AustLit

'A sophisticated literary thriller in the vein of Le Carré and William Boyd involving the disappearance of a nuclear scientist in Oxford.

'When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn't expect to find them both in danger. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent in Rio is over.

'Yet the rainy streets of this English city turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in the favelas. Leandro's schoolmates are the children of influential people, among them an international banker, a Russian oligarch, an American CIA operative and a British spook. As they congregate round the sports field for the weekly football matches, the network of alliances and covert interests soon becomes clear to Dyer. But it is a chance conversation with an Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, father of a friend of Leandro, that sets him onto a truly precarious path.

'When Marvar and his son disappear, several sinister factions seem acutely interested in Marvar's groundbreaking research at the Clarendon Lab, and what he might have told Dyer about it - especially as Dyer was the last person to see Marvar alive.' (Publication summary)

'The hauntingly beautiful story of a young girl transformed by the power of kindness from award-winning author Favel Parrett.

'Running away from the mainland was supposed to make their lives better. But, for Isla and her brother, their mother's sadness and the cold, damp greyness of Hobart's stone streets seeps into everything.

'Then, one morning, Isla sees a red ship. That colour lights her day. And when a sailor from the ship befriends her mother, he shares his stories with them all - of Antarctica, his home in Denmark and life onboard. Like the snow white petrels that survive in the harshest coldest place, this lonely girl at the bottom of the world will learn that it is possible to go anywhere, be anything. But she will also find out that it is just as easy to lose it all.

'For Isla, those two long summers will change everything.

'Favel Parrett delivers an evocative and gently told story about the power fear and kindness have to change lives.' (Publication summary)

'The year is 1847. Three sisters named Charlotte, Emily and Anne are all writers. In this fiction, though, the family name is not Bronte, but Wolf, and they live far from the Yorkshire moors, in the penal colony of Coldwater - everything changes when Finn O'Connel is appointed valet at the family cottage.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"My name is Miles Walker. Remember it. I’m keen on immortality. I’ve got to be. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m the best painter of my generation. And I’ve got four hours to live."

'On the eve of the millennium, Miles Walker has problems. His flatmate Thurston, a moody medievalist, thinks it would be a good career move for Miles to die young. Miles' best friend, the pre-conceptual artist ZakDot, agrees – and the chainsaw-wielding Maddie seems only too happy to help. Then along comes Destiny, the enigmatically beautiful politician who hates art but likes Miles. Now the others really want to kill him. By the time bare buttocks are squeaking over the blackheart sassafras of the prime ministerial dining table, it looks like Miles' fate is sealed.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Julia is a photographer, Chantal edits a fashion magazine, Helen is a feminist academic and Philippa is a writer. These four friends haunt the cafés of inner-city Sydney, eyeing the passing talent and swapping outlandish tales. Sexy, intelligent, predatory, they are women of their time—but can we believe their wild and wicked descriptions of their erotic exploits?' (Publication summary)

'The scene is Naples, against whose ancient and fantastic background the modern action takes place.

'Among the protagonists is Jenny, young and pretty, who has come to Naples in flight from a sombre drama, unaware that a larger drama waits her there.

'She has an introduction to a Neapolitan woman, and one day she idly follows it up. This is her leap through the looking glass.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.