Literary Heatwaves

When the heat rises in fiction, so too do tempers, tensions and the promise of an inevitable reckoning. We’ve curated a collection of summer-soaked literary reads, available to borrow and inspired by Melbourne’s summer heat as the season draws to a close.


Updated January 21, 2026
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Literary Heatwaves

When the heat rises in fiction, so too do tempers, tensions and the promise of an inevitable reckoning. We’ve curated a collection of summer-soaked literary reads, available to borrow and inspired by Melbourne’s summer heat as the season draws to a close.


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Book Club 2 Go. One hundred years of solitude
Garca̕ Mr̀quez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Now a Netflix original series! "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. . . . García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound,...
Pedro Paramo (Reissue)
Rulfo, Juan
Paper Book
Now an original Netflix film, directed by Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of Killers of the Flower Moon NATIONAL BESTSELLER "One of the best novels in Hispanic literature, and in literature as a whole." --Jorge Luis Borges The highly influential...
The white tiger : a novel
Adiga, Aravind.
Paper Book
Introducing a major literary talent,The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen. Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher....
Atonement
McEwan, Ian
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author. ...
Rebecca
Du Maurier, Daphne
Paper Book
Now a Netflix film starring Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas "Last Night I Dreamt I went to Manderley Again..." With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the...
Valley of the Dolls (-50th Anniversary)
Susann, Jacqueline
Paper Book
The 50th Anniversary Edition of Jacqueline Susann's All-Time Pop-Culture Classic The perfect gift for any Valley fan or your favorite Doll, featuring a new cover design * introduction by Simon Doonan * never-before-seen archival material * an essay from Jackie, "My Book Is...
Call me by your name
Aciman, Andr.̌
Paper Book
Call Me by Your Nameis the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during...
The virgin suicides
Eugenides, Jeffrey.
Paper Book
This beautiful and sad first novel, recently adapted for a major motion picture, tells of a band of teenage sleuths who piece together the story of a twenty-year old family tragedy begun by the youngest daughter's spectacular demise by self-defenstration, which inaugurates "the year of the suicides....
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald's family and from his lifelong publisher. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book...
The Known World
Jones, Edward P.
Paper Book
Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize Award and recognized as the best book of fiction in the 21st century by the New York Times, Edward P. Jones's The Known World is a debut novel of stunning emotional depth and unequaled literary power and continues to show its importance to the American literary...
The god of small things
Roy, Arundhati.
Paper Book
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An affluent Indian family is forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Mother Mary Comes to Me "[The God of Small Things] offers such...
Giovanni's room
Baldwin, James
Paper Book
From one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century comes a groundbreaking novel set among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris, about love and the fear of love--"a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction" (The Atlantic). ...
James
Everett, Percival
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view * In development as a feature film to be...
Dune
Herbert, Frank
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, David Dastmalchian, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling...
Mrs. Dalloway
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
The authorized, original edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece and one of the most "moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century" (Michael Cunningham), with a foreword by Maureen Howard. In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is...
Sing, unburied, sing
Ward, Jesmyn
Paper Book
A New York Times BestsellerAn Indie Next PickA National Book Award-winning AuthorA Finalist for the National Book Award for FictionA Finalist for the Kirkus PrizeA Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie MedalA Publishers Weekly Top 10 of 2017Jesmyn Ward brings the archetypal road novel into rural 21st...
Crazy rich Asians
Kwan, Kevin
Other
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The international sensation and blockbuster Hollywood rom com. * "A Pride and Prejudice-like send-up about an heir bringing his Chinese-American girlfriend home to meet his ancestor-obsessed family." --People   ...
Jaws
Benchley, Peter.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The shark-versus-man classic that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg movie--now in a fiftieth anniversary edition with an exclusive foreword from the author's wife, renowned ocean conservation advocate Wendy Benchley "A tightly written,...
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