Cirrus@Austlit

'From the critically acclaimed author of Mr Wigg comes an enthralling literary novel about a batmaker and a gifted young cricketer, set around the time the game began changing. For fans of Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

'Cricket has a willow heart. Batmakers around the world have tried everything, crafting bats from birch, maple, ash, even poplars . . . After two hundred years, cricket bat making is still beholden to a single species: salix alba caerulea - or white willow

'Reader Cricket Bats, one of the last traditional batmakers back in the old country, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive in a small workshop. Allan lives alone, all but estranged from his adult daughter, quietly going about his days with the cricket commentary for company.

'When Todd Harrow, a gifted young batter, catches Allan's eye, a spark is lit and Allan decides to make a Reader bat for him, selecting the best piece of willow he's harvested in years to do so.

'As Harrow charts a meteoric rise to the highest echelons of the sport, leaving his equally talented sister's dreams in his wake, Allan's magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in Allan and bringing him back into himself. But can Allan's fledgling renaissance - hanging as it does on the magic of that bat - carry on after Harrow is cursed by injury and a strained personal life?

'Set as the new short form of the game began to gain prominence, Willowman is a love letter to the art and beauty of cricket and a meditation on the inner lives of certain kinds of men and women, for whom it is a way of life. Award-winning author Inga Simpson writes exquisitely about a national sport you will never view the same way again.' (Publication summary)

'Your wife is a liar.

'Has your wife told you the truth yet?

'Do you know who Claire really is?

'Lenny has always known that his wife, Claire, is the love of his life. But somehow his marriage is in shambles, he’s struggling with the kids, and a string of anonymous text messages are tormenting him, insisting that Claire is a liar.

'Claire knows Lenny is a good man, but there’s a lot she hasn’t told him about her past. Now she’s terrified that the horrors that haunt her are about to put her entire family in danger.

'Strange new neighbours, insidious clients and schoolyard scandal begin to fracture Claire and Lenny’s happy families façade. As secrets are revealed and pasts uncovered, the lies will be exposed and everyone's lives will change forever. 

'A gripping suburban thriller from the bestselling author of Beneath the Shadows and The Hush.'(Publication summary)

'It sounded like a good idea at the time: A Hollywood spy thriller, starring, for the first time in history, an Asian male lead. With an estimated $350 million production budget and up-and-coming Hong Kong actor JK Jr, who, let’s be honest, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but probably the hottest, Brood Empire was basically a sure thing. Until it wasn’t.

'So how did it all fall apart? There were smart guys involved. So smart, so woke. So woke it hurts. There was top-notch talent across the board and the financial backing of a heavyweight Chinese studio. And yet, Brood Empire is remembered now not as a historical landmark of Asian representation that smashed the bamboo ceiling in Hollywood, but rather as a fiasco of seismic proportions.

'The Whitewash is the definitive oral history of the whole sordid mess. Unofficial. Unasked for. Only intermittently fact-checked, and featuring a fool’s gallery of actors, producers, directors, film historians and scummy click-bait journalists, to answer the question of how it all went so horribly, horribly wrong.'  (Publication summary)

'My journey from bullied schoolboy to world champion

'The story of Jeff Horn reads like a fairytale. Written with award-winning author, journalist and boxing aficionado Grantlee Kieza, The Hornet is the tale of a boy who, slapped around by bullies, saw through tears in his eyes a vision of himself as a hero, a champ, someone other people might one day look up to.

'Horn took up boxing after being tormented as a teenager. Fast forward a dozen years and the former bullied schoolboy - now humble schoolteacher - became world boxing champion on 2 July 2017 at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium. The fight drew a record crowd to the stadium and a global audience of hundreds of millions, with Horn's victory over one of the greatest boxers of all time, Filipino senator Manny Pacquiao, one of the most incredible upsets in Australian sporting history.

'But the fight was decided not amid the roar in the vast arena so much as in the chambers of Jeff Horn's heart, where the essence of his character lives with blood and fire beside his steel backbone.

'Jeff Horn's journey to victory will resonate with anyone who has ever felt downhearted or dejected, anyone who has ever been an outsider. It's the revenge of the nerd, the rise of the geek, the coronation of the wimpy kid who once spent his lunchtime in the library to avoid the tough guys.

'The now millionaire boxer's message is simple: never give up on your dreams, because if you push through tough times, amazing things can happen. Through his rise from the pit of despair to global sporting fame, Jeff Horn has proved to the whole world that anything is possible. Anything.'  (Publication summary)