AustLit

'Jim Bloke's your typical Aussie, sort of. Being an orphan he's done it tough in the past, but he knows how to take care of himself and he has an affinity with life's important things. So when he takes a job as a sea-urchin diver on a stretch of coastal paradise, he's right at home with the morwong, pearl perch and butterfish.

He's less at home with the people - apart from the woman who works as his deckhand - since the industry's crookeder than your average banker. And because Bloke's already done a season in the big gym, he makes a perfect fall guy when things go wrong.

That sends him running again, by a roundabout way into the arms of his real family. But Jim's not sure that's where he wants to be. He wants love and that's hard, he wants his identity and that's even harder.

Bloke is an achingly funny novel about coming to terms with who you are, where you belong, who you love. Jim has a weakness for women that leads him into trouble, and then to salvation.' (From the publisher's website.)

The Catarqui goes down with the loss of 400 lives. The Guiding Star is embayed in ice. Who will mourn the women of the lost Neva? How do you build a lighthouse on a cape that has no harbour and no road access the ravines? The amazing life of the lighthouse keeper´s wife - mother, cook, rescuer, nurse, school teacher, farmer and relief keeper. Why were the Katabanut people killed? Did extra terrestrials capture two pilots whose plane disappeared over Bass Strait without trace? Cape Otway has many Secrets. Solve the mysteries of fate and the idiosyncratic nature of men and women - and never so strange as in a lighthouse. (Publishers Blurb)

'Stolen children, stolen land, stolen freedom. Enough to break the spirit but that's what these people have got, they're Too Bloody Strong to go under. The proud cry of survival is in all these stories and you can read the future in them too, because the Wathaurong people of South-West Victoria will be here while there's air to breathe. From making baskets to building fences, from nursing to law, in education and art, the Wathaurong are preparing for the brand new day when the sun rises over a land of equality, not the same land as 200 years ago but a better land than today.' (Publishers Blurb)

A grazier's daughter goes missing, last seen in the company of her Aboriginal lover. The white community doesn't need to think about where to lay the blame, the black community move instinctively to protect their own.

And in between are the station owners at Bahra Bay and the Murray people who live and work there. The intrigue slowly develops in the acid bath of north Queensland life, but it is that rich, tumultuous and violent life which takes over. The murder and the chase are only two events in the elegant shambles of the major characters' lives.

Black justice and logic pre-empts white vengeance, but the future remains indistinct.

George Watt in his first novel examines the convergence of two civilizations, ploughing a straight, sharp furrow in the plain of the Australian novel. (Publisher's blurb, back cover).

Dresden burns. After allied bombing, one of the world's most beautiful cities is destroyed and most of the population with it. Graham Sheil bases the story on accounts he recorded from German civilians who survived. A German family's story is paralleled by that of Templar, the Australian prisoner of war....(Publisher's blurb, back cover).

'From Maralinga to the Murray, Alice to Adelaide, fifteen Aboriginal women tell their stories of walking through atomic clouds, being taken from their mothers in the process of 'Assimilation', tribal punishment and tribal life. Two even had time to play Test Cricket and enter the Miss Australia Quest.'

'Extraordinary stories of survival in a land that wasn't harsh until the first white man declared the land uninhabited. These are Australian women to be reckoned with, women who reared children for tomorrow's Australia in defiance of a government whose policy was to 'smooth the pillow of a dying race'. (Source: Back cover)

'Stories of Aboriginal Australians from Melville Island, Bathurst Island, Roper River, Darwin, Maningrida, Groote Eylandt, Katherine, Alice Springs and the Flinders ranges. Two stories are printed in Tiwi and English.' (Source: TROVE)