Literary Fiction

The Color of the Sky

by Peter Cowan
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Set in a country house in Western Australia, The Color of the Sky slips between perspective of literary-minded Leon, fresh back from England and wanting to know more about his family, and that of his explorer ancestor, Tom. First published in 1986, and winner of the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction.

Peter Cowan AO (1914–2002) was an academic, critic, biographer and novelist. He received a Centenary Medal for service to literature through writing, and in 1992 won the Patrick White Award.

The Cupboard under the Stairs

by George Turner
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

After spending six years in a progressive psychiatric institution being treated for depression, Harry White returns home to the small town of Treelake. He tries to readjust. But it’s the 1960s and it isn’t easy. Being a man of his time doesn’t make it easier either. Nor does the stigma of his institutionalisation. Or the problem of being married to one woman, but loving another…

The Cupboard Under the Stairs was published in 1962, the same year as the American author Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Critically acclaimed, it won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, sharing it with Thea Astley’s The Well-Dressed Explorer, which is also part of the Untapped Collection.

In addition to being a Miles Franklin-award-winning literary author, George Turner (1916–1997), was internationally known for his science fiction writing and criticism. His novel The Sea and the Summer (1987) won both the Arthur C Clarke Award and a Commonwealth Writers Prize.

The Big Fellow

by Vance Palmer
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Politician Macy Donovan now has a successful career and marriage, seemly all he’s ever wanted, but is it enough—and can it last? When a woman from his past comes back into his orbit and, simultaneously, his past actions are put under the microscope, it’s possible that he might lose it all.

Vance Palmer (1885–1969) was an influential literary critic and award-winning novelist and, with Nettie Palmer, a champion of Australian writing. The Big Fellow was awarded the Miles Franklin Literary Award posthumously. The Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction is named after him.

Taking shelter

by Jessica Anderson
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

It’s 1980s Sydney and for this group of family and friends, love and relationships are complicated. Beth wants Miles, Marcus wants Beth, Marcus’ mother isn’t wanted by anyone anymore, Kyrie wants what’s on offer, and Juliet is not quite sure what she wants. An insightful, witty novel from the multi-award-winning author of Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson.

‘A provocative blend of Jane Austen domesticity, Iris Murdoch androgyny and Australian sensuality.’ — Washington Post Book World

First published in 1989, Taking Shelter was shortlisted for the NBC Banjo Award for Fiction in 1990 and the Miles Franklin Literary Award the following year.

J Jessica Anderson (1916–2010) was a novelist and short story writer. Her novels include The Commandant (1975), Tirra Lirra By the River (1978) which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1978, and The Impersonators (1980), which won the same award just two years later, along with the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction (1981). Her multi-award-winning collection of short stories, Stories from the Warm Zone and Sydney Stories (1987), is also part of the Untapped Collection.

The Acolyte

by Thea Astley
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

Jack Holberg is a blind musician and composer from Queensland who becomes world famous. Paul Vesper, ‘the acolyte’ of the title, tells the great man’s story—and his own—in this dark, funny portrait of an artistic genius and those who worshipped, and suffered, at his feet.

First published in 1972, The Acolyte won the Miles Franklin Literary Award that same year.

Thea Astley, AO (1925–2004) won the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times, for The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), also in the Untapped Collection, The Slow Natives (1965), The Acolyte (1972) and Drylands (1999). Other awards for her work include The Age Book of the Year, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. She also received multiple personal awards including, in 1989, the Patrick White Award and, in 2002, a New South Wales Premier’s Award for a lifetime’s achievement in literature.

Sister Kate

by Jean Bedford
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

The outlaw bushranger Ned Kelly is an Australian legend. But what about his sister, Kate? How do you live in the shadow of a legend?

In this sensuous, vital and compelling novel, Kate tells her own tale. It is the story of an expert horsewoman who rode through the bush to deliver supplies to her brother and his gang; the story of a young woman who fell in love with a man marked for death by the police; and the story of the destruction of a family and the tragic price of notoriety.

‘Out of the male past, Bedford fashions a disturbing figure, the female inheritor who broods over the Kelly legend … Sister Kate has simplicity and energy, moving swiftly and surely through a life held in the custody of the past.’ — Helen Daniel, The Age

Jean Bedford’s other books include the short story collection Country Girl Again: Stories (1979) and Love Child (1986). She is the co-editor, with Linda Funnell, of The Newtown Review of Books. Sister Kate was first published in 1982. For more information visit jeanbedfordauthor.com.

Second Sight

by Janine Burke
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

There are many things that might happen when a woman is experiencing a long dark night of the soul: being whisked off to sunny Tuscany is rarely one of them. If only it was, Janine Burke suggests in her award-winning second novel.

First published in 1986, Second Sight came out years before Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, another book that extolls Italy’s revitalising properties, though in a very different way. It won the Vance Palmer Award for Fiction in 1987.

Janine Burke is an award-winning novelist, art historian and biographer. Her books include Australian Women Artists: 1840–1940 (1980), Dear Sun: The Letters of Joy Hester and Sunday Reed (1994), Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker (2002), which was shortlisted for the 2002 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, and The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide (2004), and, most recently, My Forests (2021).

Ride on Stranger

by Kylie Tennant
Ligature untapped
genre Literary Fiction

The compelling, heart-wrenching tale of Shannon Hicks, unwanted as a child, and now trying to find where she belongs. Set during the Marxist movement of the 1930s, award-winning author Kylie Tennant evocatively and convincingly paints Sydney as a city on the brink of revolution. The ever-changing landscape Shannon finds herself in breeds discontent and restlessness—not unlike the Social Media Age readers find themselves in today.

Kylie Tennant AO, is best known as the author of the novels The Battlers (1941), winner of the ALS Gold Medal in 1942, Lost Haven (1946) and this one, Ride On Stranger, first published in 1943.