Abel Jackson's boyhood belongs to a vanishing world. On an idyllic stretch of coast whose waters teem with fish, he lives a simple, tough existence. It's just him and his mother in the house at Longboat Bay, but Abel has friends in the sea, particularly the magnificent old groper he meets when diving. As the years pass, things change, but one thing seems to remain constant: the greed of humans. When the modern world comes to his patch of sea, Abel wonders what can stand in its way. Blueback is a deceptively simple allegory about a boy who matures through fortitude, and finds wisdom through living in harmony with all forms of life. It is a beautiful distillation of Winton's art and concerns. 'In true fable style, this is a simple story, but one so beautiful, poignant and moving it is impossible to ignore.' Daily Telegraph 'Winton. . convince[s] us of the preciousness of our oceans not through lectures but through his characters' steady wonder.' New York Times

Bruce Pike, or 'Pikelet', has lived all his short life in a tiny sawmilling town from where the thundering sea can be heard at night. He longs to be down there on the beach, amidst the pounding waves, but for some reason his parents forbid him. It's only when he befriends Loonie, the local wild boy, that he finally defies them. Intoxicated by the treacherous power of the sea and by their own youthful endurance, the two boys spurn all limits and rules, and fall into the company of adult mentors whose own addictions to risk take them to places they could never have imagined. Caught up in love and friendship and an erotic current he cannot resist, Pikelet faces challenges whose effects will far outlast his adolescence. "Breath" is the story of lost youth recollected: its attractions, its compulsions, its moments of heartbreak and of madness. A young man learns what it is to be extraordinary, how to push himself, mind and body, to the limit in terrible fear and exhilaration, and how to mask the emptiness of leaving such intensity — in love and in life — behind. Told with the immediacy and grace so characteristic of Tim Winton, " Breath" is a mesmeric novel by a writer at the height of his powers

Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire. Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans — running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth — bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated

Eyrie tells the story of Tom Keely, a man who’s lost his bearings in middle age and is now holed up in a flat at the top of a grim highrise, looking down on the world he’s fallen out of love with. He’s cut himself off, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman he used to know when they were kids, and her introverted young boy. The encounter shakes him up in a way he doesn’t understand. Despite himself, Keely lets them in. What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times — funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting — populated by unforgettable characters. It asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing

After traveling through Europe for two years, Scully and his wife Jennifer wind up in Ireland, and on a mystical whim of Jennifer's, buy an old farmhouse which stands in the shadow of a castle. While Scully spends weeks alone renovating the old house, Jennifer returns to Australia to liquidate their assets. When Scully arrives at Shannon Airport to pick up Jennifer and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, it is Billie who emerges — alone. There is no note, no explanation, not so much as a word from Jennifer, and the shock has left Billie speechless. In that instant, Scully's life falls to pieces. The Riders is a superbly written and a darkly haunting story of a lovesick man in a vain search for a vanished woman. It is a powerfully accurate account of marriage today, of the demons that trouble relationships, of resurrection found in the will to keep going, in the refusal to hold on, to stand still. The Riders is also a moving story about the relationship between a loving man and his tough, bright daughter

In these extraordinary tales about ordinary people from ordinary places, Tim Winton describes turnings of all kinds: second thoughts, changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, abrupt transitions. The seventeen stories overlap to paint a convincing and cohesive picture of a world where people struggle against the terrible weight of their past and challenge the lives they have made for themselves. 'Always a writer of crystalline prose, his lines of sinewy leanness achieve such clarity here that it seems one is reading line after line of perfect music. . To read Winton is to be reminded not just of the possibilities of fiction but of the human heart' "The Times " 'The laureate of Western Australia is back. . this is like Carver, happily with a very large dose of Winton' "Time Out " 'These stories are threaded through with subtleties and oblique connections; to be fully appreciated, they need to be read more than once. But Winton's writing — vigorous, vivid, precise — is so good that you'd want to do that anyway' "Sunday Times"