Literary Fiction

The Custodians

by Nicholas Jose
Ligature finest
genre Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction

Eight young lives come together in Adelaide, beneath the solar eclipse of 1958. They remain entangled as their orbits extend across the planet and the upheavals of the next four decades.

They are artists and politicians, philanthropists and hedonists, immigrants and expatriates and the original inhabitants of the continent, all bound—perhaps—by the ancient remains taken from an outback burial ground. They are the custodians of secrets and memories, hope and shame, the past and the future.

Epic and intimate, historic and ecstatic, The Custodians remains an urgent and compelling classic.

A Banner Bold

by Nadia Wheatley
Ligature finest
genre History · Literary Fiction

Something is happening.
I can hear bullets going off,
and people are running down
towards the Eureka field …

In 1854, Rosa Aarons and her parents travel from London to the Ballarat goldfield. Over the coming months Rosa finds new friends, learns to ride a horse, and organises the United Theatrical and Equestrian Circus. The only thing she doesn’t like is Needlework. But when the miners need a flag to fly at their protest meeting, Rosa discovers that history can be made with a needle and thread.

Since its publication in 2000, A Banner Bold has introduced a generation of children to the Eureka Stockade. In this new edition, the author has included some activities for teachers and students.

Vernacular Dreams

by Angelo Loukakis
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction · Short Stories

A shopkeeper’s son rails at his ailing father. A radio announcer’s daughter returns to her country hometown. A trouser salesman joins a small rebellion. And a metaphysical explorer struggles with the nature of islands and their islands …

These are stories of velodromes and mixed businesses, of cultures old and new, and of ordinary aspirations and their devastating consequences.

Vernacular Dreams builds on the themes of Angelo Loukakis’s award-winning collection For the Patriarch with its stories of identity and alienation, hope and nostalgia, longing and belonging.

Double Exxxpresso

by Dave Warner
Ligature first
genre Crime · Literary Fiction

The crazy, effervescent characters from Dave Warner’s Exxxpresso finally get an encore in Double Exxxpresso.

Ex-con Rick Boski and his sexy and duplicitous partner Zeen have made good on their dream of running a prison-themed café and import business in downtown Perth.
But when former prison chaplain Father Paul Monaghan dips into the parish funds to bet on a ‘sure thing’ racehorse, Rick and Zeen need to call on their old skills to keep the good father, and themselves, out of real jail.

Double Exxxpresso is screwball crime-capering at its most exxxpressive as Rick and Zeen dodge a vicious Gold Coast criminal, an ambitious and dogged gaming detective, and a less than honest leviathan bookmaker. It’s an explosive brew of peril, friendship and—most of all—fun.

Praise for Exxxpresso

‘If you’re looking for a book which will make you grip the pages tightly and stay up all night to get to the fusillade of surprises on the very last page, this is it.’
—The Advertiser

‘At last a touch of Carl Hiaasen’s crazy brilliance in Australia.’
—Debra Adelaide, Sydney Morning Herald

‘Addictive, dry-humoured with a magic edge.’
—Murray Waldren

Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms · 鉄条網と桜

by Anita Heiss
Ligature finest
genre Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Romance

A story about a love that transcends all boundaries, from one of Australia’s best loved authors—in a new Japanese translation by Noriko Oka with Professor Donna Weeks.

In August 1944, over 1000 Japanese soldiers break out of their prison compound on the fringes of Cowra. Many are killed or recaptured, and some take their own lives. But one soldier, Hiroshi, manages to escape. At a nearby Aboriginal mission, Banjo Williams discovers Hiroshi, distraught and on the run, and he and his fellow townsfolk offer him refuge. Banjo’s daughter Mary is intrigued by the softly-spoken stranger, and charged with his care. Love blossoms between them, and they each dream of a future together. But how long can Hiroshi be hidden safely and their bond kept a secret?

Day’s End

by Garry Disher
Ligature finest
genre Crime · Literary Fiction

The pandemic has found its way even to Tiverton—the remote South Australian town where Constable Paul Hirschhausen was finally getting the measure of the place—layering new divisions and disruptions on top of the old ones. The rich and the poor, the old and the new, authority and sovereignty, all playing out in a tiny population spread over a vast geography.

A Belgian doctor comes looking for her son, last seen working on an endless sheep station; and someone’s started a scrub fire out of town. The usual kind of thing for a country cop’s wide-ranging beat. But then there’s the body in the suitcase …

Day’s End is the sequel to Bitter Wash Road, Peace and Consolation, rounding out an extraordinary sequence that stands at the pinnacle of rural noir.

‘Crime fiction at its best … took this reader’s breath away.’—Canberra Times

Consolation

by Garry Disher
Ligature finest
genre Crime · Literary Fiction

Winter has arrived in Tiverton, the outback South Australian town where Constable Paul Hirschhausen is serving his exile. There’s snow on the peaks and frost on the plains—and a snowdropper in town, swiping women’s underwear from clotheslines. It’s a nuisance offence that leads Hirsch to more chilling crimes—of obsession, exploitation and conspiracy.

And just when Hirsch thinks he’s untangling the seams of trust and resentment that wind through the streets and backroads of this hard landscape—he finds himself at the centre of them all, not sure he’ll make it out alive.

Consolation is the sequel to Bitter Wash Road and Peace, and unveils an entirely new kind of rural noir.

Peace

by Garry Disher
Ligature finest
genre Crime · Literary Fiction

Christmas is coming to Tiverton, the outback South Australian town where Constable Paul Hirschhausen is making peace with his exile. That means rising temperatures—and tempers—and all Hirsch wants is a general absence of mayhem.

But the usual brawls and bingles give way to something darker: animal slaughter, dead bodies, missing children, as the insidious gaze and reach of social media deepens the fissures in this isolated rural community.

Peace is the first sequel to Bitter Wash Road and confirms Hirsch and the landscape he is fused to as the new heroes of Australian crime fiction.

‘A scorchingly good novel.’ —Michael Robotham

‘An utterly compelling mystery with rare heart and humanity.’ —Dervla McTiernan

‘Disher is the gold standard for rural noir.’ —Chris Hammer

Bitter Wash Road

by Garry Disher
Ligature finest
genre Crime · Literary Fiction

Constable Paul Hirschhausen—‘Hirsch’ to his friends, where he can find them—has been exiled to remote South Australia for failing to go along with his crooked colleagues.

But far from the city he finds older and deeper corruptions, from cosy understandings to harassment and bigotry. When shots are fired off Bitter Wash Road, in the shadow of the new wind turbines, Hirsch is set on a path that leads him through lonely deaths to terrible secrets, pitting him against enemies old and new—and the hardscrabble country itself.

Bitter Wash Road announces a new hero from award-winning writer Garry Disher, as striking and complicated as the land where he finds himself.

‘A terrific story … easily one of the best Australian crime novels of the year.’ —Canberra Times

The Mistake

by Wendy James
Ligature finest
genre Crime · Literary Fiction · Mystery

Jodie Garrow’s life isn’t perfect, but she’s come a long way—a beautiful house in the middle of town, two children, a successful husband readying a run for mayor. She could almost forget that one mistake, years ago, that could have cost her everything: an unwise affair, an unwanted pregnancy, an adoption arrangement that wasn’t entirely by the book.

But a chance reunion leads to disaster: a police investigation, a media storm, a search for a missing child, allegations of murder—and a reckoning with everyone in Jodie’s life. Suddenly it seems she could lose everything she’s worked so hard to build. Can she prove her innocence? What is the truth, and does it even matter?

The Mistake is an acclaimed thriller of buried secrets, the lies we tell each other and ourselves—and what we become when we smell blood in the water.

Literary Fiction

The Custodians

A Banner Bold

Vernacular Dreams

Double Exxxpresso

Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms · 鉄条網と桜

Day’s End

Consolation

Peace

Bitter Wash Road

The Mistake

Satchel

Digest