"I'm still looking for answers to the big questions, and realism...it doesn't seem to me to approach those big questions in the way that fantasy and science-fiction do."

Photo by Cat Sparks

Award-winning Australian Speculative Fiction Writer

Isobelle Carmody

Isobelle Carmody grew up the eldest of eight, entertaining her younger siblings with oral story-telling as a way of maintaining some semblance of order when left to baby sit. It’s safe to say Isobelle has had an extensive career in holding an audience’s attention and she has won an embarrassment of awards doing just that.

Isobelle is deeply curious about the external and internal world. This interest has spurred a quest for knowledge and justice through numerous endeavours alongside her writing, including illustration, activism and academia. She is now in possession of a PhD in Creative Arts and has over forty books to her name.

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Isobelle Carmody is Writing Books

Books by Isobelle Carmody

Isobelle's writing follows a philosophical vein, delving into her character's varied psyches. She has been inspired by writers like Ursula Le Guin, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and John Wyndman. Isobelle has also pursued creative partnerships with several talented artists who have helped to reify her words.

These books venture through many unfamiliar and dystopian lands however we are always anchored by familiar questions relating to the human condition and its challenges and so finding an audience across all ages. They wrestle through themes of fear, loss and betrayal, and slip easily into those of familial loyalty, bravery, compassion and romance.

Within their pages you may be born up by dreams, sink into mythology, follow interspecies friendships and bear witness to environmental destruction and its after effects.

The Legendsong Saga written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Obernewtyn Chronicles written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Legend of Little Fur written by Isobelle CarmodyKingdom of the Lost written by Isobelle CarmodyGreylands written by Isobelle CarmodyScatterlings written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Gathering written by Isobelle CarmodyGreen Monkey Dreams written by Isobelle CarmodyThis Way Out: Five Plays written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Gateway Trilogy written by Isobelle CarmodyAlyzon Whitestarr written by Isobelle CarmodyMetro Winds written by Isobelle CarmodyDreamwalker written by Isobelle CarmodyWildheart written by Isobelle CarmodyJourney From the Centre of the Earth written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Wrong Thing written by Isobelle CarmodyNight School written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Red Shoes written by Isobelle CarmodyThe Landlord written by Isobelle CarmodyTales from the Tower written by Isobelle CarmodyEvermore written by Isobelle Carmody

The Legendsong Saga

The Legendsong Saga encompasses the novels Darkfall and Darksong which centre on the adventures of Glynn and Ember Flanders in a parallel universe. Glynn and Ember Flanders, fraternal twin sisters, are holidaying in Greece when Glynn is seemingly swept out to sea and drowned. However Glynn finds herself transported to the world of Keltor and rescued from the sea by an Acanthan windwalker, Solen. Feigning amnesia, she gradually deciphers this new world where some aren't...

The Obernewtyn Chronicles

The Obernewtyn Chronicles is a series of science fiction and fantasy novels by Australian author Isobelle Carmody. The series has a post apocalyptic setting and depicts a world long after its destruction by a global nuclear holocaust. The series' protagonist, Elspeth Gordie, is a young girl with mental powers condemned by the series' main antagonists, the governing body, known as the council, and the religious authority, the Herder Faction. The novels deal with themes of...

The Legend of Little Fur

The Legend of Little Fur series blends fantasy, mythology, adventure and ecology. This beautifully bound hardcover with a soft felt finish features original ink illustrations by Isobelle Carmody. Little Fur is a half elf, half troll and though she looks more like a four-year-old child she is much older. She lives as an animal healer in her very own patch of wilderness in the nexus of a sprawling human city. Little Fur adores her quiet...

Kingdom of the Lost

Bily and Zluty are brothers, they have large upright ears and are covered in thick soft fur apart from their faces which have human-like features. They live contentedly in a cozy cottage in the middle of a desolate land, Bily tending to their dwellings and Zluty foraging for supplies. The brothers are unaware of their origin and have never truly questioned their mysterious background. All this changes when one day a destructive red wind drives...

Greylands

One wakeful night in the aftermath of his mother’s death, Jack enters a land devoid of colour or scent. Here he meets the tragic laughing beast and Alice, a strange girl with a secret. Will Jack escape before the terrifying wolvers find him? Or is he destined to be trapped in the Greylands forever? Only the cats know...

Scatterlings

Merlin wakes to a world that is utterly changed. She has no memory aside from a name whispered to her by one of the strange voices in her mind, and the knowledge that she is being hunted. She is determined to learn what happened to her and to her world but the way forward is full of pitfalls and she is swept up by the renegade Scatterlings and drawn into their rebellion against the all-...

The Gathering

When Nathanial and his mother move to the quiet, safe streets of Cheshunt, he immediately senses something wrong. Violent gangs patrol the streets, feral dogs roam at night, and the oppressive stench from the abattoir lingers over the school. As Nathaniel uncovers Cheshunt's dark past, events begin spiralling desperately out of control. He soon learns that his presence there is no accident. He and his new friends must confront phantoms from their past in the...

Green Monkey Dreams

I ride this day upon the worldroad, alone, except for Courage who rides on the pommel of my saddle fluffing his feathers. I did not dream of journeying thus as a child… This is the unforgettable world of Isobelle Carmody, presented in fourteen stories written over a period of thirteen years. Within these stories you will find paths travelled by seekers of the deepest truths never found on straight roads: here a princess might reject...

This Way Out: Five Plays

Written with Steve Taylor Isobelle Carmody, whose novels and short stories have been published to much acclaim, and Steve Taylor, playwright, producer and director of many successful stage works, have combined their talents to produce these five thought-provoking plays. Moving freely between reality and fantasy, three have been adapted from Carmody’s short story collection, Green Monkey Dreams, and two have been written by Carmody and Taylor especially for this collection.

The Gateway Trilogy

Rage Winnoway is an independent and introspective teenage girl who's closest friends are her four pet dogs and goat. She must travel through multiple portals to wild and dangerous places in order to save her mother from a deep coma that has arrested her life, and later to rescue the land of Valley from a cruel magically devised winter. Rage undertakes these hazardous missions with the help of her animal fellowship to whom these otherworldly...

Alyzon Whitestarr

A finger on my eye, lifting the lid. Light spearing into my brain, but the touch is worse. Despair leaks from the fingertips and burns into me. Alyzon Whitestarr is part of a caring if eccentric family that consists of her absent-minded and nocturnal mother, her sweet-natured musician father and her two sisters Mirandah and Serenity. They manage to coexist through their varied quirks, patterns and monetary struggles until Alyzon falls into a coma for...

Metro Winds

An engrossing collection of stories from one of Australia's most loved fantasy writers, and creator of the acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles. A girl is sent across the world to discover her destiny in the dark tunnels of the Metro. Another seeks a lost sister in a park where winter lasts forever. A young man fulfils a dying wish. A mother works magic to summon a true princess for her son. A man seeks an ending to...

Dreamwalker

Illustrated by Steven Woolman Ken’s ambition was to be a comic-book artist, one of a team that made the drawings come to life, that made the stories real. His greatest creation was the sorceress, whose deadly hungers visited sleepers and fed upon them. But one day he woke from a dream and found himself in the world of the sorceress, a world where one of his own characters, the beautiful Alyssa, claimed to have imagined...

Wildheart

Illustrated by Steven Woolman He has a way with animals, so that whatever beast he touches, he knows, and it will come to him. His mother fears what others may do if they learn of it. One day riders arrive with a hooded falcon, Wildheart, and he has a growing yearning to touch her – to know her…

Journey From the Centre of the Earth

Illustrated by Marc McBride What ever happened to the duck that was left swimming around on that dark, cold lake, deep under the ground, in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth? Be swallowed up by this fascinating ‘what if’ tale.

The Wrong Thing

Illustrated by Declan Lee There’s a wrong thing in the house while everybody’s sleeping. There’s a wrong thing flying around on wings of light. Hurricane, the cat, is the only one that sees it. Just what could it be? Flying here, flying there, this flittery, skittery thing! There’s no place for it here in this house. What could it want? Hurricane the cat is going to find out!

Night School

Illustrated by Anne Spudvilas A group of children spend the night in a big old school and go on a chilling journey of self-discovery when they decide to play a game. They must travel from room to room, picking up a lantern and writing down their names to ward off the dark. But the old school holds a secret that they must confront if they are to succeed in their journey.

The Red Shoes

Illustrated by Anne Spudvilas When Amerie was four, her mother vanished. Just before her eighth birthday, Amerie finds a mysterious gift hidden at the back of the bookshelf. The clues she finds in it send her on a search which leads her to the forbidden attic and a dangerous secret…

The Landlord

Illustrated by Ken Carmody When a mysterious entrepreneur, known simply as “the Landlord”, takes over a derelict theatre, Abel and his strange, brilliant friend, Egon, are fascinated by its transformation into an Ultimate Entertainment Centre. As Abel begins to notice that more sinister changes are happening around town as well, Egon sees nothing but the flickering glamour of the virtual reality game the Landlord has distributed to every home.

Tales from the Tower

Edited by Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab Twelve of the world's most exciting and best-loved writers have chosen fairytales as inspiration for this spellbinding and subversive short-story collection. 'The writers in The Wilful Eye imbue all of their characters, including the villains, with a deep sense of psychological realism, producing often tender, engaging, and insightful results. Unnamed soldiers and hideous beasts are given a voice, even if that voice is at times unsettling, and wolves are...

Evermore

Ruled by a tyrannical and all powerful despot, the Kingdom of Evermore survives and sometimes thrives in an otherwise devastated world of deserts and ruins inhabited by the plague-ridden descendants of those who chose not to sleep away the poisoned eons that followed the end of the old world. Growing up under the watchful eye of her stern but beloved nanny, Pilar, with the loving companionship of the bakers' son Quiet and the strange, enigmatic...

Christian Price for Reading Time in 2017

What sets Isobelle Carmody's books apart?

"Carmody’s writing is simple enough for young readers to follow on their own, but beautiful and poetic enough to paint a rich tapestry of colours, emotions and exciting adventures."

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