NOW IN B FORMAT. Lex Henderson washes up in a small coastal village after a tragedy shatters his life in Sydney. He wants only to escape from the world, and thinks he's found the perfect place to do it, until the local community starts taking an interest in him. By then, despite himself, he's a little fascinated in return, and is soon drawn into the place in ways he could never have anticipated. He also meets Callista Bennett, an artist with a hidden history, and enters into a friendship with her that is both volatile and difficult - both of them are paralysed by their pasts and by the idea of trusting anyone ever again. What Lex does learn to trust is the beauty of the world around him, and he embraces it wholeheartedly, swimming out among the whales, spending hours a day studying the ever-changing patterns of the sea and the play of light and shadow, storm and sunshine. This is one way he can connect with Callista, who has spent her whole life engaged with the natural world and whose paintings capture it so vividly.

NOW IN B FORMAT. A woman on a quest to find out the truth about her family, a mysterious Victorian authoress, a book of dark fairytales and a long-hidden secret - The Forgotten Garden is another addictive and compulsively readable romance/mystery from Kate Morton, author of the international bestseller The Shifting Fog.

Nina, Meredith and Annie have been friends for a long, long time. Like most old friends, they can't quite remember what initially drew them together. Elegant Meredith, motherly Nina and the determinedly single Annie are as unlikely companions as you could find. But like a matched set of 1950's kitchen canisters of Flour, Sugar and Tea, they always seem to end up together. Now each is facing the various trials of middle age: divorces, less than satisfactory marriages, teenage kids, careers going nowhere and unexpected bouts of tears. One night, over one too many Flaming Sambuccas during a reunion dinner, they somehow find themselves agreeing to take a road trip to Byron Bay in a RoadMaster Royale mobile home, to attend Meredith's daughter's wedding. Fights and friendship, tears and laughter - not to mention the possibility of finding Mr Right along the way - this trip might tear them apart or it might just save their lives.

A captivating novel about sisters, faded memories and long-hidden secrets that span three generations. Brimming with vivid detail of London past and present, The Past and Other Lies is full of warmth, atmosphere, subtle wit and exquisite surprises. This debut novel by Sydney-based author Maggie Joel marks the exciting entry of a new talent on the Pier 9 Australian fiction list.

To the world, Leith's life looks picture-perfect. But after her shocking death, her husband George conducts his own post-mortem of their marriage, filling in the gaps. To his dismay, he realises the papered-over cracks in their domestic life run much deeper than he thought. And that he is as much to blame for his as Leith was. Leith's book-club friends also stumble upon the fictions she layered, discovering how little they knew of her private world. Wondering, too, how much they truly know about their own marriages. Not that they would ever let on. Stunning, confronting and passionate, The Marriage Club explores questions of who we marry and why – and whether we can ever truly know another person, even when we share their life.

Julia has suddenly lost her husband and, along with him, her will to live. The vital, energetic old woman that her daughter Kati thought she knew has disappeared almost overnight. How is Kati to cope with a mother constantly on the verge of suicide? This finely wrought tale of love and conflict casts a searchlight into dark areas how people deal with ageing, loss, death and grief.

Emmett Brown is as dark as Heathcliff, and as unpredictable. Sometimes he's an inspiration, but not often. He's a man of booze and obsessions: one of them is his 'System', an attempt to bend the laws of probability. But when the lottery numbers and horses fail him, so do love and reason, and he becomes an ogre to his wife and children. For the innocents - Louisa, Rob, Peter, Daniel and Jessie - the bonds formed hiding in hedges at the end of the street, waiting for the maelstroms to pass, are complex and unbreakable. Over the years, the consequences of Emmett's rages shape both their spirits and psyches, but as he lies dying they discover that love - however imperfect - is the best defence against pain.

NOW IN B FORMAT. Maya de Jong, an eighteen-year-old country girl from the West, comes to live in Melbourne and starts an affair with her boss, the enigmatic Maynard Flynn, whose wife is dying of cancer. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive to stay with her, they are told by her housemate that Maya has gone away and no one knows where she is. As Toni and Jacob wait and search for Maya in Melbourne, everything in their lives is brought into question. They recall the yearning and dreams, the betrayals and choices of their pasts - choices with unexpected and irrevocable consequences. With Maya's disappearance, the lives of all those close to her come into focus, to reveal the complexity of the ties that bind us to one another, to parents, children, siblings, friends and lovers. Pacy and enthralling, The Good Parents is at once a vision of contemporary Australia and a story as old as fairytales: that of a runaway girl.

With learning worn lightly and in his own lyrical language, David Malouf revisits Homer's ILIAD. Focusing on the unbreakable bonds between men - Priam and Hector, Patroclus and Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired to retrieve Hector's body. Pride, grief, brutality, love and neighbourliness are explored. The minute you finish this novel you will want to return to the beginning and start all over again.

AN UNEXPECTED LETTER from her childhood friend Grace forces May to relive their extraordinary past and confront the events that drove them apart fifty years earlier. May's father won the Diamond Anchor, a dilapidated pub perched on the ocean's edge, in a game of cards – a gamble which positioned her at the heart of the close-knit community for seventy years, and gave her custody of its stories. Now, trying to maintain a careful balance between the demands of the collapsing building and her own solitary life, May must decide whether to reach out to Grace, whose health is fading, or let her go.

Sydney in the 1950s. On the second floor of the famous F. G. Goode department store, in Ladies' Cocktail Frocks, the women in black are girding themselves for the Christmas rush. Among the staff-Patty Williams with her wayward husband Frank, the sweet but unlucky Fay, faithful Mrs Jacob of the measuring tape-is Lisa, the new Sales Assistant (Temporary), who is waiting for the results of her Leaving Certificate. Across the floor and beyond the arch, Lisa will meet the glamorous Continental refugee, Magda, guardian of the rose-pink cave of Model Gowns. With the lightest touch and the most tender of comic instincts, Madeleine St John conjures a vanished summer of innocence. The Women in Black is a great novel, a lost Australian classic.

NOW IN B FORMAT. When Olivia returns to the grand chateau in France she once called home, with her two children in tow, their arrival is unexpected. They have journeyed from Australia, escaping unspoken horrors, but home is not what it was . . .' A powerful and disquieting novella, a work of fiction so infused with the practices of film that, while each scene is fully and even vividly realised in words, it also translates quite naturally into film, into a visually rich action taking place before the inner eye.' J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning author of DISGRACE

NOW IN B FORMAT. On the face of it, Delia's got it all – good marriage, two great kids, dream job writing witty, practical house and garden books. But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer, she's forced to view her life in an entirely new light. There are things she must do, there are wrongs to be put right, and there are mysteries from the past that demand resolution. But there is just so little time. Summoning all her strength, she returns to the tiny country town where she fled pregnant and unmarried 14 years before and comes to terms with a loss no mother should ever have to endure. She finishes writing her ultimate how-to book. And she tries, as best she can, to prepare herself and her family for the inevitable...Moving, witty and wise, Debra Adelaide's brilliant new novel is destined to become a classic of contemporary Australian fiction.

'In this refreshing novel, Maurice Whelan addresses with bravery and skill the eternal reality of Australia, that we are a nation of refugees.' - Tom Keneally 'This compelling novel is woven from archetypal stories which make up the tapestry of white settlement in Australia. Economic refugees from Ireland during the potato famine; political refugees fleeing persecution in the middle east. Their stories are powerfully similar, but also different in significant ways. The latest to arrive seem destined to try hardest, but to be singled out for hard treatment.' - Julian Burnside 'Everyone from 18 to 80 should read this book.' - Clare Calvet (ABC Radio) 'This book raised the hair on the back of my neck, which is one definition of a really good novel. Written with great energy and urgency, which are rare and precious qualities.' - Bob White, Professor of English, UWA

They may never have a life together but they will have their moment. They will have this much. England September 1934 Two young lovers Catherine and Daniel have trespassed into the rose garden of Burnt Norton an abandoned house in the English countryside. Hearing the sound of footsteps they hide and then witness the poet T.S. (Tom) Eliot and his close friend Emily enter the garden and bury a mysterious tin in the earth. Tom and Emily knew each other in America in their youth; now in their forties they have come together again. But Tom is married and his wife has no intention of letting him go. What is it that binds Tom and Emily together? What happens when the muse steps out of the shadows? In the enclosed world of an English village one autumn their story becomes entwined with that of Catherine and Daniel who are certain in their newfound love and full of possibility. From one of Australias finest writers The Lost Life is a moving lyrical novel about poetry and inspiration the incandescence of first love and the yearning for a life that may never be lived.