by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein

In July 2023, in the quiet Gippsland town of Leongatha, Erin Patterson—stay-at-home mother and true-crime devotee—invited her husband’s devoutly Christian family to lunch. Within days, three of her guests were dead and the fourth was in a coma. They had all been poisoned by death cap mushrooms.

Two years later, Patterson stood trial, accused of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The court case gripped the nation and fascinated people all over the world.

Among those drawn into the drama were three renowned writers: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein.

Together, they joined the daily media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts and spent long days immersed in the case’s sinister and complex themes: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder.

The Mushroom Tapes is a true-crime book like no other—a unique study of Erin Patterson and our collective obsession with her strange and terrible crime.

-

Condition: Excellent
Publisher: Text Publishing
Publication Date: 2025
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781923058750

by Amal Awad

The lake in the middle of her father’s kitchen is only the first in a series of disasters in Zeina’s life. Nassar’s recent health crisis has seen his well-established community restaurant, Casablanca, losing ground and customers to trendier competition. Casablanca’s deterioration is not the only chaos in Zeina’s world but, unlike her husband who won’t speak to her, her best friend who is sliding towards self-destruction, and her cousin who is stealing Zeina’s life story for content, the restaurant is something she can fix. And Zeina, lonely and adrift, needs something she can fix. Taking leave from her prestigious chef position, Zeina throws herself into caring for her ailing father, immersing herself in the familiar foods and flavours of her childhood, trying to save both him and his restaurant. But working in the kitchen – and her childhood home – brings memories, secrets, and unexpected ambitions simmering to the surface. When it comes time to make hard decisions, Zeina will have to accept that growing up is an ongoing process – one that never gets any easier.

-

Condition: Excellent
Publisher: Pantera Press
Publication Date: 2023
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780645240085

by Jessica Chan Mei Yu

But the Girl is a wry and razor-sharp coming-of-age novel about belonging, alienation, and the exquisite pleasure and pain of girlhood, for readers of The Idiot by Elif Batuman and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

-

Condition: Very Good
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: 2023
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781761046148

by Eli Edugyan

When two English brothers take the helm of a Barbados sugar plantation, Washington Black - an eleven-year-old field slave - finds himself selected as personal servant to one of them. The eccentric Christopher 'Titch' Wilde is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor and abolitionist, whose single-minded pursuit of the perfect aerial machine mystifies all around him.

Titch's idealistic plans are soon shattered and Washington finds himself in mortal danger. They escape together, but then Titch disappears and Washington must make his way alone, following the promise of freedom further than he ever dreamed possible.

Inspired by a true story, Washington Black is an extraordinary tale of a world destroyed and made whole again.

-

Condition: Good
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: 2018
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781524711443

by Douglas Stuart

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things. But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and as she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different, he is clearly no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.

-

Condition: Fair
Publisher: Picador
Publication Date: 2021
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781529019292

by Laura Jean McKay

Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.

-

Condition: Excellent
Publisher: Scribe
Publication Date: 2020
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781925849530

by Chan Ho-Kei

translated by Jeremy Tiang

From award-winning Hong Kong writer Chan Ho-Kei, The Borrowed tells the story of Kwan Chun-dok, a Hong Kong detective whose career spans fifty years of the territory’s history. A deductive powerhouse, Kwan becomes a legend in the force, nick-named “the Eye of Heaven” by his awestruck colleagues.

-

Condition: Good
Publisher: Black Cat
Publication Date: 2016
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780802125880

by Marilynne Robinson

In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames life, he begins a letter to his young son: ‘I told you last night that I might be gone sometime … you reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.’

-

Condition: As New
Publisher: Virago
Publication Date: 2020
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781844081486

by Pirooz Jafari

Tishtar runs a small legal practice in Melbourne where he has a new client, Habiba, who seeks to bring her orphan nieces to Australia from war-torn Somalia. He is also a migrant, having left the civil unrest to Iran to find a new life in a new country.

-

Condition: Excellent
Publisher: Ultimo Press
Publication Date: 2022
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781761150586