AustLit

'Once enthralled by the grand vistas of travel, Frederic returns, a man cored out by experience and flight as Europe is about to burst into the fire of World War II. He, a sharp and worldly non-believer, returns to his beloved Hungary, to Rudi Wolf, his soul friend and Lia Mendez, his only love. His two Jewish friends, now married, welcome him back as part of their life and the three friends face the incineration of all human values during the Nazi occupation. This is a story of sensibility and identity which asks what is meant by belonging to a nation, a religion, to just one person and to one another.' (Publication summary)

'This is a novel of friendship, love and corruption. Set in Brisbane during the disastrous 1974 flood, two very different men, the immunologist Mark and the charismatic 'Prince of Spice' Sannes, struggle for the affection of the feisty, fiercely independent lawyer Jessica. In a highly charged, profoundly disturbing relationship, betrayal of friendship and violation of love interact and collide with the ever-increasing moral deterioration of the 'Moonlight State'. Jurgensen's novel depicts evil as a seductively demonic power of rampant decomposition, generating from the realm of personal intimacy to the corruption of civilised society. Its narrative of power and passion takes the reader on a frightening journey, culminating in the apparition of a predatory God. Residing in the eyes of the tiger are the violent beauty and terrible knowledge of an irredeemable love.' (Publication summary)

'The fractured jigsaw that became my life began even before I answered the phone. Over the next hours, running into years, jagged pieces of me fell away, trailing me as if signposting my existence. And yet, somehow, without me even knowing, somebody or something gently slid the pieces back into place. Pieces I thought were lost forever. But the jigsaw will never really be complete, for when you died you passed your pain to me.'

'This is the compelling story of a mother’s journey after her son suicides, and of her battle to learn to breathe again as she confronts the range of emotions that are left in the wake of suicide.'
'Even if you have not witnessed a loved one’s anguish due to mental illness, and their struggle to fit the ‘norm’ of society, you will find this story a powerful testament to the invincibility of love.'

'Things go wrong in a big way for Candy Somerville when her father commits suicide. Feeling herself responsible, she is driven by guilt into a journey to Thailand on an insane mission. When she arrives in Bangkok in 1992 during the uprising against the military junta, a large amount of heroin is found in her baggage, leading to her imprisonment on a capital charge, in the infamous Klong Prem prison.

'Her father's old friend, a consul at the Australian Embassy, offers to get her legal help but she refuses to talk to him. Her brother and their uncle arrive from Sydney expecting to at least win her bail from prison, but she violently rejects their assistance.

'Sensing a story, the beautiful Bangkok correspondent for a Sydney television channel works on the brother for information. Meanwhile, the consul and her uncle manage to bribe a corrupt Army colonel to release Candy from prison. Much to her dismay, she is released.

'And then the colonel discovers he has been compromised by a news report about her release...

'In The Betrayers we read the story as told by six very different participants - Candy's brother, the consul, his mistress, the reporter, the uncle, and finally Candy herself.' (Publisher's blurb)

In Blue Moon, urban conservationist Badul Mukhapadai tries to save Penang, Malaysia, from developers and falls in love with the clean air of Byron Bay, Australia, where he consummates his passion for the prickly historian, Gillian Hindmarsh. (Publisher blurb)

'After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Niqi Thomas, a young Czech Australian woman, returns with her father to Prague, to visit her ancestral city and to discover her grandfather, who was always ‘present’ in the family, but whom she had never met – Karel Goliath-Gorovsky, the Czech Solzhenitsyn.'

'For Niqi, it became a journey of self-discovery, through discovery of her grandfather. A rebel from birth, Czech lawyer, Karel Goliath-Gorovsky, was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag north of the Arctic Circle, because of his relentless political idealism. His potent black humour enabled him to survive those seventeen darkest years of his political life, which spanned from the brutal excesses of Stalin to the liberating hope of Dubcek.'

'His son, abandoned by his father at the age of one, developed his own black humour to survive Mischling status under the Nazi occupation, the Stalinist regime in his homeland, Czechoslovakia, and flight to Australia – his new land of opportunity where some people crossed the street when they saw a ‘wog’ approaching.'

'This family narrative includes a subversive retake on the biblical Goliath, who appears several times through the book, connecting Goliath-Gorovsky with the biblical character, who paradoxically, was killed by his Hebrew ancestors.' (Source: Publisher's website)

What precisely is home for Fi? Where her mother lived in Northern New South Wales, among the tea-drinking relatives who, as Gillian reminds her, made Fi what she is today? Is home the girl of the moment who happens to make her heart miss a beat? Or is home merely one of the houses Fi has bought in Australia or leased in Bali? Fi is contrary, her head and her heart responding to different music. And as a child, Fi was sensitive to the ghostly spirits of the Bundjalung who inhabited the land the Hindmarshes and the Darks took over for dairy farms. How does she reconcile the mutterings and wailings and chantings she hears in her heart with the classic cinema sound booming in her head and the skin-smarting indignity of betrayal?

A novel combining a love story with a perspective on the farmers' settlement history of the Far North Coast of New South Wales, that grew with new grass on old rainforest soil. (Publisher blurb)

'Set in Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia, Snake is the first novel that Dewi Anggraeni has written about the Chinese descent communities in Southeast Asia. Their stories, woven into the tapestry of the mainstream Malay societies of Malaysia and Indonesia, have not only contributed to the respective society and national culture. They have also moulded the Southeast Asian overseas Chinese into a fascinating society in their own right. In common with Dewi's earlier novels, Snake presents us with an intangible, even mysterious, part of Southeast Asian life. While effective curses, and the power inanimate objects can have over people -- power for good or power for evil -- are generally considered in Australia to be fantasy, they are very much a part of life in Southeast Asia. In 'Snake', a brooch worn as a clasp for the traditional blouse, the kebaya, has power over its owner. Featuring Serena, a choreographer and lead dancer, this is the story of a family split by honour and pride, a family under the curse of a beautiful brooch. The brooch, named peniti ronce by its first owner, initially fascinates, and then destroys, its owner.'  (Publication summary)