Delia Falconer's second novel is one of those quiet Australian books that seems to have slipped between categories.

Part historical fiction, part meditation on memory, landscape and inheritance, it moves between nineteenth-century America and contemporary Australia, following the traces left by soldiers, settlers and dreamers long after their stories should have disappeared.

At its centre is a fascination with how history survives. Falconer's prose is luminous and patient, attentive to physical detail without ever becoming static. The novel drifts through battlefields, domestic interiors and vast landscapes with the confidence of a writer more interested in atmosphere and memory than conventional plot mechanics.

Readers of Helen Garner, Shirley Hazzard, Gerald Murnane or W.G. Sebald will find familiar pleasures here. The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers is a novel about the persistence of the past, the stories we inherit without choosing, and the strange ways history continues to move through the body long after it has vanished from public memory.

First edition hardback published by Picador in 2005. Very good condition with original dust jacket. Clean, tight and well-preserved throughout.