House of Books
About House of Books
Looking for the work of Thea Astley, Alan Marshall, Eleanor Dark, Dymphna Cusack, Katharine Susannah Pritchard, Xavier Herbert, Kylie Tennant, Miles Franklin, Marcus Clarke or Henry Handel Richardson? Or perhaps your favourite book by Blanche d'Alpuget, Thea Astley, Nick Earls, Andrew Riemer, Judith Armstrong or Rodney Hall - now long out of print?
At Allen & Unwin, we believe that good books should never die.
The House of Books aims to bring Australia's cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation's most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books.
The House of Books is an eloquent collection of Australia's finest literary achievements, and the digital revolution is helping bring us all closer to the books and writers of Australia's literary tradition.
The House of Books makes accessible a library of authors and their books at affordable prices to a whole new readership. Some books have long been out of print, some have recently slipped into oblivion but the House of Books should be the first stop for all readers of Australian fiction and non-fiction.
Books will be available simultaneously as ebooks and print editions (using POD - print on demand technology).
Ask your local bookseller for the print editions - or they are available for purchase from the Allen & Unwin website.
Ebook editions are available from Readings, Pages & Pages and all Australian independent booksellers with an ebook platform, as well as from Kindle, Kobo, Google, Borders, Angus & Robertson, Dymocks, Booktopia, Collins and the Coop Bookshop.
Browse the House of Books
A Boat Load of Home Folk
by Thea Astley
Only the force of a hurricane could reveal the deepest currents of their ordinary lives.
A Bough in Hell
by Dymphna Cusack
A compassionate and perceptive story of a woman's effort to escape from the nightmare of alcohol addiction.
A Radical Life
by Russel Ward
A memoir from the influential and controversial historian of The Australian Legend
Balloonist
by MacDonald Harris
An adventure story about an expedition by balloon to the North Pole in 1897.
Banjo Paterson
by Selected and introduced by Richard Hall
A new and lively selection of poetry and prose that brings together all the old classics along with the not-so-well-known and the off-beat.
Black Lightning
by Dymphna Cusack
Cusack's classic that broke new ground in its treatment of the values of present-day Australia and in its picture of the changing Aboriginal world.
Black Sheep
by Nicholas Jose
Nicholas Jose's report on Australia's Far North has an engagingly anecdotal air, but the easygoing surface is a cover for a disturbing story of dispossession and genocide.' J.M. Coetzee
Blood is a Stranger
by Roland Perry
A stylish and brilliantly paced thriller from a great Australian writer.
Candelo
by Georgia Blain
The place, the impetuousness of youth, the heat of a desolate town. Choices made unthinkingly. Young lives that would never be the same again, and the secrets that come to light years after.
Captain Starlight's Apprentice
by Kathryn Heyman
'A tale of passion and courage...Heyman weaves the strands together with an imaginative gusto that echoes the great Angela Carter...delightful.' - The Times
Closed for Winter
by Georgia Blain
Something happened that day on the jetty . A haunting novel of family secrets.
Coda
by Thea Astley
Thea Astley's brilliant satire on old age shimmers with grief and irony. One of Australia's most important novelists, Thea Astley, is at her most wickedly funny and pertinent in Coda.
Disreputable People
by Penelope Rowe
A short story collection about families and the secrets they hold.
Disturbing Element
by Xavier Herbert
Often comic, often tragic, Disturbing Element is the story of an Australian literary legend written in his own classic style.
Dreamtime Alice
by Mandy Sayer
A vivid, seductive, gorgeously written memoir that recounts the fascinating years Mandy Sayer spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father
Eliza Fraser
by Kenneth Cook
From the violent, bawdy colonial past comes a tale of lust and adventure.
Faces in the Rain
by Roland Perry
A stylish and brilliantly paced thriller from a great Australian writer.
For the Term of His Natural Life
by Marcus Clarke
The classic novel of convict Australia, For the Term of His Natural Life is a novel of tremendous power, and also of suffering and inhumanity.
Frill-Necked Frenzy
by Kenneth Cook
A collection of short stories, mostly humorous, mostly autobiographical, uniquely Australian.
Golden Miles
by Katharine Susannah Prichard
The second novel in Katharine Susannah Prichard's stirring saga about the lives of a remarkable woman and her family during the gold rush in Western Australia.
Green
by Nick Earls
Green charts the friendship of unlikely duo Phil Harris and Frank Green from their early med school days in 1981 to the present day, incorporating all the short stories and the novel World of Chickens.
Hammers Over the Anvil
by Alan Marshall
A string of vignettes and short stories of life in a Victorian country township, told in the voice of the author as a boy.
Hear the Train Blow
by Patsy Adam-Smith
The true story of a remarkable young girl growing up in the bush during the Great Depression.
How Beautiful Are Thy Feet
by Alan Marshall
A compassionate story of workers in a shoe factory during the Depression
Icebound in Antarctica
by David Lewis and Mimi George
Dr David Lewis tells of his latest expedition in which he sailed to Antarctica in the winter to be intentionally icebound. Much more than a sailor's tale of a voyage of exploration, it is a revelation of the human spirit under duress.
In Mine Own Heart
by Alan Marshall
The moving account of Alan Marshall's attempts to establish himself as a writer during the Depression.
Inside Outside
by Andrew Riemer
Andrew Riemer's masterful account of the changes in Australian society in the years after World War II, as experienced by the author and his family after leaving Hungary.
Jungfrau
by Dymphna Cusack
Dymphna Cusack's ground-breaking novel about women's sexuality and aspirations in Australia.
Keep Your Hands on the Wheel
by Kathryn Heyman
A superb, comic and moving evocation of sibling rivalry in a family with a dark secret.
Lantana Lane
by Eleanor Dark
Eleanor Dark's last book, a beautifully observed study of life in a small town.
Larger Than Life
by Xavier Herbert
A masterly and compelling collection of tales about Australia's North from one of the country's literary legends.
Making Laws for Clouds
by Nick Earls
A brilliant, sometimes hilarious, sometimes painful, insight into how complicated being 18 really is.
Monica Bloom
by Nick Earls
Step back into the 1980s, complete with cask wine, Bryan Ferry and the Bonanza Steakhouse.
Monkeys in the Dark
by Blanche d'Alpuget
An exceptional portrayal of life and love in Indonesia among foreign residents after the 1965 coup.
My Brilliant Career
by Miles Franklin
Miles Franklin's 1901 ground-breaking debut, and an instant sensation. Meet Sybylla Melvyn, the young girl hungering for life and love in outback New South Wales.
My Career Goes Bung
by Miles Franklin
'Sybylla, with her touching charm, her impetuosity, her inappropriateness, ranks with the great romantic figures of the nineteenth century.' - The London Times
Names for Nothingness
by Georgia Blain
What happens when the life you choose involves denying everyone you love?
Norman Lindsay: A Personal Memoir
by Douglas Stewart
Douglas Stewart's record of thirty years' close friendship with Australia's most controversial artist.
Perfect Skin
by Nick Earls
Perfect Skin is a witty, moving and highly original snapshot of what it is to be thirysomething in a post-Duran Duran world.
Picnic Races
by Dymphna Cusack
A comedy that brings to vivid life the ups and downs of a community in which everyone knows - and usually disapproves of - what everyone else is doing.
Return to Coolami
by Eleanor Dark
An emotional novel that explores the psychological impact of four people thrown closely together during the course of a motor trip from Sydney to the interior of Australia.
Selected Poems
by A. D. Hope
An important collection of poetry from one of Australia's greatest poets.
Seven Emus
by Xavier Herbert
Bronco Jones, part-Aboriginal owner of Emu Station in the north of Western Australia, struggles against the machinations of a businessman and an anthropologist in this satirical portrait of anthropological exploitation of Aboriginal sacred sites.
Silences Long Gone
by Anson Cameron
Black faith. White faith. Whose claim of spiritual allegiance to the land really matters?
Soldiers' Women
by Xavier Herbert
Xavier Herbert's study of women liberated by the absence or relative scarcity of men during World War II.
Southern Steel
by Dymphna Cusack
In the industrial city of Newcastle, New South Wales, lies a powerful firm that dominates the town. It is here that Dymphna Cusack sets a dramatic tale of family disunion, feminine rivalries, soldiers' lusts and lovers' ecstasies.
Springtime in Taranaki
by Douglas Stewart
The story of Douglas Stewart's first twenty-five years until chance and literary ambition conspire to take him to Sydney.
Such is Life
by Tom Collins
An Australian classic, first published in 1903. Described by its author as of 'temper democratic; bias, offensively Australian', Such is Life gives an illuminating portrait of humanity and of Australia.
The Accomplice
by Kathryn Heyman
'You can almost smell the seasalt. a superb mix of lyricism and economy.' - Sunday Herald, UK
The Big Ship
by Gideon Haigh
A biography of Warwick Armstrong, the spiritual forefather of Steve Waugh and his present-day all-conquering Australians, and a literally giant figure in the history of modern cricket.
The Black Opal
by Katharine Susannah Prichard
The first of Katharine Susannah Prichard's mining novels, Black Opal is considered one of her earliest important novels.
The Blind Eye
by Georgia Blain
'The Blind Eye captures brilliantly the enervating spirit of an emptied town.' - The Age
The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall
by Alan Marshall
Sad stories, funny stories, warm stories, tragic stories - this collection is the very essence of the work of Australia's greatest storyteller.
The Custodians
by Nicholas Jose
A brilliantly vivid tapestry of the Australian predicament, rich in possibility, but shot through with accident and revelation. Through it all breathes the ancient reality of the land: its red earth and bright air painted with the sure hand of a master.' - Simon Schama
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
by Henry Handel Richardson
A superb, sprawling trilogy of a family fortune won and lost in gold-rush Australia.
The French Tutor
by Judith Armstrong
Albertine is an exquisite rose. For a short, rampant period in spring, she puts out mouth-watering apricot-pink flowers. But her name signifies the unbearable: the likelihood that you are being deceived.
The Getting of Wisdom
by Henry Handel Richardson
Laura, a spirited and unconventional heroine, attempts to adapt herself to the discipline of school and the unrelenting judgements of her classmates. The freedom of her country childhood seems far behind, as she struggles for dignity and true friendship
The Habsburg Cafe
by Andrew Riemer
Andrew Riemer's return to the heartland of the Habsburg empire - Austria and Hungary - in 1991, having left there at the age of 10 in 1946.
The Half-Burnt Tree
by Dymphna Cusack
A passionate, emotional and moving book which weaves the story of two people, each locked in their own tragedy yet linked by an indefinable thread.
The Man on the Headland
by Kylie Tennant
The Man on the Headland is the story of Kylie, her schoolmaster husband, Roddy, and her two children, both born during her time in Laurieton.
The Seven Rivers
by Douglas Stewart
The classic account of fly-fishing in Australia and New Zealand. As Stewart makes clear, fishing is about much more than fish.
The Slow Natives
by Thea Astley
Thea Astley is in top form in this 1965 Miles Franklin Award winner.
The Sun in Exile
by Dymphna Cusack
Is it worse to be exiled from one's country than from one's heart?
The Thompson Gunner
by Nick Earls
A gripping tale of a woman caught between two worlds, The Thompson Gunner is a compelling novel of self-discovery that will intrigue, surprise and linger well after the last page.
To Ride a Fine Horse
by Mary Durack
Patsy Durack was born a poor boy in Ireland, but migrated to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century to build up a pastoral empire in the outback.
Tuna
by Kenneth Cook
Written with compelling simplicity, Tuna recalls Hemingway's masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea.
Unacceptable Behaviour
by Penelope Rowe
A short story collection about families and the secrets they hold.
Velocity
by Mandy Sayer
A moving, tender and compelling story about a life lived on the edges of society, of poverty, of certainty, of love.
Wanted Dead
by Kenneth Cook
The roar of Australia's violent past comes to life with a story of some of our most violent bushrangers.
White Eye
by Blanche d'Alpuget
Animal rights activist Diana Pembridge is embroiled in a tangle of scientific corruption and sexual scandal when her friend, scientist Carolyn Williams, is found murdered.
Wild Weeds and Windflowers
by Ric Throssell
Katharine Susannah Prichard was a writer of novels internationally acclaimed for their realism and power, a foundation member of the Australian Communist Party, a feminist. Her son, Ric Throssell, has drawn on the memories of a lifetime and a deep and intimate knowledge of his subject in this full and moving account of his mother's life.
Winged Seeds
by Katharine Susannah Prichard
The final novel in Katharine Susannah Prichard's stirring saga about the lives of a remarkable woman and her family during the gold rush in Western Australia.
Winter in Jerusalem
by Blanche d'Alpuget
A story of an Australian screenwriter in quest of her past as she returns to Israel, the land of her birth.
