Cirrus@Austlit

'Return to the enchanting world of ABIA winner The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, as a team of booksellers must fight to keep dangerous magic under cover before the stuff of legends destroys our world. From master world builder Garth Nix, this riveting fantasy adventure is set in an alternate 1980s London.

'There is often trouble of a mythical sort in Bath. The booksellers who police the Old World keep a careful watch there, particularly on the entity who inhabits the ancient hot spring. Yet this time it is not from Sulis Minerva that trouble starts. It comes from the discovery of a sorcerous map, leading left-handed bookseller Merlin into great danger. A desperate rescue is attempted by his sister, the right-handed bookseller Vivien, and their friend, art student Susan Arkshaw, who is still struggling to deal with her own recently discovered magical heritage.

'The map takes the trio to a place separated from this world, maintained by deadly sorcery performed by an Ancient Sovereign and guarded by monstrous living statues of Purbeck marble. But this is only the beginning, as the booksellers investigate centuries of disappearances and deaths and try to unravel the secrets of the murderous Lady of Stone, a serial killer of awesome powers.

'If they do not stop her, she will soon kill again. And this time, her target is not an ordinary mortal.

'A wintry return to the somewhat alternate 1980s England of The Left-Handed Booksellers of London.'(Publication summary)

'Lin 'The Silent One' Vu is a gangster and sometime private investigator living in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider.

'Through grit and courage Lin has carved a place for herself in the Vietnamese underworld where Hanoi's crime boss, Bao Nguyen, is training her to fight and lead. Bao drives her hard; on the streets there are no second chances. Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory — a dangerously addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war.

'When an Englishman comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend's murderer, Lin's life is turned upside down. She is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon gods - of regimes and mega-corporations — as they unleash dangerous new technologies.

'Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must choose: family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Meera and her twin sister Kai are among thousands of hybrid women—Mades—bred in the Blood Temple cult, from which Meera was rescued by a mysterious healer and storyteller, Narn. Years later, Meera, still racked with guilt and grief, enrolls in college to take advantage of a generous new Redress Program. There she can only dream of ever being real, of ever being whole again without her twin, for whose death she blames herself. When Narn’s conjure stories buy Meera a free ride to a notorious horror reading series, she is soon the darling of the lit set, feted by the other students, finally whole, finally free of the idea that she should have died so Kai could have lived. It seems like, thanks to Narn, Meera can be re-made after all, her life redressed.

'But college is not all it seems and there is a price to pay for belonging to something that you don’t understand. Narn has lost a sister too, and Meera agrees to try and find her if Narn keeps giving Meera the stories that are slowly changing her—opening her up to memories she’s never acknowledged, secrets she’s never wanted to know—about Narn and her connection to a violent campus stalker. Time is closing in on all Meera holds dear—she is afraid, not just for, but of herself, of what she’s becoming, and of where she stands on the bridge between worlds—fearful of what waits on the other side, and of the price she’ll have to pay for knowing what she truly is.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Eighteen-year-old art student Susan Arkshaw arrives in London in search of her father. But before she can question crime boss Frank Thringley he's turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin. Merlin is one of the youngest members of a secret society of booksellers with magical powers who police the mythic Old World wherever it impinges on the New World - in addition to running several bookshops, of course! Merlin also has a quest of his own: to find the Old World entity who arranged the murder of his mother. Their investigations attract attention from enemies of the Old and New Worlds. Soon they become involved in an even more urgent task to recover the grail that is the source of the left-handed booksellers' power, before it is used to destroy the booksellers and rouse the hordes of the mythic past. As the search for the grail becomes strangely intertwined with both their quests, they start to wonder… Is Susan's long-lost father a bookseller, or something altogether more mysterious?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Year of the Fruitcake tells of the Earth-based life of a mostly-mindwiped alien anthropologist inhabiting a human perimenopausal body instead of her own more rational body with its capacity to change gender. This alien has definitely shaken a great intergalactic empire by sitting in cafés with her new best friends. Chocolate may or may not have played a part. Will humanity survive?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.