Cirrus@Austlit

'In eighteenth-century Venice, orphan Lucietta is raised by a fisherman’s family yet supported by a secret benefactor to study music. At 16, she takes up her position at the Derelitti Convent, one of the prestigious musical orphanages for girls, playing the violin in the ensemble and training the younger musicians.

'Confronted by her benefactor’s plans for her life, Lucietta uncovers the true legacy of these women and her role in bridging the past.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Nina is a tour guide at a small museum in Sydney when she is unwittingly drawn into a major cultural brouhaha.

'At the intersections of art, politics, identity and representation, this darkly funny novella shows us a world that is weird, disturbing and all too familiar.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'George hasn’t heard from his ex, Paloma, since she returned to her family home on Songbird Island in the Whitsundays. Now she’s asking for his help to uncover the mystery of who is stealing the family’s wealth, but what they discover is much worse than a case of fraud.

'With luscious prose and a sumptuous setting, Lana Guineay’s debut novella is a brilliant reworking of the classic crime novel.' (Publication summary)

'5 things you need to know about this book

1. It is written in lists

2. Set in Western Sydney

3. Features a dysfunctional narrator

4. Who is fixated on stories of missing children

5. Though she's not entirely sure why

As her world falls apart, will she be able to put the pieces together?' (Publication summary)

'Mirii has been caught — along with the friends who were helping her find her partner, Vu.

'Being in prison is just like her revisiting her childhood in Orphancorp — only worse. Under the beating heat of a desert sun, the prisoners fight for food, water and a safe place to sleep.

'Our heroine begins to question her urge to fight back and rebel as all it seems to do is lead her and the people she cares for deeper into trouble.

'Fast-paced, gritty and original, Prisoncorp is the final instalment in the Welcome to Orphancorp trilogy. It confirms Marlee Jane Ward as one of Australia’s best YA authors.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Stories of Perth celebrates the diversity that exists in this city. A place that is simultaneously welcoming and prejudiced, kind and cruel, aspirational and even eccentric in its mundanity.

'In a tiny book-lined office backing onto a supermarket in a small town in northern New South Wales, a woman named Acker sits smoking a cigarette and listening to the music of Philip Glass. Others come to her with their stories of violence and pain and through her writing she attempts to salvage what they have lost. A Second Life immerses the reader in a world that is both familiar and forbidding. It unfolds with horror and beauty to reveal a complicated and unforgettable portrait of a woman who moves through this world carrying secret histories, different ways of seeing, and many stories. 

'With a narrative voice that is at once eerily beautiful and slightly wild, and a premise that is surreal and ambitious, A Second Life stood out to me immediately. It's an exploration of the self and life and death, all of which comprise the psychological fabric of the main character, who occupies many selves and sometimes none at all.' (Publication summary)

'Sparked by the description of a 'Malay trollope' in W. Somerset Maugham's story, The Four Dutchmen, Mirandi Riwoe's novella, The Fish Girl tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide.

'Told with an exquisitely restrained voice and coloured with lush description, this moving book will stay with you long after the last page.' (Publication summary)

'Having barely made it out of Orphancorp alive, Mirii is on a mission to find the most important babe in her life, Vu. Vu has been taken to ‘Psynode’, a secret facility operated by the megacorp Allnode.

'After wrangling her way into the Allnode warehouse as a picker, Mirii meets Rowe, the daughter of one of Allnode’s execs, who may just be the perfect person to help her with the mission.

'But life at Allnode is far from cushy and Mirii has to battle her way through the dangers of her new job, the corps that she knows are watching her and get to Vu before it’s too late.

'Fast-paced, gritty and original, Psynode follows on from Welcome to Orphancorp, winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult fiction and confirms Marlee Jane Ward as one of Australia’s best YA authors.' (Publication summary)

'Populate and Perish is the story of Nick, a young man in Melbourne, and his sister Amira who travel to Lebanon after the death of their mother looking for their estranged father – neither is prepared for what they find.'

Source: Seizure (http://seizureonline.com/and-the-winners-are/). (Sighted: 03/03/2016)

'The birch is a quiet tree. It listens.

'Eight-year-old James and his family live in a beautiful house perched on the edge of a forest, within the curve of a giant glass dome. They circle each other like fish in a fishbowl. Aquila - James's philandering father and renowned artist - prepares to unveil his latest and most shocking work to the world. Suzanne, James's mother, medicates herself against a rising tide of loneliness and memory. James seeks refuge from the adult world in his drawings and dreams.

'But when James's sister, Charity, returns home, she brings with her a visitor who will shake their fragile order to its foundations.

'Atmospheric and poetic, The Bonobo's Dream is speculative fiction at its finest, probing the limits of what it means to be human in a world spun from myths and castles in the air.' (Publication summary)

'Determined to discover the truth about the disappearance of her partner, Nick, Ana sets out to re-trace the route he took as a photojournalist on the other side of the world - a journey that saw him presumed dead, on a ship wrecked off the coast of Italy. But Ana doesn't believe Nick is dead. In his photos, in the messages her memories of him seem to carry, and in her growing suspicion about his own need to disappear, she is increasingly sure he is alive somewhere. As she tracks his journey, she begins to witness the world that Nick saw through his camera - a world in which disappearance is not unexpected. ' (Publication summary)

'Lives turned upside down by a bureaucratic error in this Kafkaesque work of neo-absurdism. 'Original, intelligent and compelling - a rare combination. Formaldehyde pulls off a complex narrative with frequent time and point-of-view shifts without ever losing the reader. For a vella that borders on the Kafkaesque, it has a good deal of heart. The interconnecting stories are handled adroitly - the clever structure never gets in the way of the writing, which is sharply observed, assured and witty. Smart but never showy. The most original vel I've read for some time.' - Graeme Simsion 'Immerse yourself in Jane Rawson's Formaldehyde if you like the seriously weird or the creepily wonderful. This story has small but persistent claws; under cover of its smooth, conversational narration you will be clasped and dragged into some tough, strange places. Let it take you there. Let it blow your tiny mind.' - Margo Lanagan 'Skipping across different times and genres, Formaldehyde is a wonderfully strange and inventive story of love, loss and severed limbs.' - Ryan O'Neill' (Publication summary)

'A sharp-edged semi-futuristic riff about a rebellious teenager’s last week at an industrial orphanage.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When Luke is implicated in the tragic death of a child, he struggles to assert his innocence to those around him. While the accident invokes haunting memories of Luke's late brother, who died when they were children, he strives to maintain a grip on reality as his relationships begin to unravel.

'Set in contemporary suburbia, The Neighbour is an astute psychological drama that offers a powerful and literary meditation on the nature of guilt and responsibility.' (Publication summary)

'This book tells the story of Kim, a 16 year old psychic hired by the Vietnamese government to reunite the remains of the dead with their descendants. This is a delicate meditation on the nature of ghosts, belief and how the future is shaped by the past.' (Publisher's summary)

'When Jessica, a recently divorced mental-health carer, meets her new patient, Eloise, their lives quickly become entangled. The boundaries of their roles begin to dissolve and questions from the past are uncovered, revealing the fractured histories that brought them together.'

Source: Seizure (http://seizureonline.com/shop/midnight-blue-and-endlessly-tall/). (Sighted: 12/6/2013)