Cirrus@Austlit

'The Professor is married to Hazel, a diligent and generous (but rather plain) woman. She is so close to her twin, Chloe, that both women live under one roof with the Professor.

'Back from an overseas trip come their daughters — triplets — ready to celebrate their twenty-first birthday. Family life in the otherwise peaceful house swells to a chaotic crescendo on the evening of the party, as the Professor feels the tender sting of his wife's accommodating ways.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Modern Classics ed.).

'Alien Son, in simple yet rich language, is the story of a Russian family settling in Australia in the years before the first World War.  Waten tells of life in his home, among the family's Jewish friends, among his new Australian playmates, on his father's bottle-o rounds - of their hopes, despairs, the comedies and tragedies - all told with the warmth, understanding, and sometimes lack of understanding, that is felt by a child finding himself between the two worlds.  His attempts to reconcile the demands of these two worlds rarely meet with success; often they end in situations that are at once poignantly sad and humorous.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Australian Classics ed.).

'With Armour, the great Australian poet John Kinsella has written his most spiritual work to date - and his most politically engaged. The world in which these poems unfold is strangely poised between the material and the immaterial, and everything which enters it - kestrel and fox, moth and almond - does so illuminated by its own vivid presence: the impression is less a poet honouring his subjects than uncannily inhabiting them. Elsewhere we find a poetry of lyric protest, as Kinsella scrutinizes the equivocal place of the human within this natural landscape, both as tenant and self-appointed steward.

'Armour is a beautifully various work, one of sharp ecological and social critique - but also one of meticulous invocation and quiet astonishment, whose atmosphere will haunt the reader long after they close the book.' (From the publisher's website.)

'When David McComb died in 1999 at the age of 36, he left behind an extraordinary body of work, notably the songs and albums he recorded with Australian post-punk group The Triffids. The fact that McComb also wrote poetry from an early age - much of it collected here for the first time - will come as no surprise to admirers of the songwriter's powerfully evocative lyrics.

Introduced by fellow Western Australian writer John Kinsella, the poems in this book will delight fans of popular music and contemporary poetry alike. Beautiful Waste illuminates a hitherto neglected aspect of McComb's brilliance.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Selected by one of Australia's most acclaimed poets, this inspired collection captures the richness and scope of present-day Australian verse. It features innovative and exciting poems - many published here for the first time - from our best-known poets as well as daring and insightful works from rising stars.

Together they create a lively sense of conversation, of voices criss-crossing the continent, exploring the many themes that animated and inspired the nation's poets in 2010.' (From the Publisher's website)

'Brutality in the workplace, rage in the streets, seething in the home. The vulnerability of political parties when they’ve forgotten why they’re there. The intellectual torpor of modern Australia. How power corrupts.

'Stephen Sewell’s play is an angry and tender depiction of an idealist who becomes so embroiled in a party power struggle that he loses sight of what’s at stake. When it premiered in 1983, The Blind Giant is Dancing felt like a sharp slap in the face. And in an age of ICAC, Union credit cards, speculative housing bubbles, a pulverised working class, vapid leadership… it’s definitely time for another look at this Australian classic.

'Artistic Director Eamon Flack begins his tenure with a company of twelve of the country’s great actors and one of the country’s great plays.'

Source: Belvoir 2016 production summary.

'For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.' (From the author's website.)

'Hours after rejecting the Corrowa People's native title claim on Brisbane's Meston Park, Justice Bruce Brosnan is brutally murdered in his home. Days later, lawyers against the claim are also found dead.

Aboriginal people were once prohibited from entering Brisbane's city limits at night, and Meston Park stood on the boundary. The Corrowa's matriarch, Ethel Cobb, is convinced the murders are the work of an ancient assassin who has returned to destroy the boundary, but Aboriginal lawyer Miranda Eversely isn't so sure.

When the Premier is kidnapped, the pressure to find the killer intensifies ... While the investigation forces Detective Sergeant Jason Matthews to confront his buried heritage, Miranda battles a sense of personal failure at the Corrowa's defeat. How far will it take her to the edge of self-destruction?' Source: www.uqp.com.au/ (Sighted 25/03/2011).

The story of Bran Nue Dae concerns Willie, who having been expelled from the missionary school in Perth returns to Broome on the far north coast of Western Australia. Before leaving Perth, however, he finds his Uncle Tadpole and together they make the journey home with a hippie and a German tourist. Willy discovers sex and true love and their adventures end in the revelation that all the principle characters are related to each other. The whole is a celebration of the multi-cultural life of Broome and of the failures by government and church to make the black population assimilate and conform.

'Written in the 1920s, Brumby Innes confronts the turbulent relations between the sexes and the races in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is published with another Prichard play from the 1920s, Bid Me To Love which, by contrast, is set among the fashionable rich in the lush hills outside Perth.'

'The two plays are compelling for their dramatic styles and for their insight into the novels which followed: Coonardoo and Intimate Strangers. And both had to wait more than forty years for their first production.' (Source: Reading Australia website)

'"Me and Ben had been mates since we was boys and if it come to it I knew I would have to be on his side."

Bobby Blue is caught between loyalty to his only friend, Ben Tobin, and his boss, Daniel Collins, the new Constable at Mount Hay. 'Ben was not a big man but he was strong and quick as a snake. He had his own breed of pony that was just like him, stocky and reliable on their feet.' Bobby understands the people and the ways of Mount Hay; Collins studies the country as an archaeologist might, bringing his coastal values to the hinterland. Bobby says, 'I do not think Daniel would have understood Ben in a million years.' Increasingly bewildered and goaded to action by his wife, Constable Collins takes up his shotgun and his Webley pistol to deal with Ben. Bobby's love for Collins' wilful young daughter Irie is exposed, leading to tragic consequences for them all.

Miller's exquisite depictions of the country of the Queensland highlands form the background of this simply told but deeply significant novel of friendship, love, loyalty and the tragic consequences of misunderstanding and mistrust. Coal Creek is a wonderfully satisfying novel with a gratifying resolution. It carries all the wisdom and emotional depth we have come to expect from Miller's richly evocative novels.' (Publisher's blurb)