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$20.14The Story
Secondhand Literary & Historical Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Books
Eighteen literary novels, novellas, and story collections — and a genuinely exceptional one at that. This box opens with Salley Vickers and John Irving, passes through Thea Astley, Christopher Koch, Elizabeth Jolley, and Richard Ford, and closes with Lisa McInerney's Baileys Prize-winning debut. There are two more Jolley titles from a collector who clearly knew what they were doing, a Nobel laureate, a Karen Joy Fowler novel set in San Francisco's Gilded Age, and a Sara Gruen follow-up to Water for Elephants that deserves to be far better known. For readers who care about where their fiction comes from.
1. Instances of the Number 3 — Salley Vickers A widow begins to notice the number three appearing everywhere — in coincidences, connections, the unexpected geometry of grief and recovery. Vickers (Miss Garnet's Angel) writes novels that look simple and aren't, and this quiet, luminous book is one of her best.
2. Ape House — Sara Gruen The author of Water for Elephants turns her attention to a group of bonobos who communicate through sign language — and the chaos that erupts when they're taken from the scientist who loves them and thrust into the media circus. Funny, angry, and genuinely moving about what it means to be a person.
3. Until I Find You — John Irving Irving at his most Dickensian and unapologetically sprawling — a boy searches for his tattoo-artist father across the brothels and churches of Europe and the peculiar institutions of North America. If you love Irving, this is essential. If you've never read him, this is a proper introduction to what he does.
4. The Woman in the Picture — James Wilson A Victorian photograph. A modern investigation. Wilson draws the two timelines together with real skill, building the kind of mystery that reveals something true about how the past inhabits the present whether we invite it or not.
5. Mad Meg — Sally Morrison Winner of the Banjo Award and one of the more remarkable Australian novels of its era. Morrison takes the Bruegel painting as her starting point and builds something fierce, feminist, and entirely its own from it. Underread and overdue for rediscovery.
6. Mr Scobie's Riddle — Elizabeth Jolley The third Jolley in this and the previous box — whoever gathered this collection was a serious reader. Mr Scobie's Riddle is set in a nursing home and is simultaneously one of the funniest and most unsettling novels in Australian literature. Jolley's compassion and her darkness are completely inseparable, and this is the book that shows you why.
7. The Grave at Thu Le — Catherine Cole Literary fiction set against the landscape and legacy of Vietnam — a novel about the long aftermath of war and the way grief travels across generations. Cole writes with a restraint that makes the emotional weight hit harder.
8. Janice Gentle Gets Sexy — Mavis Cheek A reclusive romantic novelist is coaxed out of her comfortable solitude and into the bewildering, hilarious world of real human desire. The Observer called it "truly almost irresistible" — Cheek is a wickedly funny writer who never gets the attention she deserves.
9. Two Moons — Jennifer Johnston Irish literary fiction from one of its quiet masters. The Daily Telegraph said it was "superbly executed, both enchanted and enchanting" — Johnston writes about loneliness, connection, and the lives people build in the spaces left by other people's departures.
10. Reaching Tin River — Thea Astley Thea Astley won the Miles Franklin Award four times — more than anyone else in its history — and this novel shows exactly why. "Sheer joy played at full volume," said the Sunday Herald, and that's the right description for prose that crackles with intelligence and dark comedy on every page.
11. The Doubleman — Christopher J. Koch Koch also gave us The Year of Living Dangerously, and this novel has the same intensity and moral seriousness — a "complex and exciting novel of ideas," according to the Australian Book Review. Set in the world of 1950s and 60s Australian folk music and the shadow of something older and stranger beneath it.
12. Windmill Hill — Michael Jacobson "A wonderful read" — Woman's Day. Australian fiction with a strong sense of place and the particular loneliness of lives lived at the edge of things. A quieter novel than most of its companions in this box, and all the more affecting for it.
13. Sand — Prue Carmichael Desert landscape, human isolation, the stories we carry into the most empty places. Carmichael writes literary fiction rooted in landscape in a way that owes something to the best Australian tradition of the form.
14. Women with Men — Richard Ford Three novellas from the Pulitzer Prize winner — Americans in Europe, all slightly lost, all telling themselves stories about their lives that don't quite hold. John Banville said it was "at once funny and heartbreaking, as Ford's work usually is... fiction at its finest." He was right.
15. Satan in Goray — Isaac Bashevis Singer A Nobel laureate's early masterpiece — set in a seventeenth-century Polish Jewish village devastated by the Chmielnicki massacres and gripped by the fever of a false messiah. Singer writes about superstition, desire, and collective hysteria as forces as powerful as gravity. Extraordinary.
16. Sister Noon — Karen Joy Fowler From the author of The Jane Austen Book Club — a novel set in San Francisco's Gilded Age, following a proper woman whose life is quietly upended by an improper acquaintance. Michael Chabon called it one of the most appealing novels he'd read in years. Funny, warm, and more subversive than it looks.
17. Love & Desire — Four Modern Australian Novellas (edited by Cate Kennedy) An anthology that includes the winner of the Mnemonic/Readings Novella Competition — four concentrated, carefully crafted works showcasing some of the best short-form literary fiction being written in Australia. Cate Kennedy's editorial eye is impeccable.
18. The Glorious Heresies — Lisa McInerney Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and one of the most explosive debut novels of the last decade. Set in Cork's criminal underworld, written in language that is foul-mouthed and beautiful in equal measure. "Tremendous bravado," says one cover quote. "A head-spinning, stomach-churning state-of-the-nation novel," says another. Both are correct. If you haven't read McInerney yet, start immediately.
Description
Secondhand Literary & Historical Fiction Bargain Box — 18 Books
Eighteen literary novels, novellas, and story collections — and a genuinely exceptional one at that. This box opens with Salley Vickers and John Irving, passes through Thea Astley, Christopher Koch, Elizabeth Jolley, and Richard Ford, and closes with Lisa McInerney's Baileys Prize-winning debut. There are two more Jolley titles from a collector who clearly knew what they were doing, a Nobel laureate, a Karen Joy Fowler novel set in San Francisco's Gilded Age, and a Sara Gruen follow-up to Water for Elephants that deserves to be far better known. For readers who care about where their fiction comes from.
1. Instances of the Number 3 — Salley Vickers A widow begins to notice the number three appearing everywhere — in coincidences, connections, the unexpected geometry of grief and recovery. Vickers (Miss Garnet's Angel) writes novels that look simple and aren't, and this quiet, luminous book is one of her best.
2. Ape House — Sara Gruen The author of Water for Elephants turns her attention to a group of bonobos who communicate through sign language — and the chaos that erupts when they're taken from the scientist who loves them and thrust into the media circus. Funny, angry, and genuinely moving about what it means to be a person.
3. Until I Find You — John Irving Irving at his most Dickensian and unapologetically sprawling — a boy searches for his tattoo-artist father across the brothels and churches of Europe and the peculiar institutions of North America. If you love Irving, this is essential. If you've never read him, this is a proper introduction to what he does.
4. The Woman in the Picture — James Wilson A Victorian photograph. A modern investigation. Wilson draws the two timelines together with real skill, building the kind of mystery that reveals something true about how the past inhabits the present whether we invite it or not.
5. Mad Meg — Sally Morrison Winner of the Banjo Award and one of the more remarkable Australian novels of its era. Morrison takes the Bruegel painting as her starting point and builds something fierce, feminist, and entirely its own from it. Underread and overdue for rediscovery.
6. Mr Scobie's Riddle — Elizabeth Jolley The third Jolley in this and the previous box — whoever gathered this collection was a serious reader. Mr Scobie's Riddle is set in a nursing home and is simultaneously one of the funniest and most unsettling novels in Australian literature. Jolley's compassion and her darkness are completely inseparable, and this is the book that shows you why.
7. The Grave at Thu Le — Catherine Cole Literary fiction set against the landscape and legacy of Vietnam — a novel about the long aftermath of war and the way grief travels across generations. Cole writes with a restraint that makes the emotional weight hit harder.
8. Janice Gentle Gets Sexy — Mavis Cheek A reclusive romantic novelist is coaxed out of her comfortable solitude and into the bewildering, hilarious world of real human desire. The Observer called it "truly almost irresistible" — Cheek is a wickedly funny writer who never gets the attention she deserves.
9. Two Moons — Jennifer Johnston Irish literary fiction from one of its quiet masters. The Daily Telegraph said it was "superbly executed, both enchanted and enchanting" — Johnston writes about loneliness, connection, and the lives people build in the spaces left by other people's departures.
10. Reaching Tin River — Thea Astley Thea Astley won the Miles Franklin Award four times — more than anyone else in its history — and this novel shows exactly why. "Sheer joy played at full volume," said the Sunday Herald, and that's the right description for prose that crackles with intelligence and dark comedy on every page.
11. The Doubleman — Christopher J. Koch Koch also gave us The Year of Living Dangerously, and this novel has the same intensity and moral seriousness — a "complex and exciting novel of ideas," according to the Australian Book Review. Set in the world of 1950s and 60s Australian folk music and the shadow of something older and stranger beneath it.
12. Windmill Hill — Michael Jacobson "A wonderful read" — Woman's Day. Australian fiction with a strong sense of place and the particular loneliness of lives lived at the edge of things. A quieter novel than most of its companions in this box, and all the more affecting for it.
13. Sand — Prue Carmichael Desert landscape, human isolation, the stories we carry into the most empty places. Carmichael writes literary fiction rooted in landscape in a way that owes something to the best Australian tradition of the form.
14. Women with Men — Richard Ford Three novellas from the Pulitzer Prize winner — Americans in Europe, all slightly lost, all telling themselves stories about their lives that don't quite hold. John Banville said it was "at once funny and heartbreaking, as Ford's work usually is... fiction at its finest." He was right.
15. Satan in Goray — Isaac Bashevis Singer A Nobel laureate's early masterpiece — set in a seventeenth-century Polish Jewish village devastated by the Chmielnicki massacres and gripped by the fever of a false messiah. Singer writes about superstition, desire, and collective hysteria as forces as powerful as gravity. Extraordinary.
16. Sister Noon — Karen Joy Fowler From the author of The Jane Austen Book Club — a novel set in San Francisco's Gilded Age, following a proper woman whose life is quietly upended by an improper acquaintance. Michael Chabon called it one of the most appealing novels he'd read in years. Funny, warm, and more subversive than it looks.
17. Love & Desire — Four Modern Australian Novellas (edited by Cate Kennedy) An anthology that includes the winner of the Mnemonic/Readings Novella Competition — four concentrated, carefully crafted works showcasing some of the best short-form literary fiction being written in Australia. Cate Kennedy's editorial eye is impeccable.
18. The Glorious Heresies — Lisa McInerney Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and one of the most explosive debut novels of the last decade. Set in Cork's criminal underworld, written in language that is foul-mouthed and beautiful in equal measure. "Tremendous bravado," says one cover quote. "A head-spinning, stomach-churning state-of-the-nation novel," says another. Both are correct. If you haven't read McInerney yet, start immediately.
