Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised family moves from New York City to the wide skies of Auckland, to the very end of her life, this is her great gift and possible misfortune. Through the wilderness of a commune, to falling in love, to early marriage and motherhood, from the glorious anguish of parenting to the loss of everything worked for and the unexpected return of love, Dorothy is swept along by time. Her family looms and recedes; revelations come to light; death changes everything, but somehow life remains as potent as it ever was, and the joy in just being won't let her go.

In a narrative that shifts and moves, growing as wild as the characters, The Forrests is an extraordinary literary achievement. A novel that sings with colour and memory, it speaks of family and time, dysfunction, ageing and loneliness, about heat, youth, and how life can change if 'you're lucky enough to be around for it'.

In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby. Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the dead man and the infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom's judgment, they claim the child as their own and name her Lucy, but a rift begins to grow between them. When Lucy is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world…and one of them is desperate to find her lost baby.

Jakarta, 1997, and the city is on the verge of a revolution. Even the Jordan children—Petra, Isaak and Paul—can feel it coming, shaking the edges of their privileged, protected expat world. Years later, Diana, an Australian development worker, moves to Jakarta and becomes entwined in the powerful Jordans' adult lives. As the monsoon descends, and the Jordans begin to fall apart, Diana sinks into the half-light of their past, where rumour and religion define the contours of the real, and the rules of the game change according to who is playing.

Set in a global city of poverty, beauty, corruption and extreme wealth, Running Dogs is a novel about power and responsibility; about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive, and the damage they can do.

Sometimes in the morning it is difficult to think about what you have done the night before. It is difficult to reconcile those actions with who you are during the day. Looking back to a family holiday at Candelo, Ursula remembers a summer spent in a desolate town in southern Australia. She recalls the power of the place and the lingering heat, mingled with the impetuousness of youth. Choices were made without thought of consequences. Young lives came together and were touched forever by that summer. The years drift by, until the shattering events of the past catch up with Ursula when she learns of the death of a young man. Revelations collide with her memories of Candelo as some breathtaking secrets unwillingly emerge. And Ursula must confront truths about herself, and her family, before she can truly exist in the present.

Lyrical and exquisite, My Hundred Lovers captures the sheer wonder of life, desire and love. A woman, on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, reflects on her days with one hundred scenes from a life adding up to a simple human truth. Character and sexual identity entwine and after all the emotion, the love, the hatred and the despair is done with, the great and trivial acts of her bodily life reveal an imperfect, yet whole self. By turns humorous, sharp, haunting and wise, this original and exhilarating novel confirms Johnson's status as one of Australia's finest novelists.