fiction
Fiction book of the month
A Far-Flung Life
M. L. Stedman
Australian Author Paperback
$ 29.99 $ 34.99
Our Fiction Book of the Month for March is A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman. A Far-flung Life follows the story of the MacBrides – a family who have lived on a remote sheep station in Western Australia for generations. When their father, Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo, the lives of his family are shattered forever. Like with earlier works, The Light Between Oceans being one of them, Stedman returns to familiar themes of family and fate. A Far-flung Life is an epic tale that will sit with you long after you put the book down.
A conversation with the author
Congratulations on being the Fiction Book of the Month! Can you tell us a bit about your book?
Thank you! A Far-flung Life is the story of the MacBride family, who run a millionacre sheep station in remote WA in the 1950s and 60s. On an ordinary date on a straight and lonely road, a terrible truck crash sets off a series of unforeseeable events that spool out over generations, leaving the survivors with deep moral dilemmas to which there simply isn’ t an easy answer. Other people in their community, too, are wrestling with hardship. The book raises many questions: Does everyone, no matter who they are or what they’ ve done, have the right to love and be loved? Does everyone deserve to have a place to belong, or are there some things that mean a person is forever an outcast? Who has the right to keep secrets, and who has a duty to keep them? And what is the difference?
The vast, isolated landscape of Meredith Downs feels like a character in itself. What inspired the setting of the sheep station?
I agree – it’ s definitely a character, as is time, in the form of Old Wally, the grandfather clock. Being from WA, it was a natural place for me to base a story: growing up, I often travelled in the country. Research for this novel took me to lots of remote places in WA, including sheep stations – some working, some destocked or converted for cattle. Meredith Downs isn’ t based on an actual property, but reflects aspects of places I visited, or that I encountered in archives.
The novel explores secrets people shield‘ in order to survive’. What draws you to writing about the hidden burdens people carry?
Every life has its share( sometimes more than its share) of difficulties which aren’ t visible to anyone else, yet as a society we often judge others based on surface appearance. People need to belong – to a family, a community, a place, and yet many of the characters in the book could become outcasts if details of their lives were known. I’ m interested in that inherent tension, and seeing the world from those different points of view.
Your work seems to ask profound questions about compassion, belonging, and doing one’ s best in difficult circumstances. What themes were most important to you while writing this novel?
The book has so many themes – time, and how it acts as a solvent on all our lives; the vulnerability of life to random events; the private versus the public; whether redemption is a private or a public phenomenon; whether there’ s such a thing as innocent guilt. Memory and forgetting, and their impact on forgiveness, are also central, as is the impact of isolation.
What do you hope stays with readers after they finish your book?
The German poet Rilke wrote that the important thing in life isn’ t finding the answers, but living the questions, and I hope readers will continue to‘ live the questions’, and grow more comfortable with the idea that some situations have no right or wrong answer. They’ re free to reach their own conclusions. I don’ t want to give anything away, but as well as tribulations, I think the story is full of hope, and resilience and humour and optimism, and I hope those aspects will also stay with the reader.
Look What You Made Me Do
John Lanchester Paperback
Available March 17
$ 34.99
From Booker Prize long-lister and bestselling author of Capital comes this satirical psychological thriller. Imagine the most intimate parts of your marriage stolen and turned into the subject of the year’ s hottest TV sensation. How would you take it? Turn the other cheek? Or play the revenge game? Surely, you wouldn’ t go as far as this.
The Last Poem
Courtney Peppernell Australian Author Paperback
$ 34.99
Wren Paisley’ s life is suddenly turned upside down when her fiancée, Lucy, dies in a tragic car crash. Wren flees to Colarado. The local library happens to be hosting a grief support group centered around poetry. As a successful author and poet, this might be her chance to breathe. But will she be able to build a new life in Everston, or will it all come crashing down?
On Not Climbing Mountains
Claire Thomas Australian Author Paperback
$ 32.99
A woman arrives in Geneva, the first stop in a train journey through the country of her father’ s birth. She yearns to be outside time – untethered and alone – but she soon becomes immersed in the stories resonating all around her. On Not Climbing Mountains is a tender and compelling novel from the internationally acclaimed author of The Performance.
The Sisterhood Rules
Kathy Lette Australian Author Paperback
$ 34.99
The Sisterhood Rules: 1. Never let a man come between you. 2. Share all your secrets. 3. Live life to the fullest – girls just wanna have fun. For twin sisters Isabel and Verity, the sisterhood rules were shattered when Verity had an affair with Izzy’ s husband. When their mother goes missing, Verity and Izzy are forced to come together again to find her. It turns out their mother has a new younger lover and where there’ s a will – he’ d clearly like to be in it. But first they have to bury the past.
The Minstrels
Eva Hornung Australian Author Paperback
$ 34.99
Gem and Will grow up on a farm above the chasm and pool known as the Minstrels, a site where both are broken, each by the other. One will disappear. One will, eventually, be transformed. Through her encounters with people and through art, land and language, Gem is remade while the world outside changes and time runs out.
The Mother Of All Calamities
Lisa Moule Australian Author Paperback
$ 34.99
Greengully is the perfect suburb in every sense, but is it too good to be true? Chrissy, the teacher, faces constant discrimination from her colleagues. Jenny must hide her son’ s escalating behaviour from the other parents. Estelle refuses to accept her daughter in anything but kind, and Viv carries a secret that could destroy everything she loves.
Kin
Tayari Jones Paperback
$ 34.99
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbours since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work.
Flesh
David Szalay Paperback
Available March 24
$ 24.99
Winner of the Booker Prize 2025, Flesh is a captivating and moving novel about the forces that make and break our lives. Now available in a smaller format. Follow Istvan from teenager-hood to the army and the upper echelons of London’ s elite, all the while his competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth hang over him and eventually threaten to undo him completely. A propulsive, hypnotic read, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism.
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