1

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the Earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from Earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.

2

In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavik Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, unaware that, years later, she will return to the same building to write Burial Rites, the haunting story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman executed in Iceland. Always Home, Always Homesick is Hannah Kent’s exquisite love letter to a land that has forged a nation of storytellers, her ode to the transcendent power of creativity, and her invitation to us all to join her in the realms of mystery, spirit and wonder.

3

The student: Li Min, a Chinese student, is forced by her government to transfer from Harvard to Oxford University, where she is recruited to an elite Chinese study centre based out of St Felix’s College. The scapegoat: Meanwhile, the centre’s newly recruited head stumbles on its more sinister purpose: recruiting Chinese and sympathetic British students to steal high-value research and intellectual property. Unsure who at the university he can trust, he turns to CIA agent Manon Tyler for help. But as Li and another Chinese-American student are drawn deeper into a deadly game, will Manon be able to penetrate the heart of St Felix’s secrets in time to save them?

4

Memorial Days is a memoir about her grief following the sudden death of her husband, Tony Horwitz, on Memorial Day 2019. The book alternates between the immediate aftermath of his death, which was filled with administrative tasks and a feeling of being rushed, and a later journey to a remote Australian island where she sought solitude to process her loss. She reflects on cultural grieving practices and the painful, mundane realities of being left behind.

5

In the tradition of John le Carre’s The Night Manager, Unfinished Business is a political thriller set in Sri Lanka at the end of its brutal civil war (2009). High profile journalist Ameena Fernando is assassinated on the streets of Colombo. No one knows who did it or why. CIA agent Ellie Harper is called back to Sri Lanka, years after a failed mission there, to work with the very people she let down, and investigate the journalist’s murder.

6

A historical biography that traces the life of Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, revolutionary, and humanist who fought in the American Revolution and later led an uprising in Poland. The book blends Kościuszko’s global story with contemporary Australian discussions about the naming of Australia’s highest mountain, Kościuszko, and its cultural significance, including the perspective of Indigenous Australians.

7

Detective Sergeant Peter Grant takes a much-needed holiday up in Scotland. And he’ll need one when this is over… If the more the merrier, then this gang should be ecstatic as his partner Beverley, their young twins, his mum, dad, his dad’s band and their dodgy manager all tag along. Even his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, takes in the coastal airs as he trains Peter’s cousin Abigail in the arcane arts. And they’ll need them too, because Scotland’s Granite City has more than its fair share of history and mystery, myth… and murder. Something may be stirring beyond the bay – but there’s something far stranger in the sky.

8

Set in 1944 London, following the unlikely bond between a street-smart orphan named Charlie, a girl named Molly returning from evacuation with no family to find, and a bookstore owner, Ignatius Oliver. The three form a makeshift family to survive the harsh realities of the war, but their fragile peace is threatened as they are all entangled in secrets from their pasts, leading to a suspenseful story of courage and survival.

9

Isabel, a woman living a rigid, solitary life in her late mother’s country home in 1961 Netherlands. Her life is upended when her brother leaves his new girlfriend, Eva, to stay with her for the summer, leading to a tense and eventually romantic relationship between the two women that uncovers dark secrets about the house’s history and Eva’s past. The novel explores themes of desire, control, the lasting impact of World War II, and the secrets held by the house itself.

10

Set in London in 1945, psychologist-investigator Maisie Dobbs looks into a case involving squatters in a vacant mansion, which leads to a decades-old mystery about her first husband and forces her to confront her own painful past. The story is an emotional conclusion that ties up loose ends from the series and reflects the challenges of post-WWII life in Britain.

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