Books Set in Australia and New Zealand

Book Summary

Aboard a short flight from Hobart to Sydney, Australia, a passenger (who will come to be known as “The Death Lady”) walks up and down the aisles telling each person the age at which they will die and the cause of death.

Some passengers learn that they have many, many years ahead of them, like one who will live to be 103. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are less than a year away.

A few months after the flight, one passenger dies exactly as predicted. Then, soon after, two more. No,w even those who originally viewed their encounter with “The Death Lady” as an entertaining story to share at cocktail parties are paying close attention.

Book Summary

Three women in Australia are in desperate need of strength, courage, and reconnection. Grace is a 74-year-old retired farmer who feels her decades of hard work and worries her best life is behind her. Patrica was following her dreams of travel and adventure but now has returned home to care for her aging parents. Dorothy and her husband desperately want a baby, and she’s struggling to accept that it may not happen.

Their own journeys have brought them all to the Orange Blossom House, set in a beautiful rainforest in Queensland. Together with Sandrine, their yoga teacher, the women discover that life has much more to offer than they ever expected.

Book Summary

As young girls, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia were rescued from terrible homes and constantly told how lucky they were to have been rescued by Miss Fairchild. They lived on her idyllic farming estate and, from the outside, had a happy family life.

But the truth was much different. Miss Fairchild was unpredictable and was never to be crossed. In desperation, the trio of girls managed to escape and believed they were free, though their foster mother always lingered in the back of their minds.

When a body is discovered under the old farmhouse, the foster sisters become key witnesses…or are they the suspects?

Book Summary

In 1998, twelve-year-old Lily Jorgenson’s family traveled from America to Australia and embarked on a yearlong road trip. But one night, during a storm, Lily’s mother disappeared in the Australian everglades and was never seen again.

That same night, her sister, Iris was also missing for hours. And when Iris finally returned to the family camper, she refused to tell Lily where she’d been. Lily suspects her sister is hiding a dark secret.

Twenty-four years later, Lily lives in Pennsylvania and works as a travel writer. When she receives word that flooding dredged up her mother’s backpack, she feels compelled to travel back to Australia to unlock the secrets of the past once and for all. But doing so may shatter everything she thought she knew about her family.

Book Summary

Mercy Blain has spent the last two years in isolation due to severe anxiety, but when her house burns down, she’s forced back into the world. She seeks refuge with her not-quite-ex-husband, only to discover that staying with him and his new partner only exacerbates her anxiety disorder.

On a whim, she purchases a “vintage” (tiny, old, and smelly) camper van and embarks on a road trip, accompanied by her loyal dachshund, Wasabi. Beginning in Adelaide, Southern Australia, she journeys northward through the Outback, traversing vast landscapes and remote towns en route to Darwin in the Northern Territory. Along the way, she encounters a colorful array of fellow travelers, including friendly “grey nomads” and a Scotsman with his own secrets.

Book Summary

Abby Jones is a very successful writer, except no one knows because she writes under a pen name. She is the secret identity behind a wildly popular reality television recap column in a UK tabloid.

When Abby’s boss calls her in to talk about the upcoming season of The Stag (a Bachelor-style show) that will be filmed in Sydney, she tells her they want Abby on set to get the behind-the-scenes scoop. 

But Abby won’t just be observing from off-camera – they expect her to be one of the contestants on the show. Abby can’t think of anything worse than going undercover in front of the cameras. 

The only thing that might make the experience worthwhile is the handsome Aussie producer.

Book Summary

The Exiles takes readers back in history to the British settlement of Australia in the 1800s. While Aboriginal people inhabited the land for tens of thousands of years, the British government decided to forcibly relocate many tribes and create a new nation where they would exile British citizens who violated laws in their other territories. 

The book follows three women and their intertwining lives – Evangeline, a young governess imprisoned after becoming pregnant, Hazel, a young girl sentenced to seven years after being accused of stealing a spoon, and Mathinna, an orphaned Aboriginal who the governor of the new land adopted. 

Book Summary

The Lost Man is a mystery thriller set on the Bright family’s adjoining cattle farms in outback Queensland. Nathan discovers his well-liked brother Cameron dead near an isolated headstone of an unknown cowboy. The grave is famous in local legends and ghost stories, but what was Cameron doing there, miles from his car? 

You’ll be transported to the dry, remote Outback as you try to piece together the mystery along with Nathan.

Book Summary

At the beginning of this novel, the main character, Alice, is only 9 years old and is sent away from her seaside home to live with her estranged grandmother, June, on a flower farm. Over the years, she learns both the language of flowers and about all the women her grandmother has taken in over the years to help them heal from abusive situations. 

However, Alice eventually realizes that she has her own unhealed wounds and flees the flower farm. She ends up in the remote, beautiful central desert of Australia. She thinks she has found peace until her new love, Dylan, is much different than she expected.

Book Summary

Kate hasn’t recovered from losing her husband, Cameron, two years ago. She’s back to work, but not at peak performance. Her best friend is trying to get her back on the dating scene, but she’s already overwhelmed trying to care for herself and her young son.

When Kate and her boss, Hugh, are on a flight to a quick business meeting, they have to land in Byron Bay due to a massive storm. The time away may be exactly what she needs to move into the next stage of healing.

Book Summary

Lucas Walker is a seasoned officer with the Australian Federal Police, specializing in organized crime. When he returns to his rural hometown to care for his ailing grandmother, his leave is interrupted by the disappearance of two German backpackers, Berndt and Rita. It’s possible that they simply ditched the heat and dust of the outback for the coast, but the Federal Police have reason to think otherwise. Walker is unofficially drawn into the investigation alongside Rita’s sister, Barbara, a detective from Berlin.

As they delve deeper, they uncover links to the region’s escalating drug trade and face resistance from local authorities.

Book Summary

Ky is a Vietnamese-Australian woman who deeply regrets encouraging her parents to let her brother go out to celebrate his graduation. That evening, he is killed inside a restaurant. The Sydney suburb of Cabramatta is known for violent crime and the worst heroin epidemic in Australian history, and the police force seems indifferent. 

Ky returns home to Cabramatta for the funeral and learns that while a dozen people were in the restaurant when Denny was killed, they all claim to know nothing. The police are stumped, so Ky decides to talk to the witnesses herself. As she peels back the layers, readers get the points of view of both Ky and the witnesses. These POV add depth to this literary thriller, exploring everything from colonialism to the Vietnam War.

Book Summary

Bill Bryson’s humorous travel memoirs never disappoint, and this one is the perfect combination of laugh-out-loud funny and an in-depth look at what makes the land down under so unique. Although Australia is home to more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else on Earth, Bryson adores the place, and after you read his travelogue, you’ll understand why! He takes readers far beyond the beaten tourist path, where he meets friendly locals at every turn and shares hilarious stories of his adventures.

Book Summary

Set in a seaside town, Silver Bay is about a family of women at a small inn. The town’s draw is the sea life. One of the family members, Liza, even takes tourists on whale—and dolphin-watching boat tours. 

When Mike, a real estate developer from London, is sent to scope out the town for a giant hotel complex, he brings visions of water sports that would disrupt the natural habitat. But, as he learns more about the impacts of his plans, he falls in love with more than just the location.

Book Summary

This clue-style locked room mystery takes place during a family reunion at a secluded ski resort in the Australian mountains. But this isn’t your ordinary family. As the title says, everyone in the family has killed someone and this reunion is an attempt at mending fences between family members.

From siblings, spouses, parents, and even aunts and uncles, everyone is a capable suspect when a murder occurs while they are snowed into the resort. The narrator is family-member Ern, who is investigating the crime despite his own questionable past.

Reviewers say you have to pay close attention to this Golden Age mystery filled with dark humor as you’ll encounter many twists and turns as you try to play armchair detective alongside Ern.

Book Summary

In 1950s Sydney, Blaise Hill is a determined young woman from a working-class background, determined to break into the male-dominated world of journalism. Starting as the only female in The Clarion’s newsroom, Blaise supports her family, including her sister Ivy, who is recovering from polio. Her confidence is shaken when she secretly witnesses a crime involving a notorious Sydney gangster.

When she gets an unexpected assignment in England to cover the British Royal Family, Blaise hopes to finally put the dangerous situation in Sydney behind her. 

The Swinging Sixties in London are filled with scandal and intrigue, but life is nearly perfect for Blaise. Or so it seemed until the night she attended a gala in honor of Princess Margaret’s upcoming nuptials and spotted in the crowd the one man who knows the truth about what she witnessed back in Sydney.

This novel, which spans Sydney and London, vividly depicts the era’s fashion, music, and societal changes.

Book Summary

At the start of this novel, a woman flees from her husband with her young daughter in tow. The duo ends up living on the streets of Brisbane, taking shelter in a rusted van with flat tires parked in a scrapyard along the Brisbane River.

The girl has no name because names are dangerous on the street. But she does have an old mirror. When she looks into the mirror, she sees Lola—exactly the friend she needs to talk to. The girl is also always sketching her life, and each chapter of the novel opens with one of her drawings along with commentary (in the form you might see accompanying artwork in a museum).

As time goes on, the girl winds up alone, though she has a street community around her, for good or for bad. With the help of her best friend, Charlie, she must try to stay outside the grip of the drug queen called Lady Flora Box (or Lady Flo).

Book Summary

After fighting on the Western Front in WWI, Tom Sherbourne returns home and takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island. It’s a half-day journey from the west coast of Australia, and supply boats only come once a season. During their years on the island, Tom and his wife, Isabel, suffer two miscarriages and a stillbirth. 

Then, a boat washes up onshore carrying a dead man and a crying baby. Against Tom’s judgment, the couple claims the baby is their own and raises her on the island. Two years later, when they return to mainland Australia, they must face the reality of their choice.

Book Summary

When funding for her research lab in Boston is suddenly reduced, 49-year-old Anna Fergusson is at a crossroads. On impulse, she decides to rent a cabin on an island along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for a year. 

However, her time on Turtle Island was not the simple retreat she expected. While she falls in love with islanders and with Tom, the laid-back turtle whisperer. Her time there is also filled with pain and challenges.

Book Summary

In 1808, Rose loves working with her naturalist father on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. When he is unable to travel to present his findings to the Royal Society in England, Rose goes in his place. What she discovers will change generations.

In 1908, Tamsin needs to travel to the Hunter Valley to get an old sketchbook donated to the public library. When she arrives, she discovers that there is more to the sketchbook than she expected. Shaw, a young bookseller and lawyer, has his own ideas about the book, and Tasmin partners with him to try and uncover the book’s true provenance.

Book Summary

At 27, Terri Raines took a vacation from her wildlife rescue work in Oregon and traveled to Australia. There, at a small wildlife park in Queensland, she met a conservationist named Steve Irwin. Less than a year later, the two were married in Oregon. Then she moved with Steve to Australia, where they continued his conservation work together. The footage filmed of their crocodile-trapping honeymoon would ultimately become the first episode of “The Crocodile Hunter.”

In this memoir, Terri shares the unforgettable adventures that she shared with Steve. While Steve was world-famous for his daring and enthusiasm, Terri provides a more intimate view of a devoted family man and dedicated environmentalist.

You might also like The Last Crocodile Hunter: A Father and Son Legacy, by Steve’s dad, Bob Irwin.

Book Summary

In the 1960s, the misnamed “Aboriginal Protection Act” was still in effect in Australia. The law made it possible for the government to micromanage and oppress the Aboriginal population in endless ways, including taking light-skinned children from their families. This novel tells the story of this devastating policy. 

Odette lives on the edge of a small town, and is raising her granddaughter, Sissy, after her daughter disappeared. She works hard to stay under the radar of welfare authorities, who commonly take fair-skinned children. She’s willing to risk everything to protect Sissy from that fate.

Book Summary

This Australian historical fiction novel is set in the late 1800s and the early decades of the 1900s. In the vast and unforgiving desert of Western Australia, a little girl is abandoned in the sand. 

She is taken back to the town of Leonora and named after it. Here, she is raised in an orphanage and slowly bonds with another orphan named James.

Eventually, Leonora is sent away to live with a wealthy family in America. James is taken in by relatives who have emigrated from Ireland. Years later, Leonora has the opportunity to return to Australia, and there she comes face to face with James – the only person who knows the real her.