Books like Walking Shadows — picked by fans

Australian author Kirsty Eagar’s love of surfing and the ocean comes through in every book she writes.

Here, she combines quintessential Aussie surf culture with vampires. Not sexy, heart-throb vamps, but soulless killers with an unquenchable thirst and increasingly disturbing plans for themselves and humanity. This novel is equal parts edgy contemporary Aussie coming-of-age story and skin-crawling horror. It’s no mean feat, and Kirsty hits it tone-perfect.

As always, there are well-written, believable characters (teen protagonists, unhinged vamps, and dodgy adults), plus a tense plot that builds to a frenetic pace with high stakes. Kirsty gives us classic mythology, refreshed and transplanted into a sun-drenched beach setting, underpinned by a reimagining of the brutal real-life story of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629.

I first read this over a decade ago and I loved it even more the second time around.

This is one of my all-time favourite novels. It’s a deeply moving coming-of-age story, set in a future Australia ruled by vampires known as The Masters.

It’s the story of Mark, and the monster who teaches him to be a man. Mark’s voice is perfect and the world building is totally original. The plot, with its dark undertones, moves at a measured pace towards a series of life-changing, violent moments.

I love how Australian this book is, and the fact Trent never once uses the 'v' word.

Day Boy is gentle and wild. It offers a rare and surprisingly moving study of manhood and masculinity, and the relationships between boys and father figures. The writing is sublime. This is a novel to be savoured.

This witty young adult novel cleverly up-ends the traditional vampire mythology.

These Australian urban vamps are sickly, socially isolated, and barely able to defend themselves. Fifteen-year-old Nina has been a vampire since 1973. She’s part of a group of vamps who meet once a week for therapy sessions to help them refrain from attacking humans.

When one of their members is murdered, they decide to track their enemy, assuming that once the slayer sees how pathetic and harmless they are they’ll be left alone. Ill-equipped for danger, Nina and her fellow vamps stumble into a world of guns, thugs, werewolves, and vicious humans.

This is a fun read, packed with plenty of suspense, a clever plot, and a nice sprinkle of understated romance.

This is a great read. It’s fast-paced, has interesting characters, and plenty of action and intrigue.

It features an Australian teen (Sadie) who finds herself caught in the middle of an ancient conflict nearing its final battle. I enjoyed the Perth setting, the dynamic between Sadie and the people she cares about, and the brilliant way Myke brings a fresh twist to some creepy ancient mariner myths.

There's a great sense of menace and mystery as this story unfolds, and the last third book is hard to put down as Sadie races to save her city—and the world.

This really is quite an extraordinary book, published on 1 January 1999. Alice Thomson is a British journalist who came to Australia to write a history of the overland telegraph line connecting Darwin to Adelaide. The line was built by her great-grandfather Charles Todd, a young English engineer. It is partly a touching love story, part a great historical narrative, and part a fascinating travel book. To do her research, Alice Thomson and her husband came to Australia and drove the length of the old telegraph line, picking up anecdotes and atmosphere along the way. As an aside, I mention that a seamless line of women in Alice Thomson’s family have borne the name Alice. Alice Springs was named after Charles Todd’s young wife Alice. The dry river that runs through Alice Springs is called the Todd River.

High, Wide, and Handsome is a non-fiction, pictorial history of Australian Showjumping from 1900-1950. These black and white photos depict the very different riding styles of showjumpers during these earlier years. Riding in long stirrups and even side-saddle, these fearless riders tackled enormous jumps on their courageous horses, up to nearly eight feet in height. Other photos show them jumping three or four abreast, the Section Fours, the riders sometimes going so far as to colour-co-ordinate their horses.

A blast from the past. I feel this book never got the attention it truly deserved. From a sassy, headstrong lead, to a fashionable neighbour akin to Moira Rose, this immersive story is about friendship, determination, and a mystery here and there. I adored this character who was ahead of her time and always wished we had a little more Hazel Green in our lives! 

This amazing book is about Oblivia a girl who survives gang rape living in a swamp with thousands of black swans who is promised to Warren Finch the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia an indigenous man.

In her journey we meet many out there characters told in mythic style in a future Australia devastated by climate change. This book is a potent mix of speculative fiction and magic realism featuring indigenous communities and characters. I admire it for the breadth of its vision and the intimacy of Oblivia and of course the swans.

Back in the early ‘90s in Melbourne, I talked my way into a temporary job typesetting Explore Australia, a mammoth full-colour guidebook. I ended up staying several years, undertaking desk-based research, managing the photo library, and editing text and maps. I spent my days poring over cartographic proofs, sifting through glorious photos of rust-red mountain ranges, cobalt-blue skies, and dense tropical rainforest abutting white-sand beaches. I spoke to those manning the tourist information offices around the country: at Coral Bay, where the Ningaloo Reef is just a metre from the beach, at Healesville, when the cackle of a kookaburra interrupted my call, and at Cossack, a gold-rush-era ghost town with a population of one man and one dog. Some years later I sold my home, bought a 4x4, and set off to see all those places that I had visited vicariously…

When I was a little girl, I remember being given this book, and I loved it. I read it from cover to cover, again and again, which fired my fascination for Australia. Seriously, who wouldn’t be enthralled by a bad-tempered pudding with impossibly skinny arms and legs, called Albert?

Perhaps The Magic Pudding had a large part in my choice to leave Europe and put down roots in the fabulous country of Australia. The book was first published in 1918 but that just proves how well it has stood the test of time.