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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One Hundred Years of Solitude
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia.
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,...
The white tiger
Adiga, Aravind.
Paper Book
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE | Winner of the Booker Prize "This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before." --John Burdett, author of Bangkok 8 The debut novel from the author of Amnesty and Selection Day<...
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...
Call me by your name
Aciman, André
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 great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott; Marchetta, Melina
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
From National Book Award-nominated author Edward P. Jones comes a debut novel of stunning emotional depth and unequaled literary power Henry Townsend, a farmer, boot maker, and former slave, through the surprising twists and unforeseen turns of life in antebellum Virginia,...
Giovanni's room
Baldwin, James
Paper Book
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial...
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
Frank Herbert's classic masterpiece--a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides--who would become known as Muad'Dib--and of a great family's ambition to...
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 : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn.
Paper Book
*WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION *A TIME MAGAZINE BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 OF 2017 *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize *Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal *Finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize...
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Audiobook
Crazy rich Asians
Kwan, Kevin
Paper Book
Jaws
Benchley, Peter
Audiobook
With the 1974 publication of the novel Jaws and the release a year later of the film based on the book, an American cultural phenomenon was born. Today, the remarkable bestseller by Peter Benchley still towers as a thrilling classic of suspense, drama, and the eternal conflicts of man...

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