Welcome
Roaring Stories is Balmain’s independent bookstore, serving the book-loving community of the neighbourhood and surrounds. More than just a place lined with shelves, Roaring Stories aspires to be a welcoming threshold for journeys to begin: to faraway places and back in time; to personal development and enriched understandings; to fantastical worlds and matters close to heart. You may remember us under our former name Brays Books.
If you need a guide across our wide range of genres and titles, just ask our friendly team of expert booksellers: Bronwyn, Tim, Sylvia, Nell, Stella and Shanti.
Happy reading, beautiful booklovers. We hope to see you soon.
New Release Highlights
The Performance
$32.99The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.
The house lights lower.
The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness.
As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.
Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.
As the performance unfolds, so does each woman’s story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.
‘Claire Thomas writes with a sure eye and knowing heart.’ Tony Birch
Who is Maud Dixon?
$32.99Celebrated, bestselling, elusive…who is Maud Dixon?
Florence Darrow wants to be a writer. Correction: Florence Darrow IS going to be a writer. Fired from her first job in publishing, she jumps at the chance to be assistant to the celebrated Maud Dixon, the anonymous bestselling novelist. The arrangement comes with conditions – high secrecy, living in an isolated house in the countryside . Before long, the two of them are on a research trip to Morocco, to inspire the much-promised second novel. Beach walks, red sunsets and long, whisky-filled evening discussions…win-win, surely? Until Florence wakes up in a hospital, having narrowly survived a car crash.
How did it happen – and where is Maud Dixon, who was in the car with her? Florence feels she may have been played, but wait, if Maud is no longer around, maybe Florence can make her mark as a writer after all…
Edge of The Grave
$32.99Glasgow, 1932. When the son-in-law of one of the city’s wealthiest shipbuilders is found floating in the River Clyde with his throat cut, it falls to Inspector Jimmy Dreghorn to lead the murder case – despite sharing a troubled history with the victim’s widow, Isla Lockhart.
From the flying fists and flashing blades of Glasgow’s gangland underworld, to the backstabbing upper echelons of government and big business, Dreghorn and his partner ‘Bonnie’ Archie McDaid will have to dig deep into Glasgow society to find out who wanted the man dead and why.
All the while, a sadistic murderer stalks the post-war city leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. As the case deepens, will Dreghorn find the killer – or lose his own life in the process?
Edge of the Grave by Robbie Morrison is a dark historical crime novel set in Glasgow, 1932. A city still recovering from the Great War; split by religious division and swarming with razor gangs. For fans of William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw, Denise Mina and Philip Kerr.
Driving Stevie Fracasso
$32.99Two estranged brothers, one stolen car and a road trip from Texas to New York. What could possibly go wrong? For fans of Nick Hornby, David Nicholls and Jonathan Tropper.
Jaded music journalist Rick McLennan knows his life is going south when he loses his job, his apartment and his long-term girlfriend all on the same day. But then he is thrown a lifeline – a commission to write the story of his ex-rock-star brother, Stevie, and drive him from Austin, Texas, to New York to play one final gig. One small problem: the brothers haven’t spoken in thirty years.
Rick knows it’s a bad idea. But he’s out of choices. So he gets behind the wheel of a beaten-up 1985 Nissan Stanza and drives towards his destiny. He’s about to find everything he didn’t know he was missing. It’s September 2001.
From award-winning journalist and author Barry Divola comes a glorious, music-infused, rollicking road-trip novel – think High Fidelity meets The Big Lebowski meets The Darjeeling Limited. A smart, funny and wholly endearing story about how, though we may at times lose ourselves along the way, the road always leads back to family and the things that bring us joy.
Sign Up
Stay in the loop with the Roaring Stories newsletter, packed with exclusive offers, new releases, events and more
