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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One Hundred Years of Solitude
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia.
Paper Book
Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been one of the literary giants of the past century; his body of work is an undisputed cultural landmark and a touchstone for countless readers and writers alike. In the wake of the author's death, Penguin is reissuing what is arguably his most beloved novel...
Pedro Páramo
Rulfo, Juan
Ebook
"Desconcertante, lista a inquietar a la crítica, está ya en los escaparates la primera novela de Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo, que transcurre en una serie de transposiciones oníricas, ahondando más allá de la muerte de sus personajes, que uno no sabe en qué momento son sueño, vida,...
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Lindsay, Joan
Paper Book
While Joan Lindsay's haunting Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock is a work of fiction, the story is often considered one of Australia's greatest mysteries. In 1900, a class of young women from an exclusive private school go on an excursion to the isolated Hanging Rock,...
Atonement
McEwan, Ian
Paper Book
The talented Mr Ripley
Highsmith, Patricia.
Ebook
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language...
Rebecca
Du Maurier, Daphne
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM starring Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily Collins. 'The moment I finished this story, I turned to page one and started it over again' MALORIE BLACKMAN 'Excellent entertainment . . . du Maurier created a...
Call me by your name
Aciman, André
Paper Book
The film tie-in edition to the already highly acclaimed Luca Guadagnino-directed film of one of the great love stories of our time.
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott; Marchetta, Melina
Paper Book
Everybody who is anybody is seen at Jay Gatsby's glittering Long Island parties. Yet Gatsby himself is reserved, unknowable. He seems always to be watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. When he finally draws the beautiful Daisy Buchanan back into his orbit, he sets in motion a series of...
The Known World
Jones, Edward P.
Ebook
From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory--winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of...
The god of small things
Roy, Arundhati.
Ebook
'They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.' This is the story of Rahel and Estha, twins growing up among the banana jam vats and peppercorns of their blind grandmother's...
Giovanni's room
Baldwin, James
Paper Book
'Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my...
James
Everett, Percival
Paper Book
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle James is a profound and ferociously funny novel from one of our greatest living writers, Percival Everett. The Sunday Times Bestseller Winner of the...
Dune
Herbert, Frank
Paper Book
What The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy, Dune is to science fiction. Presenting one of the most influential works of all time, which has inspired countless other stories for more than half a century, this is an awe-inspiring world, and a story of truly epic scope. ...
Disgrace
Coetzee, J. M.
Paper Book
'A great novel by one of the finest authors writing in the English language today' The Times After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The...
Mrs Dalloway
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that...
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
"It seemed...such nonsense inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that."Adeline Virginia Woolf ( 1882 - 28th March 1941) is one of Britain's leading literary talents and a pioneer of modernist writing especially 'stream of consciousness' which provides the...
Crazy rich Asians
Kwan, Kevin
Paper Book
Thwarted love, scheming snobs, obscene wealth and haute couture - it's all here in a fabulous bestseller and now a groundbreaking and lavish movie. An absolutely wicked treat!
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