Warm up with a fabulous Australian book from the Vision Australia Library this winter.
The Warm Winter Read is presented by Public Libraries Victoria.
Feel Good
Nancy Business by RWR McDonald
It's great to be back in Nancy business again, but this time it's all different. Uncle Pike and Devon can't agree on anything and Tippy is learning hard truths about the world and the people she loves the most. Can the Nancys stay together to do their best work and save the town? Or will the killer strike again? When everyone is right, does that make you wrong? And can Tippy ever trust anyone again?
The One and Only Dolly Jamieson by Lisa Ireland
Dolly Jamieson spends her days keeping warm at the local library, where she enjoys sparring with the officious head librarian and helping herself to the free morning tea.
It’s a far cry from the 1960s, when she was an international star of the stage. When Jane Leveson, a well-to-do newcomer to the library, shows an interest in Dolly, the pair strike up an unlikely friendship - and soon Jane is offering to help Dolly write her memoirs. Perhaps both women can finally face their pasts and start to heal.
We’ve Got This: Stories by Disabled Parents edited by Eliza Hull
In We’ve Got This, twenty-five parents who identify as Deaf, disabled or chronically ill discuss the highs and lows of their parenting journeys and reveal that the greatest obstacles lie in other people’s attitudes. The result is a moving, revelatory and empowering anthology. As Rebekah Taussig writes, ‘Parenthood can tangle with grief and loss. Disability can include joy and abundance. And goddammit – disabled parents exist.’
Drama and mystery
Dark as Last Night by Tony Birch
hese exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood.
Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson
Darnmoor is the home of the Billymil family, three generations who have lived in this 'gateway town'. Race relations between Indigenous and settler families are fraught, though the rigid status quo is upheld through threats and soft power rather than the overt violence of yesteryear.
When the town's secrets start to be uncovered the town will be rocked by a violent act that forever shatters a century of silence.
In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat.
As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth. An extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.
Complex families
Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down
A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolts Maggie back to the past she’s reluctant to revisit. She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light?
Three sisters on the road to a remote rental in Far North Queensland, where Meg and Nina plan on helping Amber overcome her addiction. As good intentions gradually become terrifying reality, these sisters will test the limits of love and the line between care and control.
After Story by Larissa Behrendt
When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother, Della, on a tour of England’s most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together .As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.
Dark Mode by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Reagan Carsen has keeps her life offline. No socials. No internet presence. No photos. Safe. Until the day she stumbles on a shocking murder in a Sydney laneway. The victim looks just like her. As more murders shake the city and she’s increasingly drawn out from hiding.
Coming of Age
Growing up Cantonese in the racist outer suburbs was hard enough for Jess Ho, but add in a dysfunctional family who only made peace over food, a normal life was never on the menu. In hospitality, Jess found a new family of outsiders who shared their lust for life and appetite for destruction. As the Australian food scene exploded, fuelled by the kinds of ‘exotic’ foods Jess had grown up on, they became one of the most influential voices in Australia’s bar and restaurant scene. But the industry Jess loved had its own dysfunctions: greed, ego, sexual harassment, exploitation and a never-ending fetishisation of Asian food culture. And Jess wasn’t one to hold their tongue.
One Hundred Days by Alice Pung
In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust and defiance, sixteen-year-old Karuna falls pregnant. Incensed, Karuna’s mother confines her to their fourteenth-storey housing-commission flat. Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her. As the due date draws ever closer, the question of who will get to raise the baby – who it will call Mum – festers between them.
Dress Rehearsals by Madison Godfrey
Darkly witty and deeply confessional, Dress Rehearsals is a love story to the queer self. This coming-of-age memoir asks, what does it mean to wear femininity into the world, when it constitutes both a bullseye and a ballgown?
Everything Feels Like the End of the World by Else Fitzgerald
Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a collection of short speculative fiction exploring possible futures in an Australia not so different from our present day to one thousands of years into an unrecognisable future.
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