AustLit

'Empty Sky, which draws its title from Sylvia Plath’s ‘I talk to God but the sky is empty’, features the top emerging writers from UTS’ creative writing program and showcases a range of extraordinary works. This edition is introduced by writer, editor and activist Bri Lee, the award-winning author of Eggshell Skull.

'Our world is tumultuous – from political upheaval to environmental decay, the Earth is in the process of shifting and reforming in every possible way. Technology surrounds us, encroaching. Society both evolves and regresses. It can seem as if everything is on fire.

'In one way or another, struggle stains human lives. These pieces depict precisely that. There is fantastic struggle against the self and the world and whoever is listening, and in this way, these works cry out to be read. They show that human lives are full: full of fighting and grief, full of compassion and joy.

'The 34th UTS Writers’ Anthology: the 2020 collection of some of the best new writing – previously unpublished – from a student body with an incredible voice.' (Publication summary)

'Four years after her disastrous quest for romance in Paris (the alleged ‘city of love’), Hedley Derenzie is ready to break out of her comfort zone of singledom and give it another go. She decides to seek professional help — in the form of a psychologist — but after a few sessions on the couch, she has an epiphany — keep paying the psychologist good money … or go to Italy!

'Sensibly, Hedley chooses the latter and, within minutes of landing in Milan, meets a man who captures her attention. Soon she’s jetting around the country, dining at fabulous restaurants and living the life of Riley (that’s if Riley were a woman in her late thirties looking for love). So what if this man is older (as in a lot older) and reminds her of her late father? Hedley can’t help but wonder — could he be the one?

'Meet Me in Milan is a funny, honest and raw memoir about one woman’s ongoing quest for love — this time in the land of la dolce vita.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Sommerton High is in lockdown! A fiendish prankster is on the loose! Someone has planted a fake bomb in the playground and the whole school is freaking out!

'When you’ve looked for love in all the wrong places, there’s only one place left to go …

'Reeling from another romantic failure, Hedley Derenzie booked a trip to Paris, la Cité d’Amour, in the hope of finding true love. Or at the very least a gorgeous Frenchman with whom she could have a wild summer fling and wash away the inconvenient and all-too-familiar heartbreak.

'Instead, Hedley found herself on the other side of the world with no luggage, a string of failed relationships behind her and the shocking realisation that they all had one thing in common — her.

'Join Hedley on her personal and often hilarious quest to unravel the truth about sex and love — in the one place you should never go following a break-up.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A terrible crime has been committed at the Brownleigh Football Club. Someone has ruined the footy field with deep tyre tracks. And there’s grafitti all over the clubhouse walls. The damage is diabolical! Who is responsible and why would anyone target the greatest footy club in the world?

'The Akashic ‘Noir’ crime series began in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. The book earned so much attention and acclaim that it has now expanded to include over 90 titles in locales criss-crossing the globe. The incorporation of familiar, well-known cities with excellent writing and plotting is a winning combination that readers can’t resist. Those who have stepped into the ring to edit the collections run the gamut from little-known talents to big names like Joyce Carol Oates and Dennis Lehane.

'One man's story of sex, love and other disorders.

'Like a lot of men, Jesse Fink never thought it would happen to him. But it did. His wife of 10 years and mother of his child walked out on him and into the arms of another man. In that moment he lost his best friend, his soul mate, his family, his identity. His wife's new lover even got his dog.

'What came next was a freefall of the soul that would take him from contemplating cutting his wrists to sleeping with hundreds of women.

'Laid Bare is a brutally honest account of one man's emotional and mental oblivion after separation and divorce. Jesse's search for love and pleasure saw him jump headlong into the freewheeling and sometimes dangerous world of online dating. He visited brothels and massage parlours. He crossed the Pacific for doomed affairs. He disastrously moved in sight unseen with his high-school dream girl, a woman he hadn't spoken to for 25 years but reunited with on Facebook. He flew off to Hollywood to connect with yet another beautiful woman he sparked with online and found himself in the kitchen of the real-life Bridget Jones. And he managed to get his heart broken all over again with a brilliant but turbulent young artist.

'With remarkable frankness, Jesse opens up about his complicity in the failure of his marriage, his battles with OCD, his struggles as a single dad, his sex addiction and his desperate desire to find love. He shares it all - the good, the bad and the ugly. His chance at personal salvation finally comes in the unconditional love of his eight-year-old daughter.

'This time, if he pays attention, he might just get it right.' (From the publisher's website.)

'In Let the Dead Lie, Cooper is a changed man. Forced to resign from his position of Detective Sergeant and re-classified as mixed race, he winds up powerless and alone in the tough coastal city of Durban, mixing labouring with a bit of surveillance work for his old boss, Major van Niekerk.

'Patrolling the freight yards one night, Cooper stumbles upon the body of a young white boy and, the detective in him can not, or will not, walk away. When two more bodies - this time black women - are discovered at his boarding house, he unwittingly becomes the prime suspect in a triple murder case.

'At van Niekerk's behest, Cooper's given 48 hours to clear his name and - unofficially - solve the three murders. And so, temporarily back to being a European Detective Sergeant, he launches headlong into Durban's seedy underworld, a viper's nest of prostitution, drug running and violence run by a colourful cast of characters including wannabe Indian gangsters; a mysterious figure who drives a white De Soto convertible; a Zion Gospel preacher, and the exquisite yet streetwise Lana, who also happens to be van Niekerk's mistress...'

'In the tiny South African town of Jacob's Rest, Detective Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate the murder of an Afrikaner police officer, Captain Willem Pretorius.

'Cooper, an "English" South African, is viewed with suspicion by both the Boer Afrikaners and the dead man's prominent family, and his investigation is quickly taken over by Security Branch. But Cooper isn't interested in political expediency, or making friends in high places, and as he pursues his own inquiry, he discovers that Captain Pretorius had led a deadly double life.

'The more Cooper digs, the more dangerous the investigation becomes. For Cooper is a man with his own secrets, and learning the truth about Captain Pretorius just might save life... if he isn't killed first.

'In this riveting debut, Malla Nunn combines a thrilling, action-packed story with a thoughtful, complex portrayal of an unforgettable time and place and the human desires that drive us all, regardless of race, colour or creed.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute's governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling.

'Evelyn defies him - and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge?

'Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh's finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is ripped to shreds while walking his dog -- all this after Evelyn, now a young woman, has reappeared in the city.

'What connects the victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail - each time blaming a mysterious "lamplighter"?

'Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy, and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source of Evelyn's torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of Hell.'

Book Jacket. Scribner, 2003. (Libraries Australia record).

Queen Scheherazade is kidnapped from Baghdad and must tell a story to save her own life, having told stories for many years to save the lives of other women.

'Ninth-century Baghdad, legendary crossroads of the East. It is nearly twenty years since Scheherazade spun her tales for a thousand and one nights, the tales that saved her life and immortalised the city that she had never seen - until now. But almost immediately she is kidnapped by a party of hashish-chewing assassins from under the Caliph of Baghdad's nose. An ancient prophecy leads the Caliph to despatch an unlikely crew of sailors on a rescue mission. As they venture deeper into the unforgiving desert, losing camels, supplies, and all sense of dicrection, Scheherazade must face her abductors alone. And once again begins to spin a tale to save her life... An adventure full of wit, danger and incident, murder and mystery, poetry and philosophy - and testament to the power of the imagination - Scheherazade sweeps from the historical realities of Arabian life into a world of magic carpets and miraculous beings, seamlessly weaving fact, fiction and fable into a novel rich with all the heady power of the Arabian Nights.'

Source: Back cover

'Comedian Tim Ross draws inspiration from his acclaimed ABC television series Streets Of Your Town with this selection of short stories from the suburbs. From the beachside holiday house to the backyard pool and the rumpus room, the architecture of the suburbs forms the backdrop to a uniquely Australian way of life. Ross roams through these familiar places to paint a picture of Australian domesticity and its relationship to the Australian psyche in all its funny, nostalgic, ironic, and often acutely cringe-worthy glory."I wanted the book to physically have a sense of nostalgia to match these stories that are a mixture of memoir and fiction. I was rolling around with the concepts of the suburbs for a couple of years making Streets Of Your Town and these stories reflect a more personal side to where we live. Travelling for the series and for my Man About the House tour was incredibly inspiring and this is represented in this book." Tim Ross' (Publication summary)

'Clunk! When a canoe crashes into the hull of the pearling boat Nimah after a huge storm, the crew is amazed to find a young girl aboard - but she's lost her memory and can't speak! Is she an Islander? Where is her family? How did she end up there? Follow Ben and Mimi and the rest of Nimah's crew as they try to uncover the mystery of Pearl Shell Island the lost girl with no voice.' (Publication summary)

'Adam Spencer’s 12 Days of Christmas is a cute, clever and distinctly Australian take on the classic Christmas carol.

'Featuring a postie who has to deliver 12 ever-more bizarre Christmas gifts, the book will delight younger readers with its funny rhymes, stunning illustrations ... and cheeky maths (that they won’t even realise they’re learning)!

'Adam Spencer’s 12 Days of Christmas is sure to get the whole family into the festive spirit ... on Christmas Day and beyond!' (Publication summary)

'Seven years after the death of Edward Hyde, a stylish gentleman shows up in foggy London claiming to be Dr. Henry Jekyll. Only Mr. Utterson, Jekyll’s faithful lawyer and confidant, knows that he must be an impostor – because Jekyll was Hyde. 

'But as the man goes about charming Jekyll’s friends and reclaiming the estate, and as the bodies of potential challengers start piling up, Utterson is left fearing for his life ... and questioning his own sanity.

'From the internationally acclaimed Australian author Anthony O’Neill comes Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Seek, an ingenious, original sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.' (Publication Summary)

'Susi Prescott had it all. A large, busy family, a school teaching job she loved, a home on Sydney’s leafy North Shore. But with the sudden demise of her thirty-year marriage, her world crumbles.

'To the surprise of everyone, especially herself, Susi makes a momentous decision. She packs up her former life and moves to the city of Arequipa in Peru, where she starts working at Colegio Elohim, a struggling school at the foot of the Andes. She plans to reinvent herself, to do some good, to heal.

'Arequipa teases with contrasts: colonial elegance ringed by sprawling slums; worldly affluence alongside grinding poverty; intellectuals decrying corruption and sexism; while the joy of song and dance transcends all barriers. Susi learns valuable lessons about hardship and injustice; about turning disaster into opportunity; about the nature of conflict and forgiveness. She may even learn how to fall in love again …' (Publication summary)

'When a whale washes up on the shore of a beach there is only one surety: it must explode. Sometimes a bystander, anticipating the inevitable, pokes the gaseous figure; the skin rips, and it is done. Our world can feel like the brimming belly of a beached whale, the pressure building, an indeterminate force compelling us to take an explosive action, even when it makes little to no sense.

'A girl takes a pair of shears to a black-dashed line on her skin; a woman tries to stem the flow of snake venom in the blood of a man who is already dead; an epileptic wears a crash helmet ‘round the clock; a man with only one good arm cuts it off with a chainsaw, and how?

'After every explosion, a throng of people approach the beach cautiously, collecting the debris together.

'Introduced by celebrated Australian essayist, poet and critic, Fiona Wright, And Watch the Whale Explode is the 31st edition of the UTS Writers’ Anthology. ' (Publication summary)