AustLit

'A jewel of a novel about an ageing potter who, out collecting rock for glazes, finds three kids living in a cave.

'He had closed the workshop door. Now it stood open. The woman was ahead of him, keen to get there, the constable was behind.'I'm sorry, I think they've gone.' 'I hope you're wrong, Mr Bass,' the woman said into the air. 'For their sake and yours.' Russell Bass is a master potter living and working near Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains. Eleven months ago his wife, Adele, died of a stroke. He is back again at the wheel. But his hold on the old deep habits is loosening, even on the habit of living itself. His signature glazes come from rock he collects from veins in a blind canyon below his house. In all the years he has been entering the canyon he has never seen a boot print other than his own. But on this autumn morning, two children are at the shallow pool he must pass to reach his rock, a girl of eight and a boy of five, playing boats with a saucepan and bucket. The children look underfed and wild. And this is no place to camp - sunless, remote. So what on earth are they doing here? And who sent them for water? He retreats with his questions unanswered. But he's back next morning with food in his pack. In prose of simple beauty which brings together clay, humour and deep insights into the need of humans for one another, Hare's Fur is a story of grief, kindness, art, and the bonds that can grow from the seeds of trust.'  (Publication summary)

'The thought was coming more often. That wherever he was, he was at the centre of a cage. He couldn't have said when the notion first entered his head. Some time in the last months. It was more now than a notion, he could see the damn bars. They were grey steel, the height of a man on horseback. In a dream he'd ridden out of a clump of boulders and caught them just before they retreated, how he knew what they looked like.

'It is 1865. For three years Ben Hall and the men riding with him have been lords of every road in mid-western New South Wales from Bathurst to Goulburn, Lambing Flat to Forbes. But with the Harbourers' Act made law, coach escorts armed now with the new Colt revolving rifle, and mailbags more often containing cheques than banknotes, being game is no longer enough. The road of negotiated surrender is closed. Jack Gilbert has shot dead a police sergeant at Jugiong. Constable Nelson, father of eight, lies buried at Collector, killed by John Dunn. Neither time did Ben pull the fatal trigger, but he too will hang if ever the three are taken. Harry Hall is seven. Ben has not seen the boy since his wife Biddy left to live with another man, taking Harry with her. The need to see his son, to be in some way a father again, has grown urgent. But how much time is left before the need to give the game away and disappear becomes the greater urgency?

'A spare, epic work of haunting beauty that breathes life back into legend and confirms Shearston as one of Australia's finest writers.' (Publisher's blurb)

'A romantic story of young love is not what it seems. Rachel meets Matt on his way home from school. Matt falls for her, but Rachel has other ideas. Rachel and her boyfriend Nick use Matt to exact a revenge on his parents. What follows is an escalating story of revenge and payback: amoral teenager versus family.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 7/8/2013)