Kirsty Wilson, Sales & Marketing Director, recalls the childhood thrill of discovering books about kids from the bush.

I first encountered James Aldridge’s books in the Kangaroo Flat Library when I was a braces-wearing, freckled eleven-year-old in zinc cream and Ken Done shorts.

Positioned awkwardly between a vast shopping-centre carpark and the noisy Calder Highway to Melbourne, the small library was nonetheless a cultural beacon to little country nerds like me. It was certainly one of my favourite places to escape to, along with the front seat of my family's yellow Mitsubishi van, where I could hide right outside our house and read in peace all weekend.

A great selection of titles—all more than four hundred pages long—guaranteed to absorb and entertain with your choice of crime, horror, romance, drama and more.

From Andrew Davidson’s epic romance The Gargoyle (468 pages) to Nicolai Lilin’s criminal childhood in Siberian Education (447 pages), from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s creepy and suspenseful Harbour (500 pages) to Henry Handel Richardson’s Australian classic The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (a whopping 940 pages!), the long weekend is the perfect time to get engrossed in a great big book.

We’re not suggesting you should judge your books by weight, but there is nothing quite like the heft of a new book to send a thrill up the spine. And you can assure your weary credit card that all these books are under $20, with free postage. Now that’s a great holiday! (But, be warned, you might need to take a sickie to finish Richard Mahony.)

Submissions now open for the 2015 Text Prize   

Awarded annually to the best manuscript written for young adults and children, the Text Prize has unearthed extraordinary, multi-award-winning novels and launched international publishing careers.  

The winner receives $10,000 and a publishing contract with Text Publishing.