Orlando King Trilogy by Isabel Colegate

"Orlando King is a trilogy about a beautiful young man, raised in a remote and eccentric wilderness, arriving in 1930s London and setting the world of politics ablaze. In a time of bread riots and hunger marches, with the spectre of Fascism casting an ever lengthening shadow over Europe, Orlando glidingly cuts a swathe through the thickets of business, the corridors of politics, the pleasure gardens of the Cliveden set, acquiring wealth, adulation, a beautiful wife, and a seat in Parliament. But the advent of war brings with it Orlando's downfall; and his daughter Agatha, cloistered with him in his banishment, is left to pick through the rubble of his smoking, ruined legacy. Elegant and muscular, powerful and razor-sharp, Orlando King is a bildungsroman, Greek tragedy and political saga all in one; a glittering exorcism of the inter-war generation's demons to rival the work of Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark. "

• Bloomsbury

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

A blackly comic novel about lies, love, Lagos, and how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water.

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first.

Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the fit doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...

• Allen and Unwin

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

When Aleisha discovers a crumpled reading list tucked into a tattered library book, it sparks an extraordinary journey.

From timeless stories of love and friendship to an epic journey across the Pacific Ocean with a boy and a tiger in a boat, the list opens a gateway to new and wonderful worlds – just when Aleisha needs an escape from her troubles at home.

And when widower Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to connect with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha introduces him to the magic of the reading list. An anxious teenager and a lonely grandfather forming an unlikely book club of two.

Inspiring and heart-warming, The Reading List is a love letter to storytelling – its power to transport us, connect us, and remind us that a new beginning is only a page away…

• Harper Collins Australia

Swing Time by  Zadie Smith

Two brown girls dream of being dancers—but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It’s a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.

Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.

But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, the women dance just like Tracey—the same twists, the same shakes—and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time.

• Penguin Random House

Plum by  Brendan Cowell

Peter 'The Plum' Lum is a 49-year-old ex-star NRL player, living with his son and girlfriend in Cronulla. He's living a pretty cruisey life until one day he suffers an epileptic fit and discovers that he has a brain disorder as a result of the thousand-odd head knocks he took on the footy field in his twenty-year-career. According to his neurologist, Plum has to make some changes - right now - or it's dementia, or even death.

Reluctantly, Plum embarks on a journey of self-care and self-discovery, which is not so easy when all you've ever known is to go full tilt at everything. On top of this, he's being haunted by dead poets, and, unable to stop crying, discovers he has a special gift for the spoken word. With spectral visits from Bukowski and Plath, the friendship of local misfits, and the prospect of new love, Plum might just save his own life.

From award-winning writer, director and actor, Brendan Cowell, Plum is a powerfully moving, authentic, big-hearted, angry and joyous novel of men, their inarticulate pain and what it takes for them to save themselves - from themselves. It's got a roaring energy, a raucous humour, a heart of gold and a poetic soul.

• HarperCollins

The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard

What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognisable to you? For Thea, the answer is simple and agonising: you keep loving him somehow.

Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Belinda, a crime he has no memory of committing. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanises the community to rally against him. Neighbours, employers, even some members of Thea’s own family turn away.

Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her only son and begins to suspect darker forces are at play. If there is so much she never knew about Stefan, what other hidden secrets has she yet to uncover — especially the shocking truth about the night Belinda died?

• HarperCollins

Whispers from the Doll's House by Chris Muir

This month we are beta reading Chris' book, it can be found in file section in the TBLS FB group.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

"Grace is a Victorian orphan dreaming of the mysterious African father she will never meet.

Winsome is a young Windrush bride, recently arrived from Barbados.

Amma is the fierce queen of her 1980s squatters' palace.

Morgan, who used to be Megan, is blowing up on social media, the newest activist-influencer on the block.

Twelve very different people, mostly black and female, more than a hundred years of change, and one sweeping, vibrant, glorious portrait of contemporary Britain. Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible."

• Penguin Books Australia

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

"Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son Robin is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade, for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.

What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, while all the while fostering his son's desperate campaign to help save this one."

• Penguin Books Australia

Uprooted by Naomi Novik 

"Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn't, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose."

• Pan Macmillan Australia

Still Life by Sarah Winman

"1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening.

Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.

Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.

Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful novel about beauty, love, family and fate."

• HarperCollins Australia