AustLit

'What kinds of Cretaceous creatures roam the forest at night?

'Join Horridus the Triceratops and Archie the Avisaurus as they explore the undergrowth and discover the magic of a twilight stroll through the trees in this second instalment of the Horridus series. But wait...what’s that sound? Is someone following them? Enter the night forest to find out! Filled with humour and threaded through with themes of friendship and facing your fears, this story will entrance any young dinosaur fan. Readers will delight in learning more about the Cretaceous period as they follow Horridus and Archie on their latest adventure.' (Publication summary)

'The Quest for Kool follows the adventures of an intrepid palaeontologist echidna. Her all-time favourite animal is the Koolasuchus , and her greatest wish is to meet one of these long-extinct amphibians in the flesh. So she invents a time travel device! As she skips back through time, she comes across a host of oddball characters, including a chatty marsupial lion and some very hungry toothed seabirds. But will she ever find a Koolasuchus ?

'Combining education and excitement into one rollicking adventure, readers will relish following along with our plucky heroine as she treks through space and time in her quest to meet a Koolasuchus . Along the way they’ll learn fascinating facts about Australia’s geographic time periods and the ancient animals that inhabited them.'  (Publication summary)

'A grizzly bear goes on the run after eating a teenager. A hotel room participates in an unlikely conception. A genetically altered platypus colony puts on an art show. A sabretooth tiger falls for the new addition to his theme park. An airline seat laments its last useful day. A Shakespearean monkey test pilot launches into space.

'The stories in Here Be Leviathans take us from the storm drains under Las Vegas to the Alaskan wilderness; the rainforests of Queensland to the Chilean coastline. Narrated in Chris Flynn’s unique and hilarious style by animals, places, objects and even the (very) odd human, these short fictions push the boundaries of the form by examining human behaviour from the perspective of the outsider.'  (Publication summary)

'Join Horridus the Triceratops and Archie the Avisaurus on their Cretaceous quest to unlock the secrets of Hidden Valley.

'Along the way they’ll encounter lakes, mountains, Tyrannosaurs, Pterosaurs and a distinct lack of decent snacks. Will they find the rare blue flower? Will Horridus eat it? Enter a prehistoric world of adventure to find out!

'Threaded with themes of friendship and conservation and filled with humour, this story will entrance any young dinosaur fan. Readers will delight in learning about the Cretaceous period as they accompany Horridus and Archie on their adventures.'  (Publication summary)

'Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct American mastodon, Mammoth is the (mostly) true story of how the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a pterodactyl, a prehistoric penguin, the severed hand of an Egyptian mummy and the narrator himself came to be on sale at a 2007 natural history auction in Manhattan.

'Ranging from the Pleistocene Epoch to nineteenth-century America and beyond, including detours to Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, Mammoth illuminates a period of history when ideas about science and religion underwent significant change. By tracing how and when the fossils were unearthed, Mammoth traverses time and place to reveal humanity's role in the inexorable destruction of the natural world.'(Publication summary)

'Elliot Perlman’s fourth novel is tentatively billed as a corporate satire and has a striking opening line: ‘I am absolutely terrified of losing a job I absolutely hate.’ The man in this all-too-familiar predicament is Stephen Maserov, a former English teacher turned lawyer. Maserov is a lowly second year in the Terry Gilliam-esque law firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche, which, apart from sounding like a character in a Tennessee Williams play, is home to loathsome dinosaurs in pinstripe suits and an HR department referred to as ‘The Stasi’.' (Introduction)

'Halfway through Minotaur, Peter Goldsworthy’s jauntily satisfying novel about a sharp-tongued former motorcycle cop blinded by a bullet to the head, Detective Sergeant Rick Zadow gropes his way to a shed behind his Adelaide cottage. Inside lies a partially dismantled 1962 Green Frame Ducati 750SS. Zadow, who had begun disassembling the crankshaft prior to his injury, fumbles round in the dark as he tries to restore the beloved bike he will never be able to ride again. He uses his ever-present companion and virtual girlfriend, Siri, to order parts from a website called Road and Race.' (Introduction)

'Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul, usually happens after death, when the consciousness and memories of an individual are transported into the body of another. If you believe that sort of thing. It is also a handy, if well-trodden, literary device, used to influential effect in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.' (Introduction)

'Great science fiction often tackles portentous real-world events. The genre provides a heady platform for the extrapolation of ideas, imagining what might happen if a current situation were pushed to extremes. Tasmanian-born author Rohan Wilson embraces the liberty of genre conventions in his latest book. Having thus far examined his home state’s brutal colonial history in the novels The Roving Party and To Name Those Lost, he changes tack by leaping five decades into the future with Daughter of Bad Times, a layered novel that can be read as a doomed love story, a climate change warning and a searing commentary on Australian refugee policy.' (Introduction)

'The plethora of crime stories is such that, in order to succeed, they must either follow a well-trodden narrative path and do so extremely well, or run with a high concept and hope for the best. Having the word ‘girl’ in the title doesn’t hurt. Readers are familiar with genre tropes, to the point of being high-functioning literary detectives, ready to sniff out lapses in logic and to scream at the page (or at a screen) when a plot goes haywire. Treat aficionados of crime fiction with contempt, and you’re dead in the water.' (Introduction)

'Mary Bryant was a Cornishwoman transported with the First Fleet for highway robbery. After three years in Sydney, she masterminded the first escape from the nascent colony. Her story was the subject of an ABC television drama in the 1960s and a telemovie in 2005, and she has appeared as a minor character in several books. Arguably none capture the extensive detail found in Meg Keneally’s latest, Fled, in which Bryant has been fictionalised as Jenny Trelawney.' (Introduction)

'Journeyman author Matt Howard pops up with his fourth novel in 13 years, and with his fourth publisher. Given the commercial appeal of his work, this bedhopping seems odd, but such is the climate of publishing these days. Hit it out of the park with your first swing, or move house.' (Introduction)