Cirrus@Austlit

'Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer.

'A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

'Maureen loves her sister, but when Audrey's criminal past catches up to them both, she will have to make some difficult decisions about the limits of family loyalty - and just how far sisters are willing to go to protect each other...'  (Publication summary)

'A passionate love story and an honest depiction of the self-deceptions we create to sustain the idea of connection.

'Set between England and India, Faithless tells the story of Cressida, a writer and translator, and her consuming love for Max, an enigmatic older writer – and a married man.

'Faithless charts the course of Cressida’s passion for Max from the first giddy rush of sensation when she meets him during her first year at Cambridge, to the blossoming of a desire so potent it overwhelms her, and the great stunning blows to the heart delivered by this love she must keep hidden.

'When Cressida meets Leo, she is forced to confront the tension between a life of passion and a desire for ease, between her romantic idealism and the possibility of a more steady, attainable happiness.

'Alongside the story of Cressida and Max, is the tale of Flora, a child who finds her way into Cressida’s life and heart, and forces her to confront her own capacity for love, and for deception.

'Faithless is both a passionate love story and a reflection on the nuances of attachment, the nature of desire, the different kinds of connections and relationships that sustain us, and the ways that we deceive ourselves and others and, finally, reach stumblingly toward one another.'  (Publication summary)

'FROM its opening sentence Robbie Arnott’s debut novel reveals a world as old as storytelling itself.

'A young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte— who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire.

'The answers to these riddles are to be found in this tale of grief and love and the bonds of family, tracing a journey across the southern island that takes us full circle.

'Flames sings out with joy and sadness. Utterly original in conception, beguiling in its descriptions of nature and its celebration of the power of language, it announces the arrival of a thrilling new voice in contemporary fiction. (Publication summary)