Cirrus@Austlit

'The debut novel from the multi-award winning author: six very different characters each have their lives altered by a tweet, a storm, a revelation – and a secret in one of their pasts.

'What brings six very different people together? Fiona is a millennial media writer; Sidney a failed poet; Tomas a thirty-something factory worker and father; Lexi a fading activist icon; Govita a non-binary visual artist; Henry a Vietnam veteran ageing out in rural isolation. On the face of it, they have nothing in common – but when a tweet goes viral, it sends their lives ricocheting off each other and upending their assumptions about each other, the world they live in, their pasts and their futures.

'Following her acclaimed collection of stories, Women I Know, Katerina Gibson’s debut novel demonstrates her extraordinary range of sympathy and interest. Compelling and discursive, ironic and serious, compassionate and ethically rigorous, The Temperature describes our fragmented society as it tries to absorb the significance of climate change, social media, shifting boundaries in gender and sexuality, and deepening gaps between generations. The Temperature is about whether we can learn, personally and collectively; about the cyclical nature of grief, catastrophe and revelation. It is a novel about how we might live through the end of the world.

'A contemporary equivalent of Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity or Michelle de Kretser’s The Life to Come, The Temperature marks Katerina Gibson out as one of the most ambitious, engaging and significant of our emerging writers' (Publication summary)

''In an age driven by desire, what happens when you want two different things?

'Set in the pristine, precarious world of MoMA, The Modern is a brilliantly wry and insightful debut about art, sexuality, commitment and whether being on the right path can lead to the wrong place.

'Things seem to be working out for Sophia in New York: having come from Australia to be at the centre of modernity, she’s working at the Museum of Modern Art, living in a great apartment with a boyfriend interviewing for Ivy League teaching positions. They’re smart, serious, dine in the right restaurants and have (a little unexpectedly) become engaged just before he leaves to hike the Appalachian Trail.

'Alone in the city, Sophia begins to wonder what it means to be married – to be defined, publicly – in the 21st century. Can you be true to yourself and someone else? In a bridal shop she meets Cara, a young artist struggling to get over her ex-girlfriend, and the two begin a connection that leads Sophia to question the nature of her relationships, her career and the consequences of being modern.

'Both playful and profound, inhabiting the gap between what we feel about ourselves and how we behave, Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel is a sparklingly insightful queer exploration of desire, art and her generation’s place in the world. It announces an exceptional new literary voice.' (Publication summary) 

'An epic, kaleidoscopic story of four women connected across time and place by an invisible thread and their determination to shape their own stories, from the acclaimed author of The Mother Fault.

'One of the lucky few with a job during the Depression, Peggy’s just starting out in life. She’s a bagging girl at the Angliss meatworks, a place buzzing with life as well as death, where the gun slaughterman Jack has caught her eye – and she his.

'How is her life connected to Hilda’s, almost a hundred years later, locked inside during a plague, or La’s, further on again, a singer working shifts in a warehouse as her eggs are frozen and her voice is used by AI bots? Let alone Maz, far removed in time, diving for remnants of a past that must be destroyed? Is it by the river that runs through their stories, eternal yet constantly changing – or by the mysterious Hummingbird Project, and the great question of whether the march of progress can ever be reversed?' (Publication summary) 

'A missing backpacker

'A million-dollar reward

'Ordinary people cracking under pressure

'Busy parents Mia and Ryan were devastated when their former nanny, Irish backpacker Tara, tragically disappeared. But that was two years ago. Now they want to move on and focus on their son … so why are the police questioning them again?

'When single mum Beth wakes up to a house burglary, she immediately suspects her abusive ex-husband. But when bad things continue to happen to Beth, her fear is overtaken by desperation and anger.

'A dark secret binds these families together. How far will they go to protect their own?' (Publication summary) 

'IT WAS A TRAGIC ACCIDENT. WASN'T IT? A private investigator returning to the hometown he fled years ago becomes entangled in the disappearance of two teenage girls in this stunning literary crime thriller.

'Reid left the small town of Manson a decade ago, promising his former Chief of Police boss he'd never return. He made a new life in the city, became a PI and turned his back on his old life for good.

'Now an insurance firm has offered him good money to look into a suspicious car crash, and he finds himself back in the place he grew up - home to his complicated family history, a scarring relationship breakdown and a very public career-ending incident.

'As Reid's investigation unfolds, nothing is as it seems: rumours are swirling about the well-liked young woman who crashed the car, killing her professor husband, and there are whispers about a second local student who has just disappeared.

'As Reid veers off course from the job he has been paid to do, will he find himself in the dangerous position of taking on the town again?'  (Publication summary)

'Two women separated by centuries but connected by one beautiful silk dress. A captivating novel based on a real-life shipwreck discovered off Texel Island by the bestselling author of Gulliver's Wife, Lauren Chater.

'Jo Baaker, a textiles historian and Dutch ex-pat is drawn back to the island where she was born to investigate the provenance of a 17th century silk dress. Retrieved by local divers from a sunken shipwreck, the dress offers tantalising clues about the way people lived and died during Holland's famous Golden Age.

'Jo's research leads her to Anna Tesseltje, a poor Amsterdam laundress turned ladies companion who served the artist Catharina van Shurman for one season at her property outside the Hague. The two women were said to be close, so why did Anna abandon Catharina at the height of her misfortune? And was the dress a gift or did Anna come by it through less honest means? Jo is determined to find out, but as she delves deeper into Anna's history, troubling details about her own past begin to emerge, disrupting the personal narrative she has trusted for sixteen years.

'On the small Dutch island of Texel where fortunes are lost and secrets lie buried for centuries, Jo will finally discover the truth about herself and her connection to the woman who wore the Winter Dress.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It's 1911, and 21-year-old Evelyn Northey desperately wants to become a doctor. Her father forbids it, withholding the inheritance that would allow her to attend university. At the outbreak of World War I, Evelyn disobeys her father, enlisting as an army nurse bound for Egypt and the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

'Under the blazing desert sun, Evelyn develops feelings for polio survivor Dr William Brent, who believes his disability makes him unfit to marry. For Evelyn, still pursuing her goal of studying medicine, a man has no place in her future. For two such self-reliant people, relying on someone else for happiness may be the hardest challenge of all.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.