AustLit

'Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish.

'When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island—no questions asked—he thinks that luck is running with him once more.

'But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within twenty-four hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'Lance Dillon is owner of a new cattle station on the southern fringe of Australia's Arnhem Land. When an Aboriginal hunting party targets Dillon's prize bull for a ritual killing, and then spears Dillon in the shoulder, it's clear they want him of their traditional land.

'Under the merciless rays of the burning sun, the wounded Dillon flees into the bush, with expert tracker Mundaru in hot pursuit.

'Dillon's city-born wife Mary and handsome local policeman Neil Adams set out to search for her husband. The gruelling journey throws them together, and it is not long before each is secretly hoping that Dillon is never found alive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'The flowers flared up from the ground unconquerable. The unrepentant gaiety of the weed, the burning blues and crimsons, set the hills glowing.

''It's a plant that's struck it lucky,' the Stray said thoughtfully. 'It hasn't got no right, but it's there.'

'The Battlers is the story of Snow, a drifter and wanderer, the waiflike Dancy the Stray, from the slums of Sydney, and the other outcasts who accompany them as they travel the country roads looking for work. Like the weed Patterson's Curse, they 'haven't got no right', but they are there. Based on her own experiences of life on the roads in the 1930s, Tennant tells the story of the motley crowd of travellers with compassion and humour. First published in 1941, The Battlers was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society and shared the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize. More than seventy years later, the book's message of survival against the odds is as relevant today as it was then. ' (Publication summary)