Cirrus@Austlit

'In The Female Factory, procreation is big business. Children are a commodity few women can afford.

'Hopeful mothers-to-be try everything. Fertility clinics. Pills. Wombs for hire. Babies are no longer made in bedrooms, but engineered in boardrooms. A quirk of genetics allows lucky surrogates to carry multiple eggs, to control when they are fertilised, and by whom—but corporations market and sell the offspring. The souls of lost embryos are never wasted; captured in software, they give electronics their voice. Spirits born into the wrong bodies can brave the charged waters of a hidden billabong, and change their fate. Industrious orphans learn to manipulate scientific advances, creating mothers of their own choosing.

'From Australia’s near-future all the way back in time to its convict past, these stories spin and sever the ties between parents and children.' (Publication summary)

'Tulliæn spans a fractured mountaintop, where the locals lie and the tourists come to die. Try the honey.

'Briskwater crouches deep in the shadow of a dam wall. Ignore the weight of the water hanging overhead, and the little dead girl wandering the streets. Off with you, while you still can.

'In Haverny Wood the birds drink blood, the dogs trade their coughings for corpses, the lost children carve up their bodies to run with the crows, and the townsfolk stitch silence into their spleens. You mustn't talk so wild.

'The desert-locked outpost of Boundary boasts the famed manufacturers of flawless timepieces; those who would learn the trade must offer up their eyes as starting materials. Look to your pride: it will eat you alive.

'Sooner or later, in every community, fate demands its dues — and the currency is blood.' (Publication summary)

'In a future world of extreme climate change, Perth, Western Australia's capital city, has been abandoned. Most people were evacuated to the East by the late '30s and organised infrastructure and services have gone.

A few thousand obstinate and independent souls cling to the city and to the southern towns. Living mostly by night to endure the fierce temperatures, they are creating a new culture in defiance of official expectations. A teenage girl stolen from her family as a child; a troupe of street actors who affect their new culture with memories of the old; a boy born into the wrong body; and a teacher who is pushed into the role of guide tell the story of The Nightside.' -- From the publisher's website.

'Why are certain subjects so difficult to talk about? What is justice? Why do writers think that other people’s lives are fair game? And what do we really know about the first chemist?

'A story about history, women, science (and also the demonic); a crime story, based upon a true crime; a realist satire of the supposedly sex-savvy; and a story exploring lies, and the space between the real and the unreal. Welcome to the worlds of Lucy Sussex, and to her many varied modes.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Caution: Contains Small Parts is an intimate, unsettling collection from award-winning author Kirstyn McDermott.

'A creepy wooden dog that refuses to play dead.

'A gifted crisis counsellor and the mysterious, melancholy girl she cannot seem to reach.

'A once-successful fantasy author whose life has become a horror story – now with added unicorns.

'An isolated woman whose obsession with sex dolls takes a harrowing, unexpected turn.

'Four stories that will haunt you long after their final pages are turned.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Secret Lives of Books is the much anticipated all new original collection of short stories from one of Australia’s most respected and loved science fiction writers. Winner of the Chandler Award for outstanding achievement in Australian science fiction, Rosaleen Love’s previous collections Total Devotion Machine and Evolution Annie were published by the Women’s Press alongside classic works by Joanna Russ, Suzy McKee Charnas and Octavia Butler.' (Publication summary)