Cirrus@Austlit

'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.

'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Peta Tully has found her Mr Right. The only trouble is, she's not sure she's ready to settle down. Not just yet, anyway - so when she's offered a twelve-month contract interstate which just might win her the job of her dreams, she puts her Sydney life on hold, packs her bags and jumps on a plane, leaving her doting boyfriend behind.

'Peta takes a voluntary vow of celibacy, but sticking to it proves harder than she imagines.' (Publisher's blurb)

'On a beautiful island lives a tribe of people who don’t smile or laugh much. Only a small blind urchin notices the wonderful things on the seashore. He tries to share them with the tribe, but they don’t notice. One day a sea creature comes to the shore. Together, the boy and the sea creature play in the water. The people of the tribe warn the boy that it is a monster, but they change their minds when they hear him laughing. They join in. However, afraid that the sea creature will leave and they will lose the happiness they have found, the tribe capture it and put it in a small pool. The sea creature soon begins to fade and die. The boy rescues it and the people of the tribe are left behind, wondering if they will ever be happy again.' (Publication summary)

'Small towns harbour secrets. Rising, receding and returning like the tides lapping the fictional coastal town of Kinsale, the stories in this collection revolve around Alice and Grace, friends since childhood, who grow to live vastly different lives.

Weaving in and around these women is a lattice of interconnecting stories drawing in their husbands, families, neighbours and strangers, each linked to one another by fate or circumstance. Having Cried Wolf is a contemplative and affecting collection - one that marks the arrival of an original literary talent.' (From the publisher's website.)