AustLit

'A novel about the relationship between life and art, and between language and the inner world - how difficult it is to speak truly, to know and be known by another, and how much power and friction lies in the unsaid, especially between a mother and daughter.

'A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafes and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother's family in Hong Kong, and the daughter's own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken?

'Cold Enough for Snow is a reckoning and an elegy: with extraordinary skill, Au creates an enveloping atmosphere that expresses both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the distance between them.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A monumental and gripping story, Red Heaven is a glamorous tale of a child with two fascinating and domineering guardians, inspired by the author's own childhood.

'Red Heaven is the story of a child's journey to adulthood, his loss of those he loves and his fixing of them in memory. It begins in the late 1960s in Switzerland, as the unnamed narrator's ideas about life are being shaped by two compelling rival influences, the architects of his youth.

'These are his so-called aunts-imperious, strong-willed, ambitious-both determined to make the boy into their own heir, a believer in their values. In self-contained episodes, each set in an alpine grand hotel, we see one aunt and then the other seek to educate their protege by imparting their experiences.

'Serghiana, the 'red princess', is the daughter of a Soviet general, a producer of films and worshipper of art, a true believer. Ady, a former actress and singer, is a dilettante and cynic, Viennese, married to a great conductor- in her eyes, life is nothing but an affair of surfaces; truth and beauty are mere illusions.

'The aunts and all those in their orbit are exiles, without a home, at the mercy of outside political events. They strive to see what lies beyond the chance events and intersections of their lives. Their allegiances shift. Their stories deepen- gradually the child comes to understand the shadows in their past.

'Memory and nostalgia-the aunts' gifts to him, gifts of obligation-are the purest expression of love allowed them. These stories stay with the boy, guiding his beliefs and his path in life, until he can grow up and absorb the influences of the world around him, and become himself.

'Red Heaven is about the people who make us what we- how they come into our lives, instruct or affect us, then depart the stage. This fiction, with its affinity for the elusive beauties and sadnesses of the world, is Nicolas Rothwell's finest achievement.'  (Publication summary)

'Erica Marsden’s son, an artist, has been imprisoned for homicidal negligence. In a state of grief, Erica cuts off all ties to family and friends, and retreats to a quiet hamlet on the south-east coast near the prison where he is serving his sentence.

'There, in a rundown shack, she obsesses over creating a labyrinth by the ocean. To build it—to find a way out of her quandary—Erica will need the help of strangers. And that will require her to trust, and to reckon with her past.

'The Labyrinth is a hypnotic story of guilt and denial, of the fraught relationship between parents and children, that is also a meditation on how art can both be ruthlessly destructive and restore sanity. It shows Amanda Lohrey to be at the peak of her powers.' (Publication summary)

'After a decade in Europe August Gondiwindi returns to Australia for the funeral of her much-loved grandfather, Albert, at Prosperous House, her only real home and also a place of great grief and devastation.

'Leading up to his death Poppy Gondiwindi has been compiling a dictionary of the language he was forbidden from speaking after being sent to Prosperous House as a child. Poppy was the family storyteller and August is desperate to find the precious book that he had spent his last energies compiling.

'The Yield also tells the story of Reverend Greenleaf, who recalls founding the first mission at Prosperous House and recording the language of the first residents, before being interred as an enemy of the people, being German, during the First World War.

'The Yield, in exquisite prose, carefully and delicately wrestles with questions of environmental degradation, pre-white contact agriculture, theft of language and culture, water, religion and consumption within the realm of a family mourning the death of a beloved man.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The art historian Noah Glass, having just returned from a trip to Sicily, is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect. The police are investigating.

'None of it makes any sense. Martin sets off to Palermo in search of answers about his father’s activities, while Evie moves into Noah’s apartment, waiting to learn where her life might take her. Retracing their father’s steps in their own way, neither of his children can see the path ahead.

'Gail Jones’s mesmerising new novel tells a story about parents and children, and explores the overlapping patterns that life makes. The Death of Noah Glass is about love and art, about grief and happiness, about memory and the mystery of time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.