Cirrus@Austlit

'Why have burning dogs come from the past to haunt Ned Sheridan? What is their connection to the man who delivered him to St Andrew's Hostel on the day "all memory began"? Do the answers lie in the alien world of a Queensland sapphire mining field 2,000 miles away, peopled by pub bombers, poddy dodgers, and fading bush boxers?

'In the tragi-comic spirit of Lawson, Paterson and the early bush balladeers of outback Australia, the story of Ned's search for identity unfolds against a backdrop of natural beauty and elemental catastrophe. Through its richly evoked sense of place, its finely drawn characters and unfailing humanity, The Gaze of Dogs' depiction of the small miners' struggle against the greed of the machinery men paints a rare picture of a forgotten part of Australia's history in the 1970s.

'A quest and a mystery that takes us deep into the Anakie sapphire mines of Central Queensland, and the gritty lives of ex boxers, immigrants, and the resilient Kairi people. Here, with its kindness and treachery, naked loyalty and cold malice, is one writer's hard-earned truth.' (Publication summary)

'Wakuwal (Dream) is an intercultural history of Australia. It is a story that tracks five generations of descendants of an Irish woman sent to Van Diemen's land for stealing a sheep. It contrasts this with the events that unfolded for Australia's first peoples and of the inter-connections and blockages between new and old Australian cultures. The story follows characters within the European invasion of Australia and ponders whether anything is recoverable from the original and ongoing carnage.

'The story is a wild imagining of how things were, and how they got to be, now. The narrator is alternately a spirit being from Eire, an eagle, an octopus, fire, a willy-willy, a sacred dog bounding across the continent, and bAru the crocodile.

'Yolŋu creation stories of North East Arnhem land embedded in sacred designs as well as Aboriginal stories from the Pilbara, Kimberley and Cape York Peninsula are interspersed with modern narratives of Homer, Christ, Yeats and Joyce.

'Wakuwal is a book of hope: how faith and resilience kept ancient knowledge alive, how optimism endures in the face of ignorance and destruction, and how today's descendants of both the newcomers and the first peoples are beginning a conversation, many generations overdue.'  (Publication summary)

'After the mysterious death of his grandfather, 11-year-old Lindsay Armstrong and his family leave England for a new life in New South Wales. Property is bought in remote Billarooby, a small settlement on the Lachlan River. It is 1942. The war is far away, but a stranger the boy chases from the farm, turns out to be a young Japanese soldier escaped from a nearby POW camp. His witness of the brutal recapture of the prisoner, triggers the horrific memory of a festering family secret involving both himself and his tyrannical father. The trouble in Billarooby has just begun. Lindsay acquires a picture book about ancient samurai warriors and their Code of Bushido. He comes to believe that the prisoners wish for nothing but to re-join the Emperor and regain their honour, something he feels is lacking in the local world that surrounds him.

'Lindsay is not the only one obsessed with the prisoners. The district's paranoid fantasies of mass escape are decidedly blacker than Lindsay's imaginings. Racial tensions erupt as the great drought grips and threatens to destroy the once flourishing farm. Vigilantism combined with inability to tackle the truth about the Armstrong family's darkest past, drive Lindsay's parents to desperate measures and bouts of madness. For Lindsay, it's a coming-of-age of great poignancy as the story reaches its climax on the dried-up river bed of the Lachlan.' (Publication summary)

'Sydney Australia, sometime in the 1960s. Watched by family and friends, thirteen determined young Rugby League players commence a seminal year which finishes in triumph for some, tragedy for others. Welcome to the dangerous alleys of Sydney's inner west, in a time before credit cards, when working-class families bought household goods on hire purchase; when off-course gambling was a way of life and 'cockatoos' kept watch for local SP (Starting Price) bookies operating in every corner pub. Best and Fairest assembles a fractured mosaic of almost forgotten everyday lives, and creates a powerful impression of a culture and era now rapidly fading from memory.' (Publication summary)

'Chipman Smith is still in the closet when he arrives at the Hornbill Palace Hotel at Tlula Leisure Beach in Bomzawe in 1972, but he is well and truly out of it by the end. Or is he? Mr Smith will never be the same again, and neither will you, after reading Chipman’s African Adventure. This blackly comic tale balances throughout on the edge of laughter. Crescendos of absurdity and high camp drama supplant and transcend each other with accelerating speed.' (Publication summary)

'If the movement of tectonic plates and centrifugal forces were to shift the Earth’s centre of gravity, it is impossible to predict how fast and how far it could shift, where continents and countries could end up. How would we survive such a sudden cataclysm, changing the world, as we know it, forever?

'The Bird of Time deals seriously and intelligently with a major natural disaster in Asia, which sends millions fleeing south, east and west, while leaving many to try and survive in harrowing, impossible conditions, or perishing.

'Gavan Bromilow takes us on an almost incredible journey with a small group of Indian farm workers on the sub-continent, led by an expatriate Australian, Griff, and his Indian partner, Rohini, as they experience murderous and unprecedented events, following a catastrophic natural disaster that changes the world. Griff’s quick understanding, skills and single-minded determination are what drive their efforts to survive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.