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Australia's top 100 books, with a blurb for each

Regular readers know that I love a good list. This is certainly a great list which will no doubt spark debate and hopefully encourage many to pick up a book.

ABC Radio National asked listeners to vote for their favourite Australian books, and the countdown of 100 finished over the weekend. As The Guardian’s Stephanie Convery reported, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet took first place, ahead of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe. It is not a new result for Winton. Cloudstreet also topped the ABC’s public poll back in 2003.

The method was a public vote, not a panel of experts, and it shows. The final 100 mixes adult fiction, non-fiction, young adult novels, children’s picture books, history and cookbooks. The oldest title is Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life from 1874 (No. 80). The newest are Sally Hepworth’s Mad Mabel and Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore, both from 2025. Kate Evans, host of Radio National’s The Bookshelf, told The Guardian the list “defies any glib conclusions about how we read”. Fair enough.

I have republished the full countdown below, with the year, genre and a short blurb added for each book. The ranking, titles and authors are the ABC’s. The original countdown is worth a visit too.

If you would rather use it than read it, there is a sortable version. Tick the books you fancy to build a shortlist, print it or download it, and follow the links to find a copy at your local library.

What stands out

Certainly a broad selection. Personally I think it’s a shame that the Top 100 has been crowded by cookbooks, non-fiction and children’s books. All worthy of coverage but it means fewer mentions of the fiction books which do so much to capture our stories and national character - and sub-character.

The numbers back the hunch. By my count 63 of the 100 are novels (young adult and one graphic novel included). The other 37 are 19 works of non-fiction (memoir, history, true crime and biography), 14 children’s books, three cookbooks and one poem. A birthday cake book at No. 22 is a lovely thing, but it is also a place a novel could have been.

Three other patterns jumped out:

It is a modern list. Fifty-eight of the 100 were published in 2000 or later and 36 since 2010. The 1980s is the strongest older decade with 13 entries.

A few authors dominate. Winton and Helen Garner have four books each. Geraldine Brooks and Anna Funder have three.

The screen loves these books. Good to see a fair number have also spawned movies. By my reckoning well over 30 titles have been adapted for film or television, from Picnic at Hanging Rock and Storm Boy to The Dry and Boy Swallows Universe.

My three

My favourites from the list? Boy Swallows Universe is set in a time and place that evokes my childhood, though fortunately mine wasn’t so crazy.

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu is the one that was like a slap to the brain, where every chapter had me rethinking all that I had learned before.

Tim Winton’s Breath I read when jet lagged after returning from three months overseas. Incredible scene building. I could smell the salt air of the Western Australian coast as I turned the pages.

Which ones did you love, and which one is missing? Count how many you have read, then pick one from the bottom half of the table. That is where the surprises are.

The full countdown

Rank Title Author Year Genre Blurb
1 Cloudstreet Tim Winton 1991 Literary fiction Two working-class families, the Lambs and the Pickles, share a rambling Perth house for twenty years after the war. Luck, grief and stubborn love tangle through a funny, magical family saga.
2 The Book Thief Markus Zusak 2005 Historical fiction Narrated by Death, this is the story of Liesel, a foster girl in Nazi Germany who steals books and shares them with her neighbours and a Jewish man hidden in her basement.
3 Boy Swallows Universe Trent Dalton 2018 Literary fiction Brisbane in the 1980s. Young Eli Bell navigates a violent, magical suburban childhood with a mute brother, a notorious criminal mentor and a mother he would do anything for.
4 Burial Rites Hannah Kent 2013 Historical fiction In 1829 Iceland, Agnes Magnúsdóttir awaits execution for murder while billeted on a farming family. Her story emerges slowly and unsettles everything the household thinks it knows about her.
5 A Fortunate Life A.B. Facey 1981 Memoir An unschooled farm worker’s plain-spoken account of a hard life: an orphaned childhood, Gallipoli, the Depression and personal loss, told with remarkable gratitude.
6 Tomorrow, When the War Began John Marsden 1993 Young adult Seven teenagers return from a camping trip to find their town occupied by foreign invaders. They must decide whether to run, hide or fight back.
7 The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip Williams 2020 Historical fiction Esme, daughter of an Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer, secretly collects words the male editors reject, especially those used by women, as suffrage and the First World War approach.
8 The Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan 2013 Historical fiction Army surgeon Dorrigo Evans, a prisoner of war on the Burma Railway, is haunted by a lost love and the brutality he witnessed. Winner of the 2014 Booker Prize.
9 The Secret River Kate Grenville 2005 Historical fiction London convict William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales and claims land on the Hawkesbury, setting a settler’s dream against the Aboriginal people already living there.
10 The Dry Jane Harper 2016 Crime Federal agent Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken home town for a friend’s funeral and is drawn into a murder-suicide that reopens the unsolved death of a teenage girl.
11 Possum Magic Mem Fox and Julie Vivas 1983 Children’s picture book Grandma Poss makes Hush invisible to keep her safe from snakes, then must find the food that will make her visible again, on a tour of Australian places and treats.
12 Dark Emu Bruce Pascoe 2014 Non-fiction Drawing on early colonial journals, Pascoe argues that Aboriginal people farmed, built and stored food, challenging the hunter-gatherer label. A contested but hugely influential reappraisal.
13 Looking for Alibrandi Melina Marchetta 1992 Young adult Josephine Alibrandi, from an Italian-Australian family in Sydney, juggles scholarship-school snobbery, an absent father, a formidable grandmother and first love in her final year.
14 Year of Wonders Geraldine Brooks 2001 Historical fiction In 1666 a Derbyshire village seals itself off when plague arrives. Housemaid Anna Frith becomes healer and witness as faith and fear tear the community apart.
15 The Slap Christos Tsiolkas 2008 Literary fiction At a Melbourne barbecue a man slaps a child who is not his own. Eight perspectives follow the fallout across class, ethnicity, marriage and friendship.
16 Wild Dark Shore Charlotte McConaghy 2025 Literary fiction On a remote island near Antarctica, home to a research station and seed vault, a family finds a shipwreck survivor washed ashore. Her arrival stirs secrets as the seas rise.
17 Storm Boy Colin Thiele 1963 Children’s fiction A lonely boy living in the Coorong dunes with his father raises an orphaned pelican, Mr Percival, in a tender story of friendship, courage and loss.
18 My Brilliant Career Miles Franklin 1901 Classic fiction Headstrong, talented Sybylla Melvin grows up in rural New South Wales and refuses marriage and convention in favour of a writing life. An early landmark of Australian feminist fiction.
19 Magic Beach Alison Lester 2002 Children’s picture book Rhyming verse follows children at the beach, where sandcastles, rock pools and imagination turn an ordinary day into an adventure.
20 Wifedom Anna Funder 2023 Biography Funder recovers Eileen O’Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s first wife, arguing that her intellect and unpaid labour shaped his work. Part biography, part memoir, part polemic.
21 My Place Sally Morgan 1987 Memoir Morgan uncovers her family’s hidden Aboriginal heritage in Western Australia, gathering her mother’s and grandmother’s testimony in a landmark of Indigenous life writing.
22 The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book Maryanne Blacker and Pamela Clark 1980 Cookbook Generations of Australians remember the swimming pool, castle and train cakes in this much-loved collection of novelty birthday cakes, with step-by-step instructions for anxious parents.
23 Stasiland Anna Funder 2002 Non-fiction Funder interviews former East Germans, victims and Stasi officers alike, to reveal how the secret police shaped daily life behind the Wall and what lingers after its fall.
24 The Power of One Bryce Courtenay 1989 Historical fiction Peekay, a boy in 1930s South Africa, survives boarding-school bullying and wartime prejudice through boxing, music and unlikely friendships. A bestselling coming-of-age epic.
25 Seven Little Australians Ethel Turner 1894 Children’s fiction The mischievous Woolcot children of 1890s Sydney chafe against their strict father. An early Australian classic that mixes comedy with real heartbreak.
26 Picnic at Hanging Rock Joan Lindsay 1967 Mystery On Valentine’s Day 1900, three schoolgirls and a teacher vanish during a picnic at Hanging Rock. An atmospheric Gothic puzzle that never offers a tidy solution.
27 The Harp in the South Ruth Park 1948 Literary fiction The Darcy family crowd into a Surry Hills slum house in 1940s Sydney, finding humour, grit and hope amid poverty, faith and family upheaval.
28 Mad Mabel Sally Hepworth 2025 Mystery Elsie Fitzpatrick, 81, finds a neighbour dead. The discovery exposes her past as Mabel Waller, convicted of murder at fifteen in 1959, and she decides to speak publicly.
29 The Happiest Refugee Anh Do 2010 Memoir Comedian Anh Do recounts fleeing Vietnam by boat as a child, surviving pirates and building a new life in Sydney, with humour and gratitude.
30 My Brother Jack George Johnston 1964 Literary fiction David Meredith, a Melbourne journalist, recalls growing up between the wars beside his rough-diamond brother Jack, weighing ambition and comfort against loyalty and mateship.
31 Monkey Grip Helen Garner 1977 Literary fiction In 1970s inner-city Melbourne, Nora falls repeatedly for the charming, heroin-addicted Javo in a raw, diaristic portrait of share-house life, desire and dependency.
32 Animalia Graeme Base 1986 Children’s picture book An alphabet book of alliterative verse and densely detailed paintings, each page hiding objects, and a boy, for readers to find.
33 Breath Tim Winton 2008 Literary fiction On the Western Australian coast, two teenage boys chase bigger surf and riskier dares under the spell of an older mentor, with lasting consequences.
34 The Rosie Project Graeme Simsion 2013 Romance Socially awkward genetics professor Don Tillman designs a questionnaire to find the perfect wife, then meets Rosie, who has a project of her own. A warm romantic comedy.
35 Lola in the Mirror Trent Dalton 2023 Literary fiction Dalton’s third novel follows Lola, a young artist who uses her art to interpret and survive a hard world, and the mother who shaped it.
36 Limberlost Robbie Arnott 2022 Literary fiction Ned West, on his family’s Tasmanian apple orchard while his brothers are away at war, traps rabbits to buy a boat. A lyrical coming-of-age story of land and loss.
37 I Can Jump Puddles Alan Marshall 1955 Memoir Marshall recalls a rural Victorian boyhood after polio left him with weakened legs, refusing pity and claiming independence with humour and determination.
38 Joe Cinque’s Consolation Helen Garner 2004 True crime Garner investigates the 1997 Canberra death of student Joe Cinque, poisoned by his girlfriend, and the dinner party at which friends failed to intervene.
39 Big Little Lies Liane Moriarty 2014 Contemporary fiction At a school trivia night in a beachside community, a death exposes the secrets of three mothers whose friendship and gossip hide something far darker.
40 Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey 1988 Literary fiction An Anglican clergyman and an heiress, both compulsive gamblers, stake everything on transporting a glass church through the Australian wilderness. Winner of the 1988 Booker Prize.
41 Dirt Music Tim Winton 2001 Literary fiction In a Western Australian fishing town, poacher Luther Fox and the restless Georgie Jutland fall into a dangerous love that drives them north towards the Kimberley coast.
42 The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie May Gibbs 1918 Children’s fiction Two gumnut babies adventure through the bush, helped by Ragged Blossom and menaced by the villainous Banksia Men.
43 People of the Book Geraldine Brooks 2008 Historical fiction Conservator Hanna Heath examines the Sarajevo Haggadah and finds small clues, a wine stain and an insect wing, that reveal centuries of the manuscript’s rescue.
44 True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey 2000 Historical fiction Ned Kelly narrates his own life in a rough, vivid vernacular, addressed to the daughter he never met. Winner of the 2001 Booker Prize.
45 All That I Am Anna Funder 2011 Historical fiction Based on real people, German anti-Nazi activists in 1930s London are hunted by Hitler’s agents. Memory, courage and betrayal unfold through the voices of two survivors.
46 The Thorn Birds Colleen McCullough 1977 Romance Across decades on a vast New South Wales sheep station, Meggie Cleary loves Father Ralph, a priest torn between ambition, faith and desire.
47 Playing Beatie Bow Ruth Park 1980 Young adult Modern teenager Abigail follows a strange child through Sydney’s Rocks into the 1870s, where she uncovers a family’s secret and her own heart.
48 Where is the Green Sheep? Mem Fox and Judy Horacek 2004 Children’s picture book A rhythmic hunt through a flock of wonderfully varied sheep for the one that is missing, in a bedtime favourite for toddlers.
49 The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer 1970 Non-fiction Greer’s polemic argues that women are conditioned to accept submission and suppress desire. A landmark of second-wave feminism that still provokes argument.
50 Mao’s Last Dancer Li Cunxin 2003 Memoir A poor Chinese village boy is selected for the Beijing Dance Academy, then defects to the West and becomes a star of the ballet stage.
51 The Light Between Oceans M.L. Stedman 2012 Historical fiction Lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel, after miscarriages, keep a baby found in a drifting boat on the Western Australian coast, with devastating consequences.
52 Horse Geraldine Brooks 2022 Historical fiction The racehorse Lexington links an enslaved groom, a Smithsonian articulator and a modern art historian across two centuries of American race, art and obsession.
53 Stone Yard Devotional Charlotte Wood 2023 Literary fiction A woman retreats to a struggling convent on the Monaro, where a mouse plague, drought and the arrival of a relic unsettle her carefully ordered solitude.
54 Schindler’s Ark Thomas Keneally 1982 Historical fiction A documentary novel of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved more than a thousand Jews from the Holocaust. Winner of the 1982 Booker Prize.
55 The Magic Pudding Norman Lindsay 1918 Children’s fiction Bunyip Bluegum joins Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff to guard Albert, the grumpy, endlessly renewable pudding, from scheming thieves.
56 The Cook’s Companion Stephanie Alexander 1996 Cookbook An encyclopaedic A to Z of ingredients with recipes, techniques and advice. For three decades it has been a fixture of Australian kitchens.
57 The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Holly Ringland 2018 Literary fiction After a fire, nine-year-old Alice goes to live with her grandmother on a flower farm and learns the secret language of Australian native flowers.
58 The Yield Tara June Winch 2019 Literary fiction Elder Albert Gondiwindi writes a dictionary of Wiradjuri words as his granddaughter returns home and a mining company threatens the land. Winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Award.
59 The Happiest Man on Earth Eddie Jaku 2020 Memoir Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku describes enduring Auschwitz and Buchenwald, then finding gratitude, kindness and joy in the life he rebuilt in Australia.
60 The Man from Snowy River Banjo Paterson 1890 Poetry A ballad of a young rider on a stockhorse who chases a runaway colt down a precipitous mountainside. Bush verse that became a national story.
61 Too Much Lip Melissa Lucashenko 2018 Literary fiction Kerry Salter, a Goorie woman on the run, heads home to see her dying grandfather and finds family, land and secrets. Sharp, funny, unvarnished. Winner of the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.
62 Are We There Yet? Alison Lester 2004 Children’s picture book A family takes a year-long journey around Australia, and the illustrated diary captures the landscapes, wildlife and weary backseat moods along the way.
63 Question 7 Richard Flanagan 2023 Memoir Flanagan braids his Tasmanian boyhood, his father’s survival as a prisoner of war and the physicist Leo Szilard into a meditation on history, chance and memory.
64 Damned Whores and God’s Police Anne Summers 1975 Non-fiction Summers argues that Australian women since colonisation have been cast as either damned whores or God’s police. A foundational text of Australian feminism.
65 Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens Shankari Chandran 2022 Literary fiction In a Sydney nursing home founded by Sri Lankan refugees, a missing husband and a racism complaint stir memories of civil war. Winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Award.
66 Carpentaria Alexis Wright 2006 Literary fiction A mythic, darkly funny epic set on the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the Phantom family fights for land and survival against a mine and rival clans.
67 Voss Patrick White 1957 Literary fiction German explorer Johann Voss leads a doomed expedition across the Australian interior in 1845, bound by a near-mystical bond to Laura Trevelyan back in Sydney.
68 Unreliable Memoirs Clive James 1980 Memoir James’s comic account of growing up fatherless in postwar Sydney. Self-mocking, ironic and extravagantly quotable.
69 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute 1950 Romance Jean Paget survives a forced march in wartime Malaya with help from an Australian prisoner, then seeks him in the outback and builds a new town.
70 Diary of a Wombat Jackie French and Bruce Whatley 2002 Children’s picture book A wombat records her days of sleeping, eating, digging and training the new human neighbours to supply carrots.
71 The Tree of Man Patrick White 1955 Literary fiction Stan and Amy Parker carve a farm from bush at the edge of Sydney. Across decades of fire, flood and ordinary grief, their lives gain epic stature.
72 This House of Grief Helen Garner 2014 True crime Garner follows the trial of Robert Farquharson, who drove his three sons into a dam on Father’s Day 2005, and asks how a court weighs the unknowable.
73 Scrublands Chris Hammer 2018 Crime Journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in drought-stricken Riversend a year after a charismatic priest shot five parishioners, and starts asking questions the town does not want asked.
74 The Fatal Shore Robert Hughes 1986 History A sweeping, vivid history of the convict transportation system that founded Australia, from the First Fleet of 1787 to the 1860s.
75 The Bookbinder of Jericho Pip Williams 2023 Historical fiction In First World War Oxford, sisters Peggy and Tilly work in the bindery of the university press while the war changes everything around them.
76 The Natural Way of Things Charlotte Wood 2015 Literary fiction Ten young women, each shamed by scandal involving powerful men, wake imprisoned in a remote outback compound. A chilling, allegorical thriller about misogyny.
77 The Broken Shore Peter Temple 2005 Crime Damaged Melbourne detective Joe Cashin, back in his coastal home town, investigates the bashing of a wealthy man and the fate of three Aboriginal youths.
78 Power Without Glory Frank Hardy 1950 Literary fiction A thinly disguised portrait of Melbourne gambling and political powerbroker John Wren. Hardy was prosecuted for criminal libel over it.
79 Johnno David Malouf 1975 Literary fiction Narrator Dante looks back on his friendship with the charismatic, reckless Johnno in wartime and postwar Brisbane.
80 For the Term of His Natural Life Marcus Clarke 1874 Historical fiction Rufus Dawes, wrongly convicted, endures the brutality of the Van Diemen’s Land penal settlements in an epic that shaped how Australians imagined the convict past.
81 We of the Never Never Mrs Aeneas Gunn 1908 Memoir Jeannie Gunn’s warm account of a year on Elsey Station in the Northern Territory in 1902. A bush classic of outback life.
82 Eucalyptus Murray Bail 1998 Literary fiction Farmer Holland plants hundreds of eucalypt species and promises his daughter Ellen to any suitor who can name them all. A fable of obsession and love.
83 Wombat Stew Marcia K Vaughan and Pamela Lofts 1984 Children’s picture book A hungry dingo plans to cook a wombat stew, but the bush animals have other ideas. A rhythmic, funny read-aloud.
84 Shantaram Gregory David Roberts 2003 Adventure fiction An escaped Australian prisoner hides in Bombay, where he runs a clinic in the slums and falls in with mafia, war and love. Loosely based on the author’s life.
85 The Dressmaker Rosalie Ham 2000 Contemporary fiction Glamorous Tilly Dunnage returns to her outback home town of Dungatar to care for her mother and settle old scores with her couture.
86 The Lost Man Jane Harper 2018 Crime In the remote Queensland outback, brothers Nathan and Bub investigate the mysterious death of a third brother at the stockman’s grave.
87 The Trauma Cleaner Sarah Krasnostein 2017 Biography A portrait of Sandra Pankhurst, who cleans homes left behind by death and hoarding, and whose own extraordinary life holds as many secrets.
88 Juice Tim Winton 2024 Literary fiction In a future Australia scorched by climate collapse, an unnamed narrator recalls a childhood spent half underground, then life as a recruit of a secret assassins' organisation.
89 Edenglassie Melissa Lucashenko 2023 Historical fiction Aboriginal and colonial lives collide in 1850s Brisbane, while a present-day story echoes and answers the past.
90 Puberty Blues Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey 1979 Contemporary fiction Two teenage girls in 1970s Sydney fight for respect in the male-dominated surf culture of the Cronulla beaches. Raw, funny and still talked about.
91 Where the Forest Meets the Sea Jeannie Baker 1987 Children’s picture book A boy visiting the Daintree rainforest imagines its ancient past and threatened future, in intricate collage artwork.
92 The Tall Man Chloe Hooper 2008 True crime Hooper recounts the 2004 death of Cameron Doomadgee in a Palm Island police cell and the trial of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley.
93 The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead 1940 Literary fiction A domestic war between an egotistical, sentimental father and his exhausted wife plays out in a household of children in 1930s America.
94 The Spare Room Helen Garner 2008 Literary fiction Helen takes in her friend Nicola, who is in Melbourne for alternative cancer treatment, and friendship strains against denial, exhaustion and hope.
95 The Museum of Modern Love Heather Rose 2016 Literary fiction Inspired by Marina Abramović’s 2010 performance at MoMA, a composer, a critic and a stranger find their lives changed by silent hours spent at her table.
96 RecipeTin Eats: Dinner Nagi Maehashi 2020 Cookbook One hundred and fifty weeknight recipes from the blogger behind RecipeTin Eats, with big flavours, reliable method and few fiddly steps.
97 Devotion Hannah Kent 2021 Historical fiction In early 19th-century Prussia, Hanne and her Lutheran family flee religious persecution for South Australia. Her bond with her friend Thea deepens on the voyage.
98 The Arrival Shaun Tan 2006 Graphic novel A wordless graphic novel in which a man leaves his family to find work in a strange new land. A moving, surreal portrait of the migrant experience.
99 The 13-Storey Treehouse Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton 2011 Children’s fiction Andy and Terry live in a tree house with a bowling alley, shark tank and marshmallow machine. Chaos, silliness and a looming book deadline follow.
100 Round the Twist Paul Jennings 1990 Children’s fiction Anarchic, gross-out stories of the Twist family and the strange things that happen around their lighthouse home.

Sources:

Years are first publication dates. Genres and blurbs are my own, written with Claude’s help.

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