Thornell's debut novel,
Night Street, a fictionalization of the life of the Australian landscape painter
Clarice Beckett, co-won the 2009
Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the
University of Rochester's Andrew Eiseman Award.
Night Street was proposed for study by the
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) from 2014 to 2016. In 2012, Thornell was named one of
The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists. Her second novel,
On the Blue Train, published by
Allen & Unwin in 2016 and inspired by the "disappearance" of
Agatha Christie, was described by Kate Evans of
ABC Radio National as "an elegant, literary novel about Teresa Neele, the woman Christie claimed to be when she disappeared, and the imagined people she met in this not-quite-sanctuary". In 2017, Thornell was awarded an
Australia Council for the Arts International Residency in
Rome. Her third novel,
The Sirens Sing, was published by
Fourth Estate Australia in 2022. == Published works ==