Cirrus@Austlit

'Everybody wants something.

'An addict pleads to rid himself of the mystical force ruling his life. A girl takes drastic action to ensure her grandmother lives forever. A man untangles his memories and succeeds only in unravelling himself.

'GLUTT examines the cost of our desires, traversing the boundary of literary horror and speculative fiction to produce a gut-churning appraisal of wanton desperation.

'Darkly humorous and at times eerily grotesque, this debut anthology from author Helena Pantsis toys with fantasy and comedy to explore hunger in its most physical and discarnate forms.' (Publication summary)

'‘He used to smell like laundry detergent. Even with cologne, you could smell him underneath. Always the same smell. I would nuzzle my face into his chest and breathe it in. They didn’t tell me his smell would change.’

'Ella and Theo’s relationship is young and evolving and so are they. Their lives are going mostly to plan until a sudden cancer diagnosis changes everything. Nerves about meeting each other’s parents and living together turn to anxieties about survival. Easy becomes hard. Hard becomes impossible. Their lives cannot remain the same and now every moment is coloured by illness and the challenges that come with it.

'This Is Us Now is the story of two young people navigating a relationship in the most extraordinary circumstances. They’re faced with the hardest decision: when you feel like you are losing someone you love, do you hold on or do you let go forever?' (Publication summary)

'Intermissions is an anthology of over 60 original short stories, exploring the complexity of the human condition.

'The collection brings together musings on love and loss, experimentation, isolation, suffering, intimacy and connection, environmental collapse and the Anthropocene.

'Carefully curated by Grattan Street Press, this eclectic selection of stories from both Australian and international writers is haunting, uplifting, moving and absurd. We invite you to traverse its pages to discover the diversity of voices reflective of an ever-changing world.'(Publication summary)

'Set in an ominous underwater world marred by human destruction, the stories in Mer unsettle traditional mermaid mythology - beyond gender, beyond beauty, beyond romance. Merfolk have ruled their watery domain for untold years, but humans threaten it with deadly danger. Stranded and alone, Odel haunts an abandoned lake. Ondine drags her prey to a graveyard of their own making. Unzel pursues a threatening boat. Nothing left to lose, the merfolk will do whatever it takes to defend their home - no matter who gets in their way. In her debut collection, Samantha Amy Mansell weaves a series of evocative tales about vengeance, loss and the right to survive. Mer asks not what, but who, lurks in the deep.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Robert Hassan believes that we are ‘trapped in a digital prison of constant distraction’, and that the time we spend on screens is draining more from us than hours in the day. With the increasing amount of attention that digital devices demand, diminishing our capacity for reflection, there is less time to stop and think about our lives.

'So what happens when we remove these technologies altogether?

'In order to break free from the ‘digital prison’, Hassan booked passage on a containership and spent five weeks travelling from Melbourne to Singapore – disconnected and essentially alone. In this space of isolation and reflection, he was able to reconnect with lost memories and interrogate the temporality of both ‘clock time’ and lived experience.

'Uncontained is an account of Hassan’s voyage of discovery – a must-read for anyone who resents the encroachment of the digital on their inner world.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

''Welcome to Bellevue, where the mountains meet the sea…'

'Harry wakes on a ferry with no memory of how he came to be there. The boat is bound for Bellevue, a place he has never heard of. When he goes ashore, planning to catch the next boat out, his attempts to leave are thwarted.

'Feeling trapped and alone, Harry gradually gets to know and trust some of the locals, and hopes he is on the way to learning the mystery that holds him in this strange seaside town.

'But then a series of murders grips Bellevue, threatening Harry's new friend Xanthe and fuelling Harry's desperation for answers.

'Welcome to Bellevue is a fantasy action and adventure story, from first-time author Seth Robinson.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

A lost-race romance story. Typically, in this popular late-nineteenth century genre, male English adventurers travel beyond the edges of the known world and have their masculine and racial identities tested, but ultimately affirmed, in encounters with a lost race, remnants of an ancient civilisation often led by a female chief.

Source: Carter, David. How people have imagined Queensland. Queensland Historical Atlas, 2010.

'In 2005, Emma Marie Jones lost her beloved younger sister in a heartbreaking accident. Something to Be Tiptoed Around is an experimental memoir, in which Emma explores the nature of grief, loss, memory and femininity. Drawing on elements of Greek mythology and literary theory, Something to Be Tiptoed Around is a multilayered exploration of the fate of human love after death.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Forger’s Wife (1856) is a lively adventure novel, set in an unruly colonial Sydney where everyone is on the make. The forger’s wife is a young woman who follows her rakish husband out to Australia and struggles to survive as her marriage falls apart. She soon meets Detective George Flower, a powerful man with a cavalier sense of justice and retribution. Flower literally controls the fortunes of the colony: taking on the local bushrangers, inspecting colonial authorities, and helping himself to the spoils along the way.

'First serialised in Fraser’s Magazine in 1852, The Forger’s Wife was popular in its time and was reprinted many times over. It is Australia’s first detective novel – and most likely, the first detective novel in the Anglophone world.' (From 2017 edition)