Colonial Fiction

1898, Geelong, Victoria. Stella Truehart is all alone in the world. Her good-for-nothing husband has died violently at the hands of an unknown assailant. Her mother is dead, her father deserted them before she was born, and now her kindly Truehart grandparents are also in their graves.

Farah Ibn al-Umda's dramatic historical Sa`idian novel takes place during the period of the English occupation of Egypt. The novel follows the adventures of a young doctor who is assigned to join a battalion of doctors heading to Upper Egypt to confront the deadly cholera epidemic sweeping the region. The young doctor faces many challenges and internal conflicts during his journey, with the mayor and his assistants confronting their underestimation of the epidemic and their desire to hold a celebration for the mayor’s son so that all the villagers can gather at the same time in one place.

The island of Borneo was once the most heavily wooded in the world, and its people have always carved wood beautifully. In Killernova, grappling with his heritage, Omar Musa remixes this ancient art form with fiery poetry forged in the stars. With equal parts swagger, humour and vulnerability, Musa charts a journey through the colonial history of Southeast Asia, environmental destruction, bushfires, race in Australia, the isolation and addiction of COVID lockdown, family, lost love and, ultimately, recovery.

In this powerful novel of love and family, a doctor named Paris follows a nurse to a country on the brink of civil war. When a confrontation does break out, they are swept up by rebel forces and separated. The nurse, Helen, is pregnant; she escapes, but Paris is left behind, imprisoned by rebels as war rages. A narrative of brutal power about parental bonds, forgiveness, and identity, The Colonial Hotel recasts for the 21st century the ancient story of Paris, Helen, and Oenone.

This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback - a desolate place of gas stations and fast-food franchises: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: The ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape.

Based on the true life adventures of the charming Swiss nobleman Baron Christoph de Graffenried, and his founding of New Bern, the second oldest town in North Carolina, in 1710, Knight of the Purple Ribbon is filled with drama, romance, and suspense. Penned by his descendant, Jennifer Leigh Wells, this sweeping historic novel follows de Graffenried as he goes from being the reckless black sheep of his illustrious family to the head of a colonial settlement, carved out of the wilderness, with his beautiful, spirited bride at his side.