing up, about human and animal connectedness, about...

A two year old girl is abandoned on the streets of Ulaan Bataar with a bag of clothes and a note pinned to her: ‘Please take care of me ...'Twelve year old Betty, alone looking after her dying mother, is kidnapped to become a child soldier ...An Australian aid worker finds himself off the tourist...

‘Iran, My Grandfather is a work of recovery, resistance, and affirmation. I think one can say without risk of hyperbole that it is one of the most remarkable texts ever to have been published in Australia.’ John Kinsella Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2011 ...

From the Sudan to Northern New South Wales, Tarab is an epic, mesmerising tale of high adventure and the search for meaning. Carl Cleves escapes national service in Belgium to live in South Africa at the height of the apartheid era. So begin the adventures and quests, wanderings and narrow escapes, mishaps...

Axiomatic is Tumarkin's fourth book of nonfiction, and her most pioneering. Her three previous books have all been shortlisted for major prizes in Australia, but this is the book best positioned to break her out in the US market. Axiomatic is a boundary-shifting fusion of thinking, storytelling,...

•Longlisted for 2018 Man Booker International Prize •Autobiographical novel piecing together the kidnap and murder of her grandfather by terrorists, reflecting on the personal impact of private pain and public tragedy. •A fragmented narrative told in a compulsively readable style.

A tin man ponders the mysteries of death as a heart starts to take charge of his limbs, while in a place not so far away a boy tries to play the piano like Margarita, the teacher’s cruel and beautiful niece. In stories filled with violence and tenderness, love and disconnection, Carlos Yushimito’s debut shines.

The coast and dreams of being by the water are never far away in Kinsellas surprising stories of Australian small town life. They summon in us both longing and fear at the recollection of our own childhoods, families, friends and upbringings. Flight is a possibility. A boy builds a rocket from 44-gallon...

In the spirit of A. B. Faceys A Fortunate Life, Jack Mercers Hard Times is the true story of the authors amazing adventures. In 1911, growing up in an Ararat pub, he faces the terror of a violent stepfather and a mother who barely acknowledges his existence. But one thing keeps him sane: a plan to run....