Cirrus@Austlit

'Here is Plum Coyle, on the threshold of adolescence, striving to be new. Her fourteenth birthday is approaching: her old life and her old body will fall away, and she will become graceful, powerful, at ease. The strength in the objects she stores in a briefcase under her bed - a crystal lamb, a yoyo, an antique watch, a penny - will make sure of it.

'Over the next couple of weeks, Plum's life will change. Her beautiful neighbour Maureen will begin to show her how she might fly. The older brothers she adores - the charismatic Justin, the enigmatic Cydar - will court catastrophe in worlds that she barely knows exist. And her friends - her worst enemies - will tease and test, smelling weakness. They will try to lead her on and take her down.

'Who ever forgets what happens when you're fourteen?' (Publisher's blurb)

'Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote bush shack trying to finish his book on Henry James when his beloved dog goes missing. What follows is a triumph of storytelling, as The Lost Dog loops back and forth in time to take the reader on a spellbinding journey into worlds far removed from the present tragedy.

'Set in present-day [2007] Australia and mid-twentieth century India, here is a haunting, layered work that brilliantly counterpoints new cityscapes and their inhabitants with the untamed, ancient continent beyond. With its atmosphere of menace and an acute sense of the unexplained in any story, it illuminates the collision of the wild and the civilised, modernity and the past, home and exile.' (Publisher's blurb)

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Old friendships are expected to maintain their shape despite distance, lovers, careers, new friends. But twenty years is a long time.

'Ava is an internationally acclaimed novelist who carries with her a lifetime of secrets. Helen, a brilliant and dedicated molecular biologist, is faced with unexpected moral dilemmas as she finds herself drawn into bioterrorism research. Conrad is a philosopher with a popular media profile and a desire for a much younger woman. And Jack, whose career has stalled in the light of his long unrequited love for Ava, is a scholar of the history and culture of Islam.

'It is Ava's husband, Harry, a man for whom the others can barely conceal their disdain, who has drawn them back to Melbourne where they first met at university. As they deal with the reality of their present lives and their memories of the past, none will be unchanged by the reunion. And not everyone will survive.' (Publisher's blurb)