Cirrus@Austlit

'IS IT WASTED? OR A NEW OPPORTUNITY?

'Faced with visa challenges, the asylum seekers prove to be innovators, not victims. Drawing on their resources, they repurpose, recycle and re-create a new state trading bio-fuel via the mid-ocean garbage patches. Teenage Kit illustrates how you can draw a new future as activists turn to science. But what happens in this new world order?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Sleuth Quinn is on ‘The Ghan’, booked to celebrate a ‘real’ wedding at the sunrise breakfast stop out in the desert at Marla. But things go wrong. Are they clues?

'The train manager has devised an Agatha Christie role-playing mystery to attract international fans. Themed tourism is trending. Agatha Christie fans joke about ‘Murder on the Orient Express’.

'Intriguingly, the ‘Wed, Then Dead on The Ghan ’ scenario offers opportunities to ‘dress up’ , find clues and act out the mystery while seeing wildlife and the stark eco-beauty of the desert.

'Quinn deals with Scandinavian Book Club members passionate to see ‘kangaroos’, opal fraud, missing indigenous [sic] artifacts, inheritances and the mystique of long distance train travel.

'Plus performing a wedding for the descendant of one of the original Ghans. ‘Wed, Then Dead on the Ghan’ is not quite what the roleplaying tourists expected. Fiction becomes fact.

'Quinn, a celebrant with style and a few obsessions, but a good heart, solves quirky problems, mysteries and the occasional murder.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Francesca’s sister Carli goes missing and life is turned upside down. Francesca is sent to stay with her neighbours at the Kelly Station while her parents search for their lost daughter. When Francesca becomes involved in her own dangerous search for Carli she becomes caught up in a ghostly world that threatens her very existence.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

''I buried my father, married my sister and sorted the missing will.'

'Quinn, a celebrant with style and a few obsessions but a good heart, solves quirky problems, mysteries and the occasional murder at weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies in her country town.

'Ex-actor with a great voice who writes eulogies to die for! Not forgetting a few quotable 'Quinn's Laws of Relativity'. A romantic, but asexual, Quinn lives with her long term partner Art who runs community Channel Zero.

'The workstyle of a celebrant is never routine. Fake I.D. Fraud. Fights, even to the death, over wills and inheritance ... Mislaid rings. Lost bride. Food poisoning. Clients of varied ages and cultures are well looked after. Even vintage millionairess Flora with the much younger lover who might be a con-artist.

'Quinn solves most problems but not always in the expected way.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Through Mae’s ‘Village Caravanale’ and Brendan’s “Finding Out’, Whiteboarding is an exploration of just how raw and fraught the ‘Show business’ can be for teachers of adolescents in schools ranging from the ‘privileged’ to the ‘disadvantaged’.

'Mae and Brendan shared a Post Graduate year in Education, before embarking on their respective teaching careers and the rest of their lives. And while there are both similarities and differences in their experiences, commitment to their calling, belief in Learning and the humane values to be found in Literature and History, and the filter of a sharp, honest humour are common to both of their stories. 

'Whiteboarding is about Australian schooling from the chalk face.

'And Whiteboarding is a board-marker to many of the social sea-changes that have swept Australian society from post Second War to the present, through the ‘show and tell’ of Mae and Brendan.'  (Publication summary)
 

'Melek always finds answers, some are under her super hijab. For others she needs the help of newcomer Tien who draws fantastic worlds as an escape, or the dress-ups-guru Lily, and sometimes even soccer-mad Zac who NEVER agrees with her. Melek solves all problems, even rescuing Zac in the pool. And luckily her fashionista mother designs club colour-coded hijabs for footy fans. When it's the Book Character Parade, Melek can't find a book with a girl character in a hijab. With the help of her school friends, Melek makes one. Then Melek's next challenge is to arrange an Aussie Rules Girls' football match.' (Publication summary)

'Know Your Enemy is the sequel to Irregular Safari and follows the same family through two world wars and the Great Depression. Renewed terrorist activity, reprisal attacks and political pressure force the sale of the family interests in South Africa and after much difficulty, a gun battle and tragedy they are able to consolidate back in Britain. On the outbreak of WW I the family become involved and some are posted to the Western Front in France. The horrors of trench warfare and a field hospital are experienced. (Based on a diary written in the trenches by the author’s father.) The countries of Europe were bankrupted by the war and were ill prepared for the start of the depression and the Wall Street crash and were struggling for survival. Hitler emerged and manipulated the situation to form the Third Reich with plans to overrun Europe. Members of the family and their friends are directly involved in many of the lesser known secret facets of WW II such as Mulberry, Knickebein, Armadillo, Pluto, Un Grand Ruse de Guerre and the Quattara Rabbit Run Deception. An assignment to gather secret information keeps the family au fait with a lot of classified material but causes reprisal attacks from the ‘Enemy Within’ and amazing revelations of traitors operating on the ‘Home Front’. The highly secret preparations for ’D Day' and the Normandy landing reach a crisis that requires much skill, improvisation and bravery to resolve. ' (Publication summary)