AustLit

'Writer and GP Kath O’Connor died from ovarian cancer while working on the final draft of her novel, Inheritance. Fellow writer and friend Inga Simpson helped complete the manuscript'

'From the critically acclaimed author of Mr Wigg comes an enthralling literary novel about a batmaker and a gifted young cricketer, set around the time the game began changing. For fans of Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

'Cricket has a willow heart. Batmakers around the world have tried everything, crafting bats from birch, maple, ash, even poplars . . . After two hundred years, cricket bat making is still beholden to a single species: salix alba caerulea - or white willow

'Reader Cricket Bats, one of the last traditional batmakers back in the old country, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive in a small workshop. Allan lives alone, all but estranged from his adult daughter, quietly going about his days with the cricket commentary for company.

'When Todd Harrow, a gifted young batter, catches Allan's eye, a spark is lit and Allan decides to make a Reader bat for him, selecting the best piece of willow he's harvested in years to do so.

'As Harrow charts a meteoric rise to the highest echelons of the sport, leaving his equally talented sister's dreams in his wake, Allan's magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in Allan and bringing him back into himself. But can Allan's fledgling renaissance - hanging as it does on the magic of that bat - carry on after Harrow is cursed by injury and a strained personal life?

'Set as the new short form of the game began to gain prominence, Willowman is a love letter to the art and beauty of cricket and a meditation on the inner lives of certain kinds of men and women, for whom it is a way of life. Award-winning author Inga Simpson writes exquisitely about a national sport you will never view the same way again.' (Publication summary)

'AFTER THE FIRES. AFTER THE VIRUS. THEY CAME. A remarkable literary novel from the multi-award-nominated Australian writer

'It's night, and the walls of Rachel's home creak as they settle into the cover of darkness. Fear has led her to a reclusive life on the land, her only occasional contact with her sister.

'A hammering on the door. There stand a mother, Hannah, and her sick baby. They are running for their lives from a mysterious death sweeping the Australian countryside.

'Now Rachel must face her worst fears: should she take up the fight to help these strangers survive in a society she has rejected for so long' (Production summary) 

'Trees tell stories about places. Australia has some of the tallest, oldest, fattest and most unusual trees in the world. They have changed over thousands of years, adapting to this continent's deserts, mountains, and coasts. Many have found clever ways of dealing with drought and fire.

'Their leaves, flowers and seeds are food for birds, insects and mammals. Old trees have lots of hollows, which make good homes for possums, sugar gliders, birds and bees. But trees aren't just important for other animals, we need them too. What trees breathe out, we breathe in. They are a vital part of the Earth's ecosystems.

'When you first stand in a forest, the trees all seem the same. But if you look more closely, they are each a little different, like people. This book is a love song to Australian trees, from the red ironbark to the grey gum, the Moreton Bay fig to the Queensland bottle tree.

'The first book for children from one of Australia's most beloved authors.' (Publication summary)

'Nature writing has never been more popular. In recent years it has become an international publishing phenomenon, with titles such as Helen Macdonald's 'H is for Hawk' (Jonathan Cape, 2014), Robert Macfarlane's 'Landmarks' (Hamish Hamilton, 2015), Amy Liptrot's 'The Outrun' (Canongate, 2016) and Sy Montgomery's 'How to be a Good Creature' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) scoring significant worldwide success. Australia, too, has its own rich history of nature writing. For more than a century, nature writing was 'the' primary literature for writing the country; a vital part of the ongoing process, for settler-Australians, of coming to feel at home in what were initially unfamiliar environments, and of creating a sense of national identity around them. Yet, today, nature writing is not widely known or understood here, and it's apparent that more Australians have read 'H is for Hawk' (18,000 copies sold so far according to Bookscan) than any of our own contemporary works.' (Publication abstract)

'Each chapter of this absorbing memoir explores a particular species of tree, layering description, anecdote, and natural history to tell the story of a scrap of forest in the Sunshine Coast hinterland - how the author came to be there and the ways it has shaped her life.

'In many ways, it's the story of a tree-change, of escaping suburban Brisbane for a cottage on ten acres in search of a quiet life. Of establishing a writers' retreat shortly before the Global Financial Crisis hit, and losing just about everything when it did.

'It is also the story of what the author found there: the literature of nature and her own path as a writer. Understory is about connection to place as a white settler descendant, and the search for a language appropriate to describe that experience. '

''All in?' Kieran pulled me up, and the others followed. We gathered around the bigger tree. No one asked Matty - he just reached up and put his right hand on the trunk with ours.

'Kieran cleared his throat. 'We swear, on these trees, to always be friends. To protect each other - and this place.'

'Finding those carved trees forged a bond between Jay and her four childhood friends and opened their eyes to a wider world. But their attempt to protect the grove ends in disaster, and that one day on the river changes their lives forever.

'Seventeen years later, Jay finally has her chance to make amends. But at what cost? Not every wrong can be put right, but sometimes looking the other way is no longer an option.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A gripping and thought-provoking novel about finding the lost child in all of us.

'Once an artist and teacher, Jen now spends her time watching the birds around her house and tending her lush sub-tropical garden near the small hinterland town where she grew up. The only person she sees regularly is Henry, who comes after school for drawing lessons.

'When a girl in Henry's class goes missing, Jen is pulled back into the depths of her own past. She lost her father and her best friend Michael when she was Henry's age. They also went missing - in the same week. The whole town talked about it then, and now, nearly forty years later, they're talking about it again.

'Everyone is waiting - for the girl to be found and the summer rain to arrive. At last, when the answers do come, like the wet, it is in a drenching, revitalising downpour.' (Publication summary)