Pants on Fire by Maggie Alderson

I knew exactly what I was doing - I'd read A Town Like Alice, I knew what happened to English gels who went to Australia. The met marvellous men with strong forearms who tipped their hats, saved your life and then took you off to live in a house surrounded by verandahs, on a farm as big as Wales, I could hardly wait.

When London editor Georgia Abbott comes to Sydney to work on Glow, a glossy women's magazine, she has high hopes for a bright new start. Leaving behind a broken heart (her own) and a philandering ex-fiance, she's looking forward to immersing herself in the Tim Tim-eating sisterhood of women's mags. Not to mention being whisked off into the dusty Australian sunset by a suntanned, Akubra-hatted fantasy man.

At first, things seem promising, as Georgia is swept up in a whirl of A-list parties, dancing, dinners and debauchery. But while Australian water may go down the plughole the other way, Australian men are starting to look all too familiar. And then there's the chaotic bunch of women Georgia works with on Glow, to whom every relationship disaster is a potential article, not least of all Georgia's, whose quest for live is fast becoming headline material.

What to do when all the blokes you've found are either gay, married, unfaithful, unable or just plain unworthy? 

Maggie Alderson's debut novel takes a wicked look at the social minefield of being a single girl in a party town.