AustLit

'When Hirsch heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate the gunfire he finds himself cut off without back-up. A pair of thrill killers has been targeting isolated farmhouses on lonely backroads, but Hirsch’s first thought is that ‘back-up’ is nearby—and about to put a bullet in him.

'That’s because Hirsch is a whistleblower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now demoted and exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. Called a dog by his brother officers. Threats; pistol cartridge in the mailbox.

'But the shots on Bitter Wash Road don’t tally with Hirsch’s assumptions. The truth turns out to be a lot more mundane. And the events that unfold subsequently, a hell of a lot more sinister.' (Publisher's blurb)

'CONSTABLE Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-man police station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He’s still new in town but the community work—welfare checks and working bees—is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a ute and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch’s life has been peaceful.

'Until he’s called to a strange, vicious incident in Kitchener Street. And Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living on a forgotten back road outside town.

'Suddenly, it doesn’t look like a season of goodwill at all.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Australian soldier Toohey returns from Baghdad in 2003 with shrapnel in his neck, crippled by PTSD and white-knuckling life. In the Iraq of a decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father’s dementia and the family silences that may never find voice, tests boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey’s tyranny and heal its wounds.

'These characters' worlds intertwine across time and place, in a brilliant story of fear and sacrifice, trauma and survival, and what people will do to outrun the shadows. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and cultural reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation bestows upon the next, and the potential for transformation.

'This is a searing, powerful and utterly original work by an exceptional Australian writer. It will leave you changed.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Occasional Magic is a selection of 50 of the finest Moth stories from storytellers who found the courage to face their deepest fears. The stories feature voices familiar and new. Alongside Neil Gaiman, Rosanne Cash, Cristina Lamb and three Australians, there are stories from around the world describing moments of strength, passion, courage and humour—and when a little magic happened. In finest Moth tradition, Occasional Magic encourages us all to be more open, vulnerable and alive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'He hated the word ‘retirement’, but not as much as he hated the word ‘village’, as if ageing made you a peasant or a fool. Herein lives the village idiot.

'Professor Frederick Lothian, retired engineer, world expert on concrete and connoisseur of modernist design, has quarantined himself from life by moving to a retirement village. His wife, Martha, is dead and his two adult children are lost to him in their own ways. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life – objects he has collected over many years and tells himself he is keeping for his daughter – he is determined to be miserable, but is tired of his existence and of the life he has chosen.

'When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his neighbour, Jan, together, he begins to realise the damage done by the accumulation of a lifetime’s secrets and lies, and to comprehend his own shortcomings. Finally, Frederick Lothian has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves.

'Humorous, poignant and galvanising by turns, Extinctions is a novel about all kinds of extinction – natural, racial, national and personal – and what we can do to prevent them.' (Publication summary)

'Belfast 1988: a man has been shot in the back with an arrow. It ain't Injuns and it isn't Robin Hood. But uncovering exactly who has done it will take Detective Inspector Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on the high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave. Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs and with his relationship on the rocks, Duffy will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece.' (Publication summary)

'Summer at Mount Hope is Pride and Prejudice in the Victorian wheat belt of the 1890s. A black comedy about a young woman’s attempt to resist the worlds of men and money, Phoeba Crupp is a young woman who lives with her parents and sister on a small farm near Geelong. Her father is an eccentric ex-accountant who moved his family from the city in order to establish a vineyard, a decision her mother bitterly — and frequently — resents. While her sister makes a play for the local squatter’s son, Phoeba is content with the companionship of her best friend Henrietta, until circumstances push her towards the world of men and money. Summer at Mount Hope has a lot of the black comedy of Ham’s first novel, The Dressmaker, but also contains a more serious strand about the efforts of a spirited woman striving to be free, in a society where this was almost impossible.' (Publication summary)

'It is 1906 and Will Prior is in self-imposed exile on a remote South Pacific island, working a small, and failing, plantation. He should never have told anyone about his previous existence as a military foot policeman in the Boer War, but a man needs friends, even if they are as stuffy and, well, German, as Hauptmann Kessler, the local government representative.

'So it is that Kessler approaches Will one hot afternoon, with a request for his help with a problem on a neighbouring island, inhabited by a reclusive, cultish group of European 'cocovores', who believe that sun worship and eating only coconuts will bring them eternal life. Unfortunately, one of their number has died in suspicious circumstances, and Kessler has been tasked with uncovering the real reason for his demise. So along with a 'lady traveller', Bessie Pullen- Burry, who is foisted on them by the archipelago's eccentric owner, they travel to the island of Kabakon, to find out what is really going on.' (Publication summary)

'What does it take to become a hero?

'Albert has escaped from the Adelaide Zoo to go in search of the "old Australia", somewhere in the desert, north of Adelaide, a "Promised Land" that he's heard so much about from other animals. Unusually, Albert is a duck-billed platypus.

'Four days north of Alice Springs and carrying nothing other than an old, almost empty soft-drink bottle, Albert has no idea where he's going. One thing he does know, though, if he doesn't find water fast, he's going to be in all sorts of trouble. But when all seems lost, he comes across a wombat by a campfire who offers him a cup of tea.

'And so begins Albert's adventures, during which he meets two drunk, wise-cracking bandicoots (Roger and Alvin), a wrestling Tasmanian Devil (called Muldoon), escapes from a burning hotel (set alight by his good friend the pyromaniac wombat Jack) after a very lucky streak at two-up, and runs for his life from the dingoes.

'Charming, funny and entrancing, Albert of Adelaide is a novel of mateship, adventure and honour.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Cuban cop Hernandez has a score to settle, on behalf of a deadbeat dad, a "traitor" who skipped free from Castro's control to set up a new life working illegally in Colorado. He settled in a ski resort popular with the Hollywood set, where the facade is maintained by the immigrant cleaners and labourers who work for below minimum wage while the local sheriff is bribed to turn a blind eye. Hernandez Sr's dreams of fortune and freedom came to a swift end when he was killed in a hit-and-run accident.

Sworn to avenge his death, Hernandez has some obstacles to overcome - not least getting out of Cuba, where visas are as elusive as constant electricity.

Seguing back and forth between heat-soaked Havana and the icy luxury of the mountainside resort, Fifty Grand is an audacious thriller from an acknowledged talent - and an incendiary debut for a new hero.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Aggie Grey is a jaded sexual health counsellor who finds herself having to defend her business against the attacks of a radical new fundamentalist sect. Pastor Luke Butler is young, idealistic and out to capture the hearts and minds of Sydney's disaffected youth; his first order of business is to shut down Aggie Grey's clinic.

'Caught in the crossfire is 16-year-old Honey - pregnant, battered and ready to cling to whatever hope is offered. As Aggie and Luke fight over the fate of Honey's unborn child, they discover a deep and surprising connection. But as the war between the secular and religious intensifies, Aggie, Luke and Honey find themselves in moral and physical danger.

'Against a backdrop of religious terrorism and social decay, The Gospel According to Luke is a contemporary love story about belief, family, grief and hope.'

Source: Author's website, http://emilymaguire.typepad.com/the_gospel_according_to_l/
Sighted: 10/08/2006