AustLit

'Messages from the Embers brings together 118 poetic voices and visions into 138 poems that detail and articulate the devastating 2019-2020 bushfire crisis that devastated around 20,000 hectares of land around Australia, destroying thousands of homes and buildings. Adding to the human death toll, significant losses of life to domesticated animals and native fauna resulted from the fires. In this anthology, some writers address the broad political and social scope of the catastrophe, others take a microscope to the localised and domestic effects during a time when the fragility of every structure and living creature was magnified. Beginning with the origins of fire, to the burning to the ashen aftermath, this anthology is courageous in its expression and acknowledgement of the multilayered loss felt by so many. Within several of these poems is a resilient undercurrent of hopefulness, and a will to emerge from damage and drive a more perceptive way forward.' (Publication summary)

'Rome, 382 AD. The Empire is fragile, the pagan beliefs that sustained it are fading. One man stirs up controversy like no other − Jerome, or St Jerome as he came to be known.

'When the Pontiff, Damasus I, commissions Jerome to translate the Bible into Latin, it is a political masterstroke. Highly intelligent and classically trained, Jerome was fluent in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. His Latin Vulgate displaces the many alternative biblical texts and is the quintessence of Christianity as a world religion, with Rome at its centre. But his work was not his only challenge.

'Jerome is assisted by a circle of aristocratic, educated Roman women who risk their lives in the pursuit of their ideals. Chief among them is the attractive young widow Paula, as devoted to him as she is to his cause. Rumours soon circulate as his enemies plot to dispose of him once and for all ...' (Publisher's blurb)