Cirrus@Austlit

'Discover one child's view of the difference a dog can make. Mr Mosely isn't a pedigreed dog, but he is just the dog Corey and his family want: he is loyal, protective and loving. And he is much more than that. He might well be the one thing that holds them all together.' (Publication summary)

'It's the year 1964, and fourteen-year-old know-it-all Robbie Burns is about to discover he still has a lot to learn.

'The world is changing fast, although the news has yet to reach the small South Australian town of Penola. There Robbie leads and idyllic life of rabbiting, backyard science experiments, and hooligan scrapes with his friend Billy. Penola is oblivious even to its minor celebrity as the birthplace of the poet John Shaw Neilson, but poetry means the world to Robbie's new teacher from the city, the stylish Miss Peach, a sixties sophisticate with stirrup pants, Kool cigarettes and Vespa scooter.

'Miss Peach's artistic yearnings and modern ways prove too much for the good people of Penola, but they fire Robbie's precocious imagination and burgeoning sexuality, until what begins as a schoolboy fantasy has terrible, real consequences.' (Publisher's blurb)

'"If being a vampire were easy, there wouldn't have to be a Reformed Vampire Support Group."

'Nina became a vampire in 1973, when she was fifteen, and she hasn't aged a day since then. But she hasn't had any fun either, because her life is so sickly and boring.

'It becomes even worse when one of the other vampires in her therapy group is staked by a mysterious slayer. Threatened with extinction, she and her fellow vampires decide to hunt down the culprit. Trouble is, they soon find themselves up against some gun-toting werewolf traffickers who'll stop at nothing.

'Can a bunch of feeble couch potatoes win a fight like this? Or is there more to your average vampire than meets the eye?' (Publisher's blurb)

'A thrilling action novel set in the not-too-distant future in which a brilliant young computer hacker fights to prevent the human race from being erased.

'It would take a very special person to crack the computer systems of the White House.
An expert.
A genius.
A devil.

'All of the above, some would say. Someone like Sam Wilson, brilliant teenage computer hacker. But Sam's obsession is about to lead him into a dangerous world. A world of espionage and intrigue; of cybercrime and imminent war. A world where logging on to your computer could mean the difference between life and death.' (Publication summary)

'It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. It is a brief time of optimism and advancement.

'Billowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic.

'Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land.

'With failing crops and the threat of a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape.

'Erotically charged, and shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel evokes the Australian landscape in all its stark beauty and vividly captures the hope and disappointment of an era.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.