FICTION
FICTION
WHAT WE CAN KNOW
Ian McEwan
PB $ 34.99
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people have speculated about its message, but no copy has yet been found. 2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem. What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
SEA- SCRAPER
Benjamin Wood
HB $ 35.00
Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’ s trade as a shanker. But at heart, he is a folk musician, and it remains a private dream. When a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas? Haunting and timeless, this is the story of a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfillment far beyond the world he knows.
HOUSE OF DAY, HOUSE OF NIGHT
Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd- Jones( trans.)
PB $ 34.99
A woman settles in a remote Polish village. It has few inhabitants now, but it teems with the stories of its living and its dead. There’ s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history, but a cosmology. An extraordinary novel from Nobel Prizewinner Olga Tokarczuk, the renowned Polish author of Flights and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF
Megha Majumdar
PB $ 29.99
Set in a nearfuture Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’ s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes – the consequences of which he cannot fathom. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope.
HEAP EARTH UPON IT
Chloe Michelle Howarth
PB $ 32.99
Heap Earth Upon
It is a creeping story of sapphic obsession with Gothic undertones. January 1965. The orphaned O’ Leary siblings Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start. After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they’ re taken under the wing of their wellrespected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan. But for one of the O’ Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment. It’ s difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings...
PEOPLE WITH NO CHARISMA
Jente Posthuma, Sarah Timmer Harvey( trans.)
PB $ 27.99
An unnamed narrator grows up overshadowed by her unconventional mother, an ex-Jehovah’ s witness and former television star with an inferiority complex determined on turning her into a child prodigy. Her father is the head of a psychiatric institution, whose only form of parenting is to offer his daughter the same life advice he dispenses to his patients. The daughter secretly worries she lacks the drive or charisma to do anything significant with her life. In 12 chapters, Posthuma expertly dissects a fraught family history.
shop online at hillofcontentbookshop. com or hillofcontentbalmain. com. au 8 | Summer Reading Guide 2025