Cirrus@Austlit

'After enduring months of extreme dry, farming couple Dimple and Ruthie face uncertain times. Ruthie receives the news every woman dreads. Meanwhile, a powerful landowner, Wally Oliver, appears on the local radio station, warning smaller farmers like Dimple and Ruthie that they are doomed, that the sooner they leave the land to large operators like him, the better. Bracing for a fight on all fronts, the couple decide to take a road trip to confront Oliver. Along the way, not only is their resolve tested, but their relationship as well.

'Desperate not to dwell on the past but to face up to the future, Dimple and Ruthie make a crucial decision they soon regret. And when the storm clouds finally roll in across the land they love, there’s more than the rain to contend with.

'Told with enormous heart, Small Mercies is a tender love story. It is a story of a couple who feel they must change to endure, and it is the story of the land that is as important as their presence on it.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When life delivers you gifts you don’t want.

'Dave Martin is down on his luck: his wife has left him; his farm is a failure; his house is a mess; he has withdrawn from his community and friends; and tragedy has stolen his capacity to care. He passes the time drinking too much and buying cheap tools online, treating the delivered parcels as gifts from people who care about him.

'And then boxes begin to arrive in the mail: boxes that he didn’t order, but ones that everyone around him seems to want desperately. As he tries to find out the secret of the boxes, Dave is drawn into a crazy world of red herrings and wrong turns, good guys and bad, false friends and true, violence, lust, fear, revenge, and a lot, lot more. It’s not a world he understands, but is it the only one Dave can live in?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Graeme Sweetapple is a man down on his luck, reduced to stealing cattle to pay the mortgage on the family farm. Early one Christmas morning, Sweetapple is heading home with a truck full of stolen steers when he comes across an upended ute that has hit a tree. Anna, one of the two passengers he helps out, is an anti-coal mine protestor, and she has stolen a small explosives pack that one of the more extreme protestors had taken from the mine. When she spots the cattle, she blackmails Sweetapple into taking the explosives and hiding them.

'Sweetapple cares for the horses of his wealthy neighbours, Bob and Caroline Statham. He despises the dodgy big-business ethics of Bob and his ex-politician wife, but he loves horses and needs the money, so when Bob asks him to steal a very expensive horse for him, he agrees.

'The horse is called Retribution, and Sweetapple forms a strong attachment to her. He fantasises about keeping her, and finds it difficult to ultimately hand her over to Bob. So when Bob subsequently does something terrible to the horse, Sweetapple wants revenge. But is revenge the solution or the problem?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Stony Creek is a quiet farming community where good manners, good will and fairness must be upheld at all costs. No one embodies these values more than married P&C president, Jennifer Booth. Though her only child is long graduated from Stony Creek Primary School (one teacher plus casuals), Jennifer prides herself on leading by example. But when she has passionate, unexpected sex with the new principal, Brock Kelly, just before a P&C meeting, on his office desk, no one is more surprised than she. And when an accident at the school looks like sabotage, then they've really got trouble on their hands. Fellow committee member Sarah Howard, gifted with a highly developed intuition, takes one look at the guilty parties and knows her children's futures are in jeopardy. Everyone always says that a child's education should not be compromised and nothing about this scandal will end well for the school, the teacher or the community. Does disaster loom for Stony Creek?' (Synopsis)