Book Club - End of Year Picks and Xmas Gift Guide 2024

Final Draft - Great Conversations

Here are my End of Year Picks and a few recommendations for buying Xmas Gifts for the book lover in your life!

Lech Blaine’s Australian Gospel

‘A Family Saga’. Australian Gospel tells the story of Lech’s siblings. It’s a big family and Lech’s mum and dad Tom and Lenore fostered five children in the years before Lech was born. Three of those children, Lech’s brothers and sisters, happen to be the biological offspring of Michael and Mary Shelley.

Buy it for - Anyone looking for a good Aussie Yarn

Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead

Across a single day we are thrown into the life of Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes, stealing a few precious moments before her time is not her own, to the dinner party that looms over her calendar, the reader follows Winona as she tries simply to be herself…

Buy it for - Lovers of literary fiction who are looking for a gorgeously written, stimulating read

Sara Haddad’s The Sunbird

The Sunbird tells the story of Nabila Yasmeen. As a six year old she and her family were expelled from their village in Palestine. Now in her eighties and living in Sydney, Nabila stills feels the weight of this trauma in her daily life…

The Sunbird has been included in a reasoning pack being sent to Australian MPs by a group of authors including Tim Winton, Charlotte Wood, JM Coetzee, Anna Funder, Michelle de Kretser, André Dao and Rosie Batty. Their goal is to educate our leaders in the history of Palestine and the Israel/Gaza conflict

Buy it for - Anyone who wants (or needs) to learn a little more about Gaza

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang

In the fractured kingdom of the Yue, Xishi is regarded as a peerless beauty.

Her beauty is famous across her homeland and leads her to be sought out by the advisor to the king. The Yue have suffered terrible defeats at the hands of the Wu. This humiliation and the threat of ongoing war has lead the king to try a desperate plan. With Xishi’s help they will infiltrate the Wu king’s court, win his heart and overthrow his tyrannical rule.

Thrust deep into the heart of the enemy Wu kingdom, Xishi must use all her skills, not only to survive but to bring justice for her people.

Buy it for - Lovers of historical fiction

Honourable Mention Emily Maguire’s Rapture

The Echoes by Evie Wyld

Max waits in the London flat he shares with Hannah. He’s had little to do but wait since he died. He’d never given much consideration to being a ghost and even still it’s not living up to the hype.

Buy it for - Lovers of Ghost Stories, humour and love alike

Sharlene Allsop’s The Great Undoing.

Scarlet Friday is a truth teller in a hyper connected world. Her job is to explore archives and provide context for the official narrative of history. But the past is never truly buried and outside Scarlett’s archives the rest of the world is teetering on the brink. As systems shut down around the world, Scarlet finds herself on the run. Unwelcome in England, she is now a refugee seeking safe passage back to Australia.

Buy it for - Lovers of Speculative Fiction

Honourable mentions Alice Robinson’s If You Go and Jordan Prosser’s Big Time

Siang Lu’s Ghost Cities

Xiang is working as a translator at Sydney’s Chinese Consulate when it’s discovered he really doesn’t speak much Chinese. This is considered a less than desirable outcome and Xiang is both fired and culturally shamed for his lack of national pride.

Xiang is quickly whisked off to the Ghost City of Port Man Tou, where he is set to star in the city wide production of Baby Bao’s simulation of reality. A movie within a city within a movie that is aiming to create an economy so circular it might just get vertigo.

Buy it for - Anyone with Eyes! Probably my book of the year