Literary Fiction

Sister Kate

by Jean Bedford
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

The outlaw bushranger Ned Kelly is an Australian legend. But what about his sister, Kate? How do you live in the shadow of a legend?

In this sensuous, vital and compelling novel, Kate tells her own tale. It is the story of an expert horsewoman who rode through the bush to deliver supplies to her brother and his gang; the story of a young woman who fell in love with a man marked for death by the police; and the story of the destruction of a family and the tragic price of notoriety.

‘Out of the male past, Bedford fashions a disturbing figure, the female inheritor who broods over the Kelly legend … Sister Kate has simplicity and energy, moving swiftly and surely through a life held in the custody of the past.’ — Helen Daniel, The Age

Jean Bedford’s other books include the short story collection Country Girl Again: Stories (1979) and Love Child (1986). She is the co-editor, with Linda Funnell, of The Newtown Review of Books. Sister Kate was first published in 1982. For more information visit jeanbedfordauthor.com.

Second Sight

by Janine Burke
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

There are many things that might happen when a woman is experiencing a long dark night of the soul: being whisked off to sunny Tuscany is rarely one of them. If only it was, Janine Burke suggests in her award-winning second novel.

First published in 1986, Second Sight came out years before Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, another book that extolls Italy’s revitalising properties, though in a very different way. It won the Vance Palmer Award for Fiction in 1987.

Janine Burke is an award-winning novelist, art historian and biographer. Her books include Australian Women Artists: 1840–1940 (1980), Dear Sun: The Letters of Joy Hester and Sunday Reed (1994), Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker (2002), which was shortlisted for the 2002 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, and The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide (2004), and, most recently, My Forests (2021).

Ride on Stranger

by Kylie Tennant
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

The compelling, heart-wrenching tale of Shannon Hicks, unwanted as a child, and now trying to find where she belongs. Set during the Marxist movement of the 1930s, award-winning author Kylie Tennant evocatively and convincingly paints Sydney as a city on the brink of revolution. The ever-changing landscape Shannon finds herself in breeds discontent and restlessness—not unlike the Social Media Age readers find themselves in today.

Kylie Tennant AO, is best known as the author of the novels The Battlers (1941), winner of the ALS Gold Medal in 1942, Lost Haven (1946) and this one, Ride On Stranger, first published in 1943.

Riverslake

by T.A.G. Hungerford
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Bob Randolph, a veteran of World War Two, finds a job working in the kitchen of Riverslake, a workers hostel just outside Canberra. He witnesses ‘New Australians’ being subjected to racism and discrimination – while he’s subjected to the attentions of a married woman. 

‘This is a fierce book, swept by sudden gusts of savage anger against things that are happening and chances that are being wasted in Australia today. It gets to the very heart of the migrant assimilation problem.’ — News (Adelaide), 1953

‘T.A.G. Hungerford has written a first-class Australian novel, a novel which should bring him recognition far beyond the English-speaking world.’ — Emery Barcs, The Daily Telegraph, 1953

First published in 1953, Riverslake is one of the earliest novels to be set in Canberra and remains one of the few to be set in the nation’s capital; its subject – immigration and assimilation – remains as current as it ever was. It was serialised for ABC Radio in 1953. 

T.A.G. Hungerford AO (1915–2011) was a journalist and author of a range of works including novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction and children’s fiction. His books include The Ridge in the River (1952), winner of the ALS Gold Medal; Sowers of the Wind (1954) and Stories from Suburban Road (1983), winner of the Prose Fiction section of the Western Australia Week Literary Awards. He was the recipient of the Patrick White Award in 2002, and the T.A.G. Hungerford Award for an unpublished manuscript – now City of Fremantle Hungerford Award – was established in his name. 

Red Shoes

by Carmel Bird
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Petra Penfold-Knight is the leader of a religious cult. Many join because of the persuasive charm of privileged Petra. But not all. Some ‘members’ are babies stolen from their unmarried mothers.

Red Shoes—so-called because the wearing of them is a mark of membership —could have been a straightforward thriller or suspense novel. It’s not. Carmel Bird has Petra’s guardian angel tell the story. And angels, of course, always have their own opinions and a rather particular point of view.

First published in 1998, and inspired by the story of the Australian religious cult known as the ‘The Family’, Red Shoes is the second book in award-winning author Carmel Bird’s compelling Mandala trilogy, a series of novels which examines the dark danger of charismatic leaders. It was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin in 1999.

Novelist, essayist and non-fiction writer Carmel Bird won the Patrick White Award in 2016. Her works include The Bluebird Café (1990) and the thematically-linked Mandala trilogy The White Garden (1995), Red Shoes (1998) and Cape Grimm (2004). Her most recent novel is the acclaimed Field of Poppies (2019) of which Robert Drewe wrote: ‘How to describe Field of Poppies? A lush feast of wit and wisdom? Writing so rich you simply want to devour it? A forensic examination of an Australian country town? Literary tour de force will have to do.’

Plumbum

by David Foster
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Take one heavy metal band from Canberra, provide them with an unlikely level of global success, and then set them loose in India. The perfect recipe for madness, comedy and implosion. An over the top take on the rock’n’roll world from Australia’s master satirist, David Foster.

Plumbum was first published in 1983. Acclaimed author David Foster’s other novels include Dogrock (1985), The Glade Within the Grove (1996), winner of 1997 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and In the New Country (1999). His most recent novel is The Contemporary (2018). Foster won the Patrick White Award in 2010.

One for the Master

by Dorothy Johnston
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

The woollen mill has closed. What was once the life-blood of a community—and the centre of Helen Sullivan’s life—lies derelict. Is this loss to be mourned? Or celebrated? In One for the Master, Dorothy Johnston vividly brings to life the hard world of the factory and its workers who endure dangerous, sometimes deadly, conditions but suffer in silence—until Helen and her unionist friend Queenie decide to record what is going on.

‘What I like most about One for the Master is its passion and its mystery.’ — Terri-ann White, Australian Book Review

‘Dorothy Johnston’s is that rare thing, a contemporary Australian novel which draws strength and resonance from one of the oldest novelistic traditions in Australian literature.’ — Ivor Indyk, The Sydney Morning Herald

First published in 1997, One for the Master was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award the following year.

Dorothy Johnston has written eleven novels, and her short stories have appeared in magazines and been included in anthologies. Her crime novel, The Trojan Dog (2000), was joint winner of the ACT Book of the Year. For more information visit www.dorothyjohnston.com.au.

Painted Woman

by Sue Woolfe
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Always The Gap, I swear I knew about it right from the start. Oh, I see how you in the front row smile and twitch your toes, but I knew. From the moment I broke the first doll’s head and found inside only a brand name. Budget Toys. Synthetic Rubber. When I saw the first Christmas present wrappings emptied of hope. When I knew that the arms holding me could fall by a will that wasn’t mine. When I saw the distance between the breast and me. The dreaded, awesome distance. 

I didn’t need philosophers to point it out, find names, say that it made sense, or nonsense. It was there. But if it was, so was a place where there was no Gap. A place incandescent with meaning.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, became my purpose. From the start. To find that place beyond The Gap, so it would close behind me.

The richly compelling portrait of the artist as a young woman dominated by her violent, overpowering father, a ‘man of genius’ and an artist too. Will she be able to free herself? 

‘An exquisitely intense book … dazzlingly conveyed … such robust, unpitying and honest writing about women that it becomes writing for everyone.’ – Thomas Keneally 

‘Extraordinary, beautiful writing, like a bright light, glancing and flashing across a canvas.’ — Kate Grenville

‘Sue Woolfe writes witty, comic, elegant, noticing prose that is a pleasure to read and savour … [Hers is] an individual, powerful and important … voice.’ — John Hanrahan

‘Who is Sue Woolfe and why does she have the power to do strange things to my mind, heart and very marrow? Woolfe’s power and utter compassion … is a shattering achievement. Her command of a dazzling palette of characters, drama, style and pure poetry is awesome.’ — Hobart Mercury 

First published in 1989, Sue Woolfe’s acclaimed debut novel, Painted Woman, was runner up in the Australian Bicentennial Award. 

Sue Woolfe’s novels include the internationally award-winning bestselling Leaning Towards Infinity (1996), also part of the Untapped Collection; The Secret Cure (2003) and The Oldest Song in the World (2012). Her most recent book is Do You Love Me Or What? (2017). For more information visit suewoolfe.com.au.