Cirrus@Austlit

'The Divinity School follows the lives of four of faculty members at an interfaith studies centre at the fictitious Hamilton University. A widower now Catholic priest tries to reconcile with his gay daughter. A Jewish rabbi confronts domestic violence and is tempted to return to a life he left behind. A Muslim woman tries to help a former student stop her sister from travelling to Syria to join ISIS, and a grieving Episcopal priest finds himself confronted with zany situations that amuse as much as annoy him.'

'Set in the mystical kingdom of Iona, a young slave boy named Iskandar learns that he is the son of the King and Queen of Iona, once noble rulers who were seduced by the dark Lord Marduk with a promise of divine power. Iskandar discovers what happened to his family, how he was hidden from his parents by his uncle, the secret power he has that even his immortal parents are afraid of, and the obsessive determination of his elder brother Jakov to use him as an instrument of revenge. Iskandar must travel through forests filled with dangerous creatures, fight battles against impossible odds, draw on the help of a mysterious knight, and learn to use his elemental powers, all while being constantly haunted by the question of whether he really has the courage to confront and even kill the immortal king of Iona, his own father.' (Publication Summary)

'Charles Thomas Johnston (‘Bill’) Adamson was born on 17 January 1901, between the proclamation of Australian Federation on 1 January and the first federal election in March. His father was an Australian surgeon living in England and his mother was from the Scottish aristocracy. Despite an excellent public-school education, Bill turned away from privilege. After learning the wool trade, he emigrated to Australia in 1923 to work with a shearing team. He spent the next few years doing the rounds of the sheds in Queensland. The year 1926 was a bad one on the land and after a period cutting cane in far north Queensland, Adamson left for Papua (an Australian Territory since 1906) to try his luck on the goldfields.

'He prospected with variable success for the next decade, often the only European, many days from assistance in precipitous terrain. In 1935 he joined the Papuan Government service as one of Sir Hubert Murray’s ‘Outside Men’, and achieved a measure of fame for his part in the epic eight month – and completely bloodless – Bamu-Purari Patrol into the Southern Highlands. This was the longest exploration in Papuan history. He then helped to open the Lake Kutubu Patrol Post in the Southern Highlands, where he spent two continuous years involved in the business of ‘first contact’ on a daily basis. At the beginning of World War II, Bill joined the RAN and served first on minesweepers in the English Channel and Western Approaches, then a corvette in the Indian Ocean. After Japan entered the war, Bill returned to Papua, where he served as beachmaster at Oro Bay, and in command of a survey ship assisting the Allied offensive in New Guinea. In the final year of the war he assumed command of HMAS Taipan, one of the ‘cloak and dagger’ snake-boats of the Services Reconnaissance Department. After demobilisation he returned to Papua in the government service, and later as a plantation owner, before retiring to Cooktown in 1964. His health began to fail, and in 1978, shortly after he was married, he shot himself.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.