Archives par étiquette : Text Publishing

DO WE DESERVE THIS? d’Eleanor Elliott Thomas

A mordantly funny family drama exploring questions of luck, misfortune and privilege. Do any of us get what we deserve?

DO WE DESERVE THIS?
by Eleanor Elliott Thomas
Text Publishing, October 2025

Credit: Karin Locke 2023

When Nina Halloway is left unconscious after a car accident, her three adult children— histrionic pop star Jeremy, uptight lawyer Genevieve, and hapless twenty-something Bean— think it’s the most dramatic thing that will happen to them all year. Then they discover that the lottery ticket Bean bought her mother just before the accident is worth money—a lot of money .

At first, the three of them agree that holding on to the ticket until Nina wakes up is the right thing to do. Then, as various financial problems arise for Jeremy and Genevieve, their resolution is tested. Bean, meanwhile, begins an ambiguous relationship with a colleague whose motivations are unclear: does he know about the lottery win? When she finds out that her mother’s estranged family has made their money in some problematic ways, she begins to doubt whether the Halloways deserve their good fortune at all.

This smart and snarky novel explores big themes and complicated relationships with a light touch, and will appeal to readers of The Rachel Incident, The Long Island Compromise and Such a Fun Age.

Eleanor Elliott Thomas worked for many years as a lawyer before devoting herself to writing full time. She lives in Melbourne with her partner and two daughters. Her debut, The Opposite of Success, was published in 2023 and was shortlisted for the 2024 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Her hilarious substack can be read at: https://substack.com/@eleanorelliottthomas

THE BEST WITCH IN PARIS de Lauren Crozier

The 2023 Text Prize winner is a magical middle-grade adventure featuring an array of enchanting characters, exotic settings, a deliciously sinister antihero and an intriguing mystery to be solved. For fans of The Grandest Bookshop in the World, The Lost Library and the Nevermoor series, this sparkling adventure set in both Paris and Melbourne will captivate young readers.

THE BEST WITCH IN PARIS
by Lauren Crozier
Text Publishing, September 2024

Luna rides a battered old broom that keeps crashing itself into the school pond. She has a witch’s hat and wand and sometimes she’s quite good at magic, but she isn’t completely sure that she’s a real witch. She doesn’t have a familiar for one thing, and she doesn’t know where she came from-only that she was found by three witches who she now calls her aunts. When she swaps her moonstone ring for an Australian boobook owl in the Lost Forest, the mysterious bird seller makes her promise to keep the bird hidden for as long as she can. This is not easy when you live with very inquisitive aunts. And it’s not easy when you find out that the fearsome Madame Valadon, the Best Witch in Paris, is missing her boobook owl and she’s sure that Luna knows something about it.

Could it be that Luna has Madame Valadon’s boobook? Why then did the mysterious bird seller give it to Luna? Why did she say the bird belonged to her? A familiar can only belong to one witch, after all. Luna has lots of questions-the biggest one of all is who she really is.

Fun and funny and full of life, The Best Witch in Paris is a delightful story of courage and self-belief, with colourful characters, fabulous magic and a puzzling mystery at its core.

Lauren Crozier won the 2023 Text Prize for her debut novel THE BEST WITCH IN PARIS. She lives in Sydney with her partner and their two children.

LET’S NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN de Megan Williams

Ella and I have been best friends since grade one. We can spend hours talking about everything and nothing. We know each other’s greatest fears, things that irrationally annoy us, and ideal career if money and skill weren’t an issue. If there was only one Hartford Bakery brownie left in the whole world and it was somehow in my possession, Ella is the only person I’d consider sharing it with.

LET’S NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN
by Megan Williams
Text Publishing, September 2023

Life is pretty good for sixteen-year-old Abby. Okay, her grandma doesn’t remember things anymore, her relationship with her mum is increasingly strained and she accidently kissed her cousin’s cousin on the weekend, so things aren’t exactly perfect. But everything is manageable with her best friend, Ella, by her side.

And with Ella’s brother, Will—interesting and attentive—on the sidelines.

When new girl Chloe arrives, Abby is pleased to be the one to show her around, to welcome her to the group. But Abby doesn’t imagine Chloe fitting in so well or quite so quickly. And before long Abby is feeling just a little left out, a little unsure of Ella’s friendship. In a moment of anger and confusion she wishes something bad would happen.

When it does—with tragic consequences—everything shifts again. And Abby has to face her own feelings and work out what friendship really means.

Megan Williams’ brilliant debut novel is a tender, moving, often funny celebration of female friendship, about the things that test it, and about what matters most.

Megan Williams won the 2022 Text Prize for her debut YA novel, LET’S NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and their three children.

THE SEASON de Helen Garner

[Garner’s sharp eye, wit and warm humour bring the team and the season to life, as she documents this pivotal moment, both as part of the story and as silent witness. It’s a reflection on masculinity, on the nobility, grace and grit of team spirit and the game’s power to enthrall.

THE SEASON
by Helen Garner
Text Publishing, August 2024

I pull up at the kerb. I love this park they train in. I must have walked the figure-of-eight around its ovals hundreds of times, at dawn, winter and summer, to throw the ball for Dozer, our red heeler, but he’s buried now, in the backyard, under the crepe myrtle near the chook pen.

The boy jumps out with his footy and trots away, bouncing it. Boy? Look at him. He’s five foot eleven. The last of my three grandkids. This year he’s in the Under 16s.

It’s footy [Australian football] season in Melbourne, and Helen Garner is following her grandson’s suburban team. She turns up not only at every game (give or take), but at every training session, shivering on the sidelines in the dark, fascinated by the spectacle.

She’s a passionate Western Bulldogs supporter (with a rather shaky grasp of the rules) and a great admirer of the players and the epic theatre of the game. But this is something more than that. It is a chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to be close to him in his last moments as a child and in his headlong rush into manhood. To witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and to cheer for the team as it fights its way towards the finals.

Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. And in 2023 she was awarded the ASA Medal for her outstanding contribution to Australian literature. Her works include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The First Stone, The Spare Room, This House of Grief and three volumes of her diaries. She lives in Melbourne.

SANCTUARY de Garry Disher

A thrilling new standalone from one of Australia’s most esteemed crime authors.

SANCTUARY
by Garry Disher
Text Publishing, April 2024

Grace is good at theft. She was taught by experts and she’s been practising since she was a kid. She specialises in small, high value items—stamps, watches—and she knows her Jaeger- LeCoultres from her Patek Philippes. But it’s not the life she wants.

Then, lying low after a run-in with an old associate, Grace walks into Erin Mandel’s rural antiques shop and sees a chance for something different. A normal job. A place to call home.

But someone is looking for Grace. And someone’s looking for Erin, too.

And they are both, in their own ways, very dangerous men.

Garry Disher has published sixty titles across multiple genres. With a growing international reputation for his best-selling crime novels, he has won four German and three Australian awards for best crime novel of the year, and has been longlisted twice for a British CWA Dagger Award. In 2018 he received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.