AustLit

'Absent Without Leave follows three wide-eyed twenty-one-year olds from their enlistment at the Sydney showground in 1940 to disembarking in the Middle East before being plunged into jungle warfare in the Asia Pacific. Private Stanley Livingston and his two best mates, Roy Lonsdale and Gordon Oxman, would by the end of the war be brothers-in-law as well as brothers in arms as Stanley would marry Roy's sister Evelyn, while Gordon would marry Lily Livingston, Stanley's younger sister.

'Over the course of the war, these three young men would be court-martialled four times for abandoning their training units. They were not cowards, running from responsibility, rather they were deeply committed family men who ran to the service of their families. This was a more common occurrence than has ever really been reported before. Stanley's mother died just prior to the outbreak of WW2, and while in the midst of battle in the Middle East, Stanley received word of the sudden death of his father. Once back in Sydney, Pte Stanley Livingston skipped training camp to be with his younger sister Lily, who was deeply traumatised by the loss and had suffered a mental breakdown.

'After almost six months AWL, Stanley surrendered just in time to embark with his battalion to Milne Bay in New Guinea, where he was court-martialled in the field and pleaded guilty to all charges. He was fined twenty pounds before being plunged into the harrowing combat - with no jungle warfare training whatsoever. Illuminating, deeply moving and told with no shortage of humour, Absent Without Leave is part biography, part family memoir, and part of Australian history that is largely forgotten, because no one ever really talked about it. Until now.' (Publisher's blurb)

In this sequel to Happy Feet, Erik, son of the tap-dancing Mumble and his mate Gloria, struggles to find his own place in the penguin colony, just as his father did. In Erik's case, though, the situation is complicated when he meets a penguin who is able to fly ...

'As Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson settle in for a quiet night at Baker Street they're interrupted by a woman at the door. She does not ring the bell or enter the house. She simply oscillates on the pavement, slips a note under the door of Baker Street and walks away. So begins perhaps the most puzzling case Holmes and Watson have had to deal with: A Case of Stolen Identity.'

Source: ABC Radio National's Airplay website: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/
Sighted: 23/11/2009

'Act One: Sydney suburbia 1969, The Barkers Nest Public School Reunion.

'Timothy, Douglas, May, June and Marisa are attending the 10 year school reunion for the class of '59. It's a small gathering so nametags probably won't be necessary. It's the loved-up sixties -- bellbottoms, patchouli oil, pot and war.

'Act Two: Sydney suburbia 1999, The Barkers Nest Public School/Greenington College Reunion.

'Timothy, Douglas, May, June and Marisa are attending the 40 year school reunion for the class of '59. And as usual it's very small turnout. It's the uninspiring nineties -- hostile takeovers, holidays on the central coast, Kylie Minogue and war.'

Source: ABC Radio National's Airplay website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/
Sighted: 10/11/2008

''The Man Underground' is set in the remote opal town of Ginger Whisker. The town's named after the flaw found in much of the opal mined in the region - a thread of ginger whisker. Simon Crown runs the town's only radio station. Divorced, broke, and quite possibly an alcoholic, he soon discovers that it's not only the opal that's flawed in Ginger Whisker.

'When the local bank manager, Bill Mellish, sidles up to Crown at the bar he thinks nothing of it. It's a small town and the only sane place to be in the unrelenting desert heat is in one of the four hotels. But as Bill begins to question Simon about his finances and the monies owning on the radio station Ginger Whisker suddenly becomes a very sinister place.'

'All human characters are of redundancy age, 50-plus. Meet: Keith: about 65 - control freak; Chloe: late 50s - agoraphobic; Sylvia: late 50s - claustrophobic with multiple personalities. and twin sister of Chloe; Albert: 50s - psychotic with reverse Tourette's syndrome and Henry: 50s - sane.

They're all going down.'

Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/
Sighted: 05/02/2007