Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Quota | 2014 | Jock Serong | Buy |
| 2 | The Rules of Backyard Cricket | 2016 | Jock Serong | Buy |
| 3 | On the Java Ridge | 2017 | Jock Serong | Buy |
| 4 | Preservation | 2018 | Jock Serong | Buy |
| 5 | The Burning Island | 2020 | Jock Serong | Buy |
| 6 | The Settlement | 2022 | Jock Serong | Buy |
| 7 | Cherrywood | 2024 | Jock Serong | Buy |
Jock Serong’s novels are united less by recurring characters than by recurring preoccupations: the coast, the law, and the ways that remote or isolated settings force people into impossible choices. Quota introduced him as a writer of contemporary crime, but Preservation and The Burning Island showed he was equally comfortable working in historical territory, reconstructing the dangers and moral compromises of early colonial Australia.
The books vary in tone and period but share a consistent attention to place. Serong’s Australia is never just backdrop; it shapes the action, sets the stakes, and often becomes the subject of the novel itself. Whether he’s writing about modern maritime refugees in On the Java Ridge or convict-era survivors in The Settlement, the landscape feels specific and hard-won.