Cirrus@Austlit

'Thirty-year-old Melburnian Kimberly Leamy leads a quiet life. She lives alone in a Coburg apartment and drives to a local TAFE at night where she teaches photography. One rainy evening between classes, Kim is approached by James Finn, a stranger who tells her he is certain she’s connected with the disappearance of toddler Sammy Went, who vanished from a small town in the United States 28 years earlier. Specifically, he believes that Kimberly is Sammy, the little sister he has spent his adult life searching for. (Introduction)

'It’s 1885 and Tommy McBride and his big brother Billy live with their parents on a hardscrabble cattle ranch in Central Queensland: “Two boys, not quite men, tiny in a landscape withered by drought.” The ranch is failing, and the boys blame Dad – worn down with bad luck and drink, especially compared with Sullivan, the more prosperous squatter-baron up the road.' (Introduction)

'Candice Fox’s latest comes with an endorsement from genre legend James Patterson, identifying Fox as “A bright new star of crime fiction.” It’s perhaps not an impartial view, as the pair have written bestselling novels together, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.' 

'The Town is Shaun Prescott’s full-length fiction debut and the sophomore novel from The Lifted Brow – the avant-garde Australian literary mag that, since moving into trade publishing last year, has championed writers whose ideas and execution run against the grain of commercial literary trends. Take this book: a deep dive into weirdness that reads like a blend of Donald Horne and García Márquez – although it contains little of the magic realist’s joie de vivre. Call it magical fatalism.' (Introduction)

'It’s 1994 and Nate Byrne is a business student in the small university town of Gatton, Queensland. He sells weed on the side, but his friend/dealer Jesse has disappeared, precipitating a drug-drought. When a couple of violent bikies turn up looking for Jesse and a considerable sum of money, Nate’s tasked to find him, and fast. He stumbles upon a homemade porn ring, a missing fortune in pills and cash, the seedy underbelly of a rural community. A girl from the neighbourhood turns up dead. Nate’s too high to handle any of it. Traumas from his past are catching up to him. The plot comes heavy and fast. The sentences are short and sharp. Gritty. Noir. Laconic.' (Introduction)