Cirrus@Austlit

'One teacher. One school. One year.

'Brendan James Murray has been a high school teacher for more than ten years. In that time he has seen hundreds of kids move through the same hallways and classrooms - boisterous, angry, shy, big-hearted, awkward - all of them on the journey to adulthood.

'In The School, he paints an astonishingly vivid portrait of a single school year, perfectly capturing the highs and lows of being a teenager, as well as the fire, passion and occasional heartbreak of being their teacher. Hilarious, heartfelt and true, it is a timeless story of a teacher and his classes, a must-read for any parent, and a tribute to the art of teaching.' (Publication summary)

'A chance encounter in a fish-’n’-chip shop set Brendan Murray on the trail of a mystery. Had a gay man been secretly murdered on HMAS Australia during the Second World War?

'The veteran he spoke to was certain. ‘I knew about it,’ he said. ‘We all did.’

'But was the story true? If so, who was the dead man? And why was it so hard to find out?

'The Drowned Man is a search for the answer, almost stymied by cover-up and silence. In the end, it brings us to the lies that have shrouded our understanding of war, and especially of war at sea.

'As one of the survivors poignantly says, ‘I want to pass it on to the next generation. What it was like. What it was really like.’'

Source: Publisher's blurb.