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September 2021

CLAIRE THOMAS

THE PERFORMANCE

As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.

Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.

As the performance unfolds, so does each woman’s story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.

“An enigmatic, elegant and assured novel that explores the power of art in revealing us to ourselves.” – Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend

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Read extract here. 

July 2021

NADIA OWUSU

AFTERSHOCKS

Nadia Owusu is a woman of many languages, homelands and identities. She grew up in Rome, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Kumasi, Kampala and London.

For every new place there was a new language, a new identity and a new home. At times she has felt stateless, motherless and identity-less. At others, she has had multiple identities at war within her. It’s no wonder she started to feel fault lines in her sense of self. It’s no wonder those fault lines eventually ruptured.

Aftershocks is the intimate story behind the news of immigration and division dominating contemporary politics. Nadia Owusu’s astonishingly moving and incredibly timely memoir is a nuanced portrait of globalisation from the inside in a fractured world in crisis.

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June

GINA WILKINSON

WHEN THE APRICOTS BLOOM

At night, in Huda’s fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the secret police, who have ordered her to befriend Ally, the deputy ambassador’s wife. Huda’s former friend Rania, an artist, enjoyed a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a sheikh. Now her family’s wealth is gone, and Rania is battling to keep her child safe and a roof over their heads.

As the women’s lives intersect, their hidden pasts spill into the present. Facing possible betrayal at every turn, all three must trust in a fragile, newfound loyalty, even as they discover how much they are willing to sacrifice to protect their families.

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April

CHERIE JONES

HOW THE ONE-ARMED SISTER SWEEPS THE HOUSE

Lala is eight months pregnant when her waters break unexpectedly during the night. Her husband is nowhere to be found, so she flees the house in search of him. Adan has been out doing a burglary that has gone horribly wrong, and now he’s killed a white man.

Mira Whalen has only recently married Peter, the husband who now lies dead in their bed. He loved her, and she loved him. But last night they had a row, and she wishes they hadn’t. Just as she wishes that she hadn’t confronted her husband’s murderer and pulled the stocking off his face. As now he knows exactly who she is.

This is the story of two marriages, and a beautiful island paradise where, beyond the white sand beaches, lies poverty, menacing violence and a desire among women to speak out and survive.

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March

RACHEL CLARKE 

BREATHTAKING

Breathtaking depicts life, death, hope, fear, medicine at its most impotent and also at its finest, the courage of patients in enormous adversity, the stress of being torn between helping those patients and endangering your spouse and children, the long fretful nights ruminating over whether the PPE you wear fits the science or the size of the government stockpile. Faltering, fumbling, tenacious, undaunted, this is medicine in the time of coronavirus.

As a palliative care doctor, Rachel Clarke found herself spending less time in the hospice and more in the hospital. Unable to convey the intensity of her days on the wards to friends and family, by night, she wrote about what she and her colleagues were going through. Breathtaking is her inside story of how the health service responded. However, what she had thought was an unrelenting stream of death and darkness was in fact illuminated by pinpricks of light.

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February

BRIT BENNETT

THE VANISHING HALF

From the author of the New York Times bestseller of The Mothers, a powerful new novel about the parallel lives of estranged twin sisters.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.

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January

TARA JUNE WINCH

THE YIELD

Today's young women are told we can be anything, so we search for a love to back us, not hold us back. We want the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle kind of love, not Prince William and Kate. Yet, while we unapologetically own our careers and lives and Bumble accounts, we're still unsure whether men truly accept-let alone desire-the women we have become. We are told to lean in at work, but wait for him to call. To ask for the pay rise, but not his number. We are ambitious at work but confused in love.

“Sheryl Sandberg was right: the single most important career decision a woman makes is her choice of life partner. Brooks ignites that conversation for a new generation.” — Jamila Rizvi

December

EMILY J. BROOKS

THE FIRST MOVE

Today's young women are told we can be anything, so we search for a love to back us, not hold us back. We want the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle kind of love, not Prince William and Kate. Yet, while we unapologetically own our careers and lives and Bumble accounts, we're still unsure whether men truly accept-let alone desire-the women we have become. We are told to lean in at work, but wait for him to call. To ask for the pay rise, but not his number. We are ambitious at work but confused in love.

“Sheryl Sandberg was right: the single most important career decision a woman makes is her choice of life partner. Brooks ignites that conversation for a new generation.” — Jamila Rizvi

November

FUTURE WOMEN

UNTOLD RESILIENCE

A new book from Future Women due October 2020.

History celebrates the brave wins and noble losses of men, but rarely pays mind to the - sometimes quieter - intelligent determination of women who went before.

This book make a small contribution to setting that skewed presentation of history right. Of paying homage to the remarkable experiences of women, who sought no medals, who gave no aggrandising speeches - the women who put their heads down, and got the job done.

We cannot wait for you to meet them.

October

JESS HILL

SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO

Domestic abuse is a national emergency: one in four Australian women has experienced violence from a man she was intimate with. But too often we ask the wrong question: why didn’t she leave? We should be asking: why did he do it? Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators – and the systems that enable them – in the spotlight. 

“The shared stories of coercion and control, the way in which Hill draws out the intimate and the personal to provide a picture of what happens in our country today should be compulsory reading for politicians at every level.’ —Jenna Price, Sydney Morning Herald

September

CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS

QUEENIE

Queenie Jenkins can't cut a break. Well, apart from one from her long term boyfriend, Tom. That's definitely just a break though. Definitely not a break up. Stuck between a boss who doesn't seem to see her, a family who don't seem to listen (if it's not Jesus or water rates, they're not interested), and trying to fit in two worlds that don't really understand her, it's no wonder she's struggling.

“Candice Carty-Williams is a fantastic new writer who has written a deliciously funny, characterful, topical, and thrilling novel for our times." — Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other
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August

CURTIS SITTENFELD

RODHAM

In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise. And then she meets Bill Clinton. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton. But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. 

“By fanning out alternate narratives . . . [Rodham] asks us to imagine a different world. . . . And from there, what a short —excruciating, hopeful—leap it is to: Everything could be different.”— NPR

July

DR AILEEN MORETON-ROBINSON

TALKIN’ UP TO THE WHITE WOMAN

Dr Aileen Moreton-Robinson "talks up" in this provocative interrogation of feminism in representation and practice. As a Geonpul woman and an academic, she provides a unique cultural standpoint and a compelling analysis of the whiteness of Australian feminism and its effect on Indigenous women.Through an extensive range of articles by non-white scholars and activists, she demonstrates the ways whiteness dominates from a position of power and privilege as an invisible and unchallenged practice.

First published twenty years ago, new editions prove the continued relevance of this classic work as a critique of the whiteness of western feminism.   

June

KILEY REID

SUCH A FUN AGE

Alix Chamberlain is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar.

“Readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories that tackle serious issues with a touch of wit will find this a worthy alternative to a wild night out.” — Ms. Magazine

May

ANITA HEISS

GROWING UP ABORIGINAL IN AUSTRALIA

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question.

“Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia is a mosaic, it's more than 50 tiles –  short personal essays with unique patterns, shapes, colours and textures – coming together to form a powerful portrait of resilience.” — The Saturday Paper

April

ABI DARÉ

THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice”—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni’s father sells her to become the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.

“Heartbreaking and inspiring… A moving story of what it means to fight for the right to live the life you choose.” — Kirkus

March

CLARE BOWDITCH

YOUR OWN KIND OF GIRL

Clare Bowditch has always had a knack for telling stories. Through her music and performing, this beloved Australian artist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. But what of the stories she used to tell herself? That 'real life' only begins once you're thin or beautiful, that good things only happen to other people.

“The words that kept coming to me over and over again as I read this book were authenticity and decency. Clare Bowditch made me feel how  wonderful and difficult and amazing it is to be a human.” — Leigh Sales

February

CHARLOTTE WOOD

THE WEEKEND

Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?

“Here’s my verdict: wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. This is Wood’s greatest novel yet.” — Stephen Romel, The Australian

January

CHANEL MILLER

KNOW MY NAME

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Now she reclaims her identity by telling her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words.

“Miller is a gifted storyteller… Know her name, know her voice.” — The New Yorker