AustLit

'Wilf Healy lives in the wheatbelt town of Selwyn, works in Monk's Irish pub, delivers letters, drives the school bus, holds the place together. But he's had enough, wants to retire - to forget his nephew Connor, at war with the world, his brother Brian, visiting from America, his niece Orla, sick with blood cancer. Although he plans, and tries, he can't leave. Something is holding him back.

'As the young people flee, the old people die, the drugs arrive in Selwyn, Wilf has to decide what's important. Shining Like the Sun is about the value of promises, of words and actions that might save a failing community. In the process, Wilf learns there's no such thing as retirement.' (Publication summary)

'Like rocks, we are shaped by forces over time. Despite being eroded, fractured, immersed, put under pressure - The Rocks Remain. Always was, always will be.

'Through poetry and prose, twenty-five Aboriginal writers share narratives that embody: strength of family and community; love found and lost; enduring relationships with the Land and nonhuman others; honouring Elders and Ancestors; expressions of place and belonging; asserting sovereignty; talking back to the colony; and envisioning Blak futures. Voices of new and emerging writers are intertwined with writers of renown, with a strong representation of writers with connections to South Australia. This collection is both timeless and timely.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'But there I stand, with one hand resting on his shoulder, and I wonder what I was feeling in that moment. Why did I place my hand there? Was it for comfort, for reassurance, or to show that he was mine?

'Emma Werner, now an old woman, is domineering, cold and difficult to love. But she has not always been so. What happened to Magdalena Johanna Emma Scholz, the bright young woman she once was? And why does she still take flowers to the grave of her first love?

'Emma turns to the journals she has kept for sixty years to rediscover her old self, and to reclaim her future. They reveal the story of a survivor: a woman who suffered but never wavered, whose strength of will and self-belief helped her endure and make a life for herself and her family in a small town in the Riverina.' (Publication summary)

(Publication summary)

'On Luck Street builds on The Elsewhere Variations, Nearly Lunch, and Waldo's Game - taking the reader around the corner, and around the world. From a small circus in Nepal, to a florist in New York, and the streets of Coogee and Fitzroy.

'Connivers, chancers, charmers - those trapped and those who would break free. To what extent do any of us trust our luck?'(Publication summary)

'Waldo's Game extends the reach of The Elsewhere Variations and Nearly Lunch - going around the corner, and around the world. From supermarket aisle to art gallery - from nocturnal shiftiness in industrial zones to dawn reckonings ... in bedrooms, on wild coastlines.

'The world as it looks to other people, not all of them looking at the same thing. What are they at? What is their game?' (Publication summary)

'Mood is a memoir that perfectly suits our times, and our collective journey to understand how we are shaped by our identities. It is a testament to hard-won growth through self-knowledge.

'Roz Bellamy is a first-generation Jewish Australian who identifies as non-binary. They met their wife, Rachel, as a university student, as the pair made their first tentative forays into queer culture - and fell in love - through a Buffy the Vampire Slayer online message board. As a young teacher, Roz's longstanding anxiety intensified, as past trauma of being bullied in their own schooldays and the creeping toll of antisemitism in the classroom undermined their burning desire to be the 'perfect' teacher.

'Therapy to treat their distress became a deeper inquiry. As Roz began to investigate and unfurl the various strands of their identity, and how they intersect to make them who they are, they were handed more pieces of the puzzle.

'Mood is a story about love, family and self-fulfilment, while living with mental illness. It's also a candid, absorbing inquiry into the self, and the rewards of embracing who you are, in all its complexity and contradictions. Even - especially - when it's hard.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Is it possible to break the cycle of failures in one's love life? Toby Hill, a bachelor for many years, finds himself startled out of his withdrawal from social life by a chance meeting. What happens when a chance encounter - a black swan - arrives in Toby's reclusive life?

'Why did Viv want him to come to her home for the review of the grant application instead of her office? Why was he silly enough to agree to this?

'Following in his father's footsteps, searching the world for his next adventure, learning about food, wine and love, Toby realises that what he thought was unconditional love was more to do with youthful lust. He has to admit that journeying with a female companion has its drawbacks.

'Da Capo is a coming of age story as Toby steps into the unknown, trying to understand life's complexities and betrayals in his search for fulfilment, love and commitment.' (Publication summary)

'A young man from the working-class suburb of Fitzroy was on the cusp of a brilliant career and was the talk of the Academy's salons. Far from his humble origins, he now stood shoulder to shoulder with the leading figures of London's art world.

'Max Martin was an enigmatic achiever who stood briefly on the mountaintop but died in obscurity. It was over thirty years after his death before a painting of his was acquired by a public collection. The National Gallery of Victoria, Newcastle City Gallery in New South Wales and the art collection of the State Library of Victoria now all hold his work.

'What made him turn his back on painting at the height of critical acclaim? How close was he to a career in mainstream ballet and what drove him to march for disarmament in his later years?' (Publication summary)

'In Witnesses, Valerie Volk takes us behind the scenes for a fresh look at some of the great moments in biblical history. These sixteen compelling stories are told by those on the sidelines: Saul's armourbearer, Noah's daughter-in-law, frightened of water and about to board the Ark, a man who cut a hole in the roof of a house to lower his paralysed brother to Jesus, David's daughter Tamar, sexually assaulted by her brother ... witnesses at the edges of significant and familiar stories.

'The characters in Witnesses tell their own tales, but they are also observers of important events. Their stories will change the way you understand the Bible, and have implications for modern lives.' (Publication summary)

'December, 1963: widowed café owner Stella Madigan, with her two young children Fran and Theo, and the free-spirited artist Mardi Rose, embark on a road trip to Byron Bay. But a night spent in the tiny outback town of Temperance will alter all their lives, and ignite a chain of events the children will struggle to both conceal and resolve, long into adulthood.

'Temperance explores the discrepancies between what children see and what adults allow them to believe. Its mystery unravels against a background of early 1960s Australia, where religious wars are fought in suburban living rooms, and feminism has made so little headway that a relationship between two women can be seen as perverse, even dangerous.

'This haunting novel vividly inhabits its suburban beachside setting, while sensitively exploring through its characters the corrosive effects of ambiguous loss, and of tightly held family secrets.' (Publication summary)

'Josiah Symon arrived in South Australia from Scotland in 1866 just before his 20th birthday. His baggage included two boxes of books, references praising his primary school teaching and a few English pounds. In 1934 he left an estate valued in modern terms at $22 million.

'Symon acquired his wealth as the acknowledged leader of the Adelaide Bar for 30 years, by investments in shares and property in London and Australia, and through his highly regarded vineyard and winery.

'Knighted for contributions to the federal cause, Symon served in the House of Assembly (1881-1887) and in the Australian Senate (1901-1913) and was, briefly, both a State and a Commonwealth Attorney-General.

'He headed a large family, owned an estate and working farm and was also a philanthropist, a bibliophile, Shakespearean scholar, president of cultural societies and a sought-after public speaker.

'His contemporaries knew him as a major figure, but he is now mainly remembered, if at all, as a reactionary and a master of vituperation. To restore balance requires recognition that this largely self-made Scot, composed of many allegiances and contradictions, took principled stands which placed him ahead, alongside and behind his times.' (Publication summary) 

'Hali Greengard thinks she's a freak. She's a twin from Hexa, a planet where twins are always Daka together. Except for her. She is Luma.

'When the navigation system on her family's interplanetary cruiser goes haywire, an ordinary family holiday turns into a nightmare. They are hurtled through space with no known destination, finally dropping into orbit six days later around a small, unlisted planet in the Milky Way called Earth.

'The family is welcomed by two of Earth's inhabitants, who call themselves Humans but bear a striking resemblance to Lumas. Hali finds herself strangely comfortable in this unfamiliar world, where her Daka brother stands out like a sore thumb, not her. Soon they discover that space travel is banned on Earth, and they are, in fact, fugitives from the law. Things go from bad to worse when they're spotted by the nosy kids from the farm next door, who report them to their mother, the local cop.

'With their new friends languishing in jail and an all points alert out on the 'dangerous aliens' (as the Earth authorities have dubbed them), Hali and her family must work quickly to save Liam and Jodi. Along the way they discover that Lumas and Humans might have more in common than they thought.

'This fast-paced intergalactic adventure is a story of family, friendship, and discovering who you really are.' (Publication summary)

'Welcome to One Curious Doctor. Thank you for your willingness to take over the care of the stories set down in this book. Some of these stories were born out of my years working as a doctor in small-town Australia. Other stories have their roots in my personal journey as a migrant growing up in 1960s Sydney. As a descendent of grandparents who were forced to escape Europe to survive. And as the son of parents who died prematurely from conditions that modern medicine, my professional domain, could not cure.

'In 2019, these worlds collided. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I received this diagnosis both as a shock - This can't be happening to me. I'm a doctor. Not a patient! And as a gift - Does this mean I actually get to rest now?

'As the fallout from the trauma of the diagnosis began to settle, I tried to work out how I ended up in this position. Was the PTSD a consequence of the repeated losses I experienced in my working life? Did it come from my life-long feelings of being an outsider trying so hard to fit in? Or was it a result of trauma experienced by my parents and grandparents in their search for security across three continents? And if so, how much of this was learnt, and how much was inherited?

'Maybe it was all down to my personality type. My nature. Did the qualities which made me a trusted doctor also make me more vulnerable to the inevitable impact of caring for people over many years?

'I do not yet have answers to these questions. But I am keen to share my ponderings with you in One Curious Doctor - the case history of a doctor who is curious to understand more about himself and who is also curious in the sense of perhaps being a little unusual. Be patient with this curious doctor. He has done his best without always getting things right. 

'May I ask you to care for these stories as a kind doctor might care for a new patient - with curiosity and compassion.

'With my best wishes,

'Hilton Koppe, MB BS MFM FRACGP.

'Spring, 2022' (Publication summary)

'These events, foretold, are of forty years ago. They were a surreal blur then and remain so. A fever dream that was tragically real. Even with the clarity of time, there is only distance. And the need to understand. I suppose it is a long overdue, long goodbye.

'Grief is a great theme of our times and this is a memoir of grief in action.

'On the tempest-tossed afternoon of 9 July 1982, Pan Am flight 759 crashed into a suburb of New Orleans shortly after takeoff. Eight people on the ground and all 145 passengers died, among them Peter's parents, Margaret and Brian Goers, aged 50 and 52. Peter, busy with his promising career as a director, had not said goodbye.

'Peter left for the US the next day, summoned to identify the bodies. These are his impressions of a strange and tragic journey full of potent memory, loss, poignant candour, wisdom and family redemption.' (Publication summary)

'Derek Pedley abandons his 30-year journalism career on the brink of a breakdown, haunted by addiction, compulsion and obsession, and carrying the heavy baggage of a boy who found his adoption papers at 15.

'When an anguished letter his mother wrote almost half a century earlier arrives five years after her death, it raises more questions than it answers. The man who was born Abraham Maddison embarks on a quest to find the truth, uncovering a story of heartbreak and lies that echoes the pain of tens of thousands of mothers and children, robbed of each other by Australia's Forced Adoption era.

'It is also a spiritual journey, and Derek must find a way to bridge the visceral disconnection of adoption, reunion, estrangement and death to achieve peace with his mother, Joye Maddison, who was allowed to hold her newborn just once before he was taken away in Perth, in 1972.

'With his marriage and mental health at stake, and guided by a psychologist and other experts, Derek confronts the worst of himself, and his past, with a blend of journalistic rigour and earthy humour.

'Crazy Bastard is raw and harrowing, brutally honest, and beautifully vulnerable. It is one man's search for identity, for love, and for the truth.' (Publication summary)

'In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of terrified and broken villagers for company, this story explores coming of age when society - and all its cues - has been washed away. For the few survivors, questions of identity, nature, love, and fear are explored through the eyes of a child, against a backdrop of encroaching water. In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of broken villagers for company, this story explores coming of age when society - and all its cues - has been washed away. In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of terrified and broken villagers for company, this story explores coming of age when society - and all its cues - has been washed away. For the few survivors, questions of identity, nature, love, and fear are explored through the eyes of a child, against a backdrop of encroaching water.' (Publication summary)