AustLit

'A novel spilling with mystery and magic by “a gifted storyteller” (Sydney Morning Herald).
'This is the second book in a compelling trilogy about a young man, Xavier, and his companion, Eve. Both are afflicted with a strange ability which physicists are scrambling to explain.

'The pair have moved into the rambling house inherited by Xavier. Here, they are joined by Rose and Luke O’Neill, a palaeontologist. A plane crash leads to an important fossil discovery – and its theft. Rose and Luke travel to China in search of it, while Xavier and Eve go to the mountains of Vietnam to find his Hmong mother.

'There is looming danger, shamanism, betrayal, and from the start, many mysteries to be solved.

'Set in 2001 and including 9/11, The Flying is about being different and fitting in, discovering love, and finding inspiration in small things. A brilliant novel for anyone who still dares to dream.'  (Publication summary)

'A compelling novel rich in beauty and magic by "a gifted storyteller" (Sydney Morning Herald). Xavier is an outsider, with ideas that just don't add up in a post-modern world. It is not easy trying to become an artist. Especially with a tribal Hmong mother and an Australian father, both of whom are believed dead - and a grandfather who was a Hmong shaman. Unexpectedly, modern medicine saves Xavier from a fatal head injury with consequences that no-one is prepared to believe. For answers, Xavier must travel to the other side of the world: "there are others". Who is Eve, is she really afflicted with the same strange ability? But she is much more than Xavier ever dreamed of. Somehow, they seem to have escaped the limitations of Western Rationalism, even if science is working on an explanation. Set one year before 9/11, The Floating is about being different and fitting in, discovering love, and finding inspiration in small things. A brilliant novel for anyone who still dares to dream.' (Publication summary)

'Renowned abstract artist, the curmudgeonly octogenarian Giles Paumen, is the head of a family of artists, each of whom he considers less talented than himself. His son Laurence is a conceptual artist and lecturer – code for the fact that, unlike his father, he cannot draw at all. However, granddaughter Sophie has inherited the genes and is making a name for herself as a painter of massive portraits, not that Giles would ever dream of expressing a positive word about her work.

'When a new national art prize is announced, each of the Paumen’s secretly enters, the prize galvanizing them to embark in new directions. Giles will complete a landscape honouring his recently deceased wife. Laurence heads to Uluru intent on capturing the true spirit of Australia in this most iconic of outback locations. And Sophie decides to portray the malevolence lurking beneath the benign exterior of that most awful of men, the chauvinist.

'What none of them predicts is that they will become embroiled in an art fraud which threatens to undermine their reputations and devastate their careers. Here, the truth of their narcissistic and insecure personalities is revealed. So too, the underbelly of the art world is exposed in all its ugly, and hilarious, glory.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An exposé of contemporary life seen from the perspective of an eleven-year-old boy. Shaun, a country boy, is orphaned after a bushfire and must now live in the city where he meets many lonely, mixed-up residents. Can his world of benign nature and theirs of dispirited culture, be reconciled? It is a story of polarities: the country and the city; nature and culture; the material and the digital; the spirit and the flesh; lost faith and renewed hope.' (Publication summary)

'In 2004 the author found a little diary of 386 pages written by a 62-year-old man in a nursing home. This story is inspired by that diary.

'E=mc2? Jack Smythe thinks Einstein is wrong and he has a theory to prove it. But he's no physicist. Instead, he's been a homeless kid, a palmreader, a cosmic theorist, a father of two (who probably aren't his) and a devoted companion to his sister Kitty who has her own demons. But now at 62, he wakes after an operation to find he's been placed at Eden, a below-average nursing home.

'Here he is confronted by Nurse Stinson, Collier the Hun, Pistol Pete, Skeleton Joe, Dooley the publican, Jim the ex-politician and Jim's rebel granddaughter, among others. He wants nothing to do with any of them.' (From the publisher's website.)