Michelle de Kretser Books in Order

In revolutionary France, Sophie tends roses and dreams of creating an extraordinary new bloom. The arrival of an American balloonist disrupts her family’s quiet life, while political violence and unrequited love threaten the fragile hopes she has carefully nurtured.

A lawyer in colonial Ceylon secures fame by solving the murder of a tea planter. His faith in British justice and his personal ambitions come under pressure as the consequences unfold, revealing fractures within his family and the society around him.

Professor Tom Loxley searches the Australian bush for his missing dog with help from an enigmatic artist. As attraction grows, questions about her vanished husband mingle with his worries about an aging mother and the unsettled course of his own life.

Laura travels widely before returning to Sydney to work on travel guides, while violence drives Ravi from Sri Lanka. Their contrasting experiences explore the difference between choosing to leave home and being forced away, alongside the hopes that sustain new lives.

After beginning an affair with Charlie, Frances moves with him from Melbourne to Sydney. Their unfamiliar surroundings and uncertain relationship acquire an unsettling quality as a mysterious presence disturbs her daily walks and complicates her sense of a new beginning.

Across Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, interconnected lives reveal the distance between how people see themselves and how others experience them. Ambition, romantic longing and suppressed memories shape friendships and expose the loneliness beneath apparently ordinary social encounters.

In 1980s France, Lili hopes to become an independent woman while observing racism around her. In a threatening future Australia, migrant Lyle pursues security through conformity, with their contrasting stories exploring displacement, prejudice and the pressures of belonging.

In 1986 Melbourne, a young woman studying Virginia Woolf enters an affair with a man already in another relationship. An unsettling discovery about her literary idol collides with jealousy and desire, exposing gaps between radical ideas and lived experience.