4Th Estate: 47 books

From award-winning author Diane Armstrong comes a dramatic and heartwarming novel which brilliantly evokes postwar Sydney. A heart-warming novel in the tradition of CLOUDStREEt and tHE HARP IN tHE SOUtH Empire Day, 1948. A back street in Bondi is transformed as the fireworks of Cracker Night cast...

Stories of life from a remote Aboriginal community that sing with vivid and simple life, truth and power. At the end of 2008, Robbi Neal and her family travelled to the other end of mainland Australia to a remote Aboriginal community. They planned to stay for twelve months. Seven years later,...

the long-awaited award-winning biography of one of Australia's most charismatic and misunderstood writers. Charmian Clift's writing captivated readers across the nation. Her life inspired legends and fascinated thousands. Now at last here is the real story. Charmian Clift was born in Kiama, New South...

Winner of the 2015 Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. A novel about memory, music, friendship, family rifts and reconciliation, this is a beautiful, intelligent read. Nina Jameson, an international consultant on memorial projects based in London, has been happily married to Daniel for...

A gripping tale of a daring heroine testing her wits against a backdrop of secrets, spies and smugglers in perilous Far North Queensland in the late nineteenth century and based on a true story ... A daring heroine tests her wits against secrets, spies and smugglers on a remote Australian island 'It's...

From our Varuna Awards program comes a classic outlaw tale of a father and son on the run. ten-year-old Chook knows something is wrong when his father, Kev, bundles him into the car in the middle of the night, leaving their friend Max white-faced, silent and covered in blood.As the two head for Broken...

Told with the perfect mix of humour and tragedy, this is a tale for all families who have ever questioned how well a relative can really ever know another. It is customary to bring gifts to a wedding. But as daughter Luna prepares to marry her dream husband, the Smith family instead have in tow their...

'Madness and the nature of creativity are at the heart of A.L. McCann's first novel. A highly engaging read' - Courier Mail. Melbourne in the 1890s: a city of respectable facades concealing a twilight world of sexual misadventure. As the marriage of Albert and Anna Walters degenerates into brutal...

A cautionary tale of prejudice - and the redemptive power of soap Based on a true story, this beautifully crafted novel gives a startling insight into how the seeds of terrorism are sown. Gool Mahommed worships Allah and Lifebuoy soap. In 1914, the young Afghan returns to Broken Hill, five years after...

A luminous novel that both questions and celebrates the miraculous 'fresh and brilliant ... the sort of book that keeps on unfolding in the imagination, long after you've finished reading it.' Gabrielle Lord 'It is strange and fascinating to me to think of people - Avila in particular - praying me...

A thrilling tale of legal and political intrigue, betrayal, spies and treason, spanning the tumultuous decades in Australia leading up to 'The Dismissal' in 1975, and a compelling tour - by an insider - through the corridors of parliamentary power the young idealist never knows where his good intentions...

From the acclaimed author of Due Preparations for the Plague comes a powerful Australian story. Stories do insist on being told. Even the stories of hidden lives and towns and opal reefs. By cunning intention, and sometimes by discreet bribery (or other dispatch) of government surveyors, the opal-mining...

Love can take you to the darkest places ... Leela is a gifted mathematician who has escaped her small Southern town to study in Boston. From the first moment she hears Mishka, a young Australian musician, playing his violin in a subway, his music grips her, and they quickly become lovers.But Mishka...

A forgotten fragment of Australia's past inspires a powerful new novel ... It is 1899, and one of the fiercest storms in history is brewing - a hurricane named Mahina. to a remote part of the Queensland coast come the hundreds of sails of the northern pearling fleets, and a native policeman trying...