Transit Lounge: 71 books

Catherine Bell, a famous concert pianist, is struggling to hold on to her career in a competitive international arena that spans the classical music capitals of the world. After a disastrous show in Copenhagen, Cathy is about to attempt her first concert performance without alcohol in Prague when...

‘Do I look strange?’These were his last recorded words. That night Sosimo kissed his hands and laid them across his breast, knitting his fingers together like flowers. The next morning the household watched his coffin, held aloft by a dozen brown hands, disappear into an ocean of leaves. Every...

‘This is the shape-shifting detail of life, the tiny horrible and beautiful things we don't notice until fever or trauma stop us in our tracks; Lane has pulled them from the depths of our psyche and written them into a story of family that shifts and tilts the world we know. Dreamlike, nightmarish,...

London- based scientist Anthony Malloy has made a discovery that will hugely benefit global health. A pharmaceutical company is keen to market his invention of the single-use syringe, but its backing comes at a terrible price. What ensues entangles Anthony in a web of intrigue and blackmail that has...

On the outskirts of Sydney, a boys’ boarding school prides itself on the horses it keeps. David, a gifted working class student, receives a scholarship to attend. At the same time Gregory, a new master, is appointed. Both soon learn, from their different perspectives, that what is said bears little...

Get ready for a risk-taking rollercoaster ride through the favelas of Rio Di Janeiro and the wayside towns and jungles of South America in search of the secrets of shamans and ayahuasca the vine of the soul. Aaron Smith’s often hilarious chronicle of love, danger and enlightenment, set in the one...

On the morning of her wedding, 24-year-old Beth Shaw drives down the peninsula to the Portsea Hotel. She is uneasy and confused because she has just learnt something devastating about her fiancé, Jordan, that completely changes her view of him.As Beth's old schoolmates and her relatives arrive for...

Like the best true life adventures, the story of Werner Pelz is stranger than fiction. Forced to flee Nazi Germany for being Jewish, he was then interned in England for being German. Shipped to Australia on the notorious HMT Dunera, he spent two years in internment camps in Hay and Tatura. After returning...

Hauntingly beautiful and told with remarkable clarity, Over the Water is the story of an Australian outsider who finds teaching work in Bandung, a city in Java. Seduced by the sights, sounds, and magic of Indonesia, Joe finds himself unwittingly drawn into the lives of three women. Firstly he rents a...

We All Fall Down is a vivid and compelling narrative of middle class friends and families, relationships and the contemporary workplace. Kate and Hugh Drysdale like many couples buy a house that stretches them to the limits financially. Hugh looks at the soaring property market, the fact hes earning...

Subtly savage humour. ' Gabrielle Carey, author of Moving Among Strangers, Winner PM's Literary Awards 2014.A glamorous ocean liner, inspired by the original ghostly Queen Mary, sets sail on its maiden voyage from Hobart to Antarctica. The personal plaything of the super-rich Kirstin McKinley, those...

A property developer fears that a burgeoning ibis population will prevent the construction of a high rise apartment complex; a bus stop outside a dementia care facility in Düsseldorf suffers its own identity crisis; a young man’s new job requires him to pose as a woodcutter and wave at a trainload...

‘Subtle and finely crafted. A novel of intellectual and emotional intensity.’ ~ Steven Carroll, author of The Time We Have Taken   In Keeping Faith the innocence and certainties of childhood are delicately tested against the realities of adult life. Josh and...

William Lane's disarming new novel, The Word, brilliantly satirises the ways in which we use language to define our lives. Kenric is an oddball advertising eccentric who possesses an unusual gift for language. The brands he names, sell. Yet he comes to believe advertising uses language too cynically....