Cirrus@Austlit

'Look up “hard-boiled” in the dictionary and you may well see a photo of everyone’s favourite master thief: Wyatt, Garry Disher’s taut, repressed old-style villain. Except, of course, that no clear photo of Wyatt exists. He has no Christian name. He’s a phantom, a loner, a man who should be played by Liam Neeson in a movie because Wyatt also has a very particular set of skills. Skills he has acquired over a very long career. In Kill Shot, our antihero has been transplanted to coastal Sydney and Newcastle from his usual haunts in Victoria, but that’s the only appreciable difference in this, Disher’s ninth Wyatt caper crime thriller. Kill Shot is just as classy and enjoyable as Wyatts one through eight, propelled by Disher’s impeccable plotting and brilliant narrative drive, characterisation and pace.'  (Introduction)

'In Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay, the five Dunbar young men – Matthew, Rory, Henry, Clayton and Thomas – have, since the death of their mother, Penny, and the abandonment by their father, Michael, formed a wild gang with their menagerie of animals. Brutal and violent to each other, the boys embody the term “toxic masculinity”. When Michael returns after a long absence wanting help to build a bridge, it’s only Clay who responds. His task is also metaphorical as he attempts to restore his fractured family. Matthew, the eldest, narrates the story of the bridge as well as that of the boys’ parents, in flashbacks from their childhoods.' (Introduction)

'David Cohen’s imagination, as evidenced by his short-story collection, The Hunter and other stories of men, is a truly remarkable thing. The titular story is narrated by a property developer whose construction site is plagued by an influx of ibis. He’s also troubled by the disappearance of his old site manager, but replacement Henrik is determined to evict the birds and tries drones, starter pistols and Ed Sheeran at high volume, but nothing works. When the body of Henrik’s predecessor is discovered, riddled with beak punctures, Henrik declares war.'  (Introduction)

'It’s the beginning of a Western: an outlaw on the run from police rides into town with a bag of ill-gotten loot. In Melissa Lucashenko’s wonderful Too Much Lip, the outlaw is Kerry Salter, her ride is a stolen Harley and she’s returned to her hometown, Durrongo in northern New South Wales, because her Pop is dying, her girlfriend’s copped five years for armed robbery – and also because Kerry herself needs a place to lie low. But with her demanding family, crooked politicians, sleazy property developers, dodgy estate agents and a hot, six-packed whitefella leaving her “burbling-jumping-fizzing on the inside”, Kerry soon finds small-town life is one big headache.' (Introduction)

'Dysfunctional family dynamics are well-worn subjects in fiction, as are the mysterious disappearances of young girls. Novels about Australians’ relationships with the sea, also, are so popular as to be their own genre. None of that matters when the characters are this heartbreaking and the language this ethereal. What a revelation is Belinda Castles’ stunning fourth novel, Bluebottle.'  (Introduction)

'It’s been a long time between drinks for Justine Ettler. Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure, Ettler’s previous novel, was released in 1996, and her debut prior to that, The River Ophelia, saw her heralded as a star of ’90s grunge lit alongside the likes of Andrew McGahan and Linda Jaivin. Her new novel, Bohemia Beach, is an ambitious and flawed attempt to connect addiction with personal, intergenerational and national post-traumatic stress disorder, while also referencing the Gothic Brontës and Kundera, among others.' (Introduction)

'In 1930-31, the worthy citizens of Melbourne were gripped by a brutal and depraved unsolved murder that filled the tabloids. Mollie Dean, a 25-year-old special education teacher, was sexually assaulted and killed in an Elwood laneway on her way home after an evening at the theatre with friends. Dean was sexy, beautiful and ambitious; a poet, aspiring novelist and artists’ model, and a mistress of Colin Colahan, a prominent Melbourne painter. In this latest addition to his true crime oeuvre, Melbourne journalist and polymath Gideon Haigh attempts to uncover Dean’s life as well as her death.' (Introduction)

'Four privileged Year 12 students are preoccupied with their upcoming formal and the new ice-cream place they want to try, when their art teacher gives them life-changing advice. “No need to play nice all the time,” she tells them. It resonates, and the girls embark on a daring act of civil disobedience that marks their glorious coming of age better than any dance could.' (Introduction)

'Sarah and her granddaughter Hannah are travelling from San Diego to Australia by cruise liner. It’s a homecoming of sorts, as well as the completing of a circle: Sarah was a war bride who left her family back in Sydney in 1946 to sail to the American husband she barely knew. She hasn’t been back since. American granddaughter Hannah, a student nurse, has left her boyfriend behind and has her own struggles with compulsive exercising and anorexia. She’s filled with self-loathing and as she listens to Sarah tell her life story from her childhood onwards, Hannah begins to see her grandmother, and herself, anew.' (Introduction)

'Children in peril make for gripping stories – think The Brothers Grimm and Dickens, A Series of Unfortunate Events and All the Light We Cannot See. In Sign, Colin Dray’s debut thriller, the child in question is Sam, a young boy recovering from an operation to remove a cancer from his throat, leaving him mute. His father, Donald, shot through to Perth a while ago, so Sam lives with his younger sister, adorable and lively Katie, and mum, Joanne, in pre-mobile-phone Sydney. His father’s sister, eccentric Aunt Dettie, has been of steadfast practical and emotional help through the separation and Sam’s illness.' (Introduction)

'On the surface, A. S. Patrić’s Atlantic Black is the story of a 17-year-old girl, Katerina Klova, and the 24 hours she spends unaccompanied aboard the Aquitania as it steams across the Atlantic on New Year’s Eve 1938. Her travelling companion, mother Anne, is recovering from a psychotic breakdown during which she’s attempted to gouge out her own eye and is restrained in the ship’s infirmary. Katerina is at once vulnerable and violent, dressed in her mother’s clothes and fur, adrift on the brink of adulthood. Many things are teetering on the edge: the year, as it passes; class distinctions, crumbling in the artificial air of the ship; the futures of Katerina’s brother, Kornél, and father Audrius; Anne’s sanity; and the world itself, on the precipice of war.' (Introduction)

'Australia has a thriving community of horror writers but only rarely does local horror find a mainstream readership. Lois Murphy’s classy, clever debut, Soon, deserves to be that rare example.' (Introduction)

'Miles Franklin-winner Sofie Laguna has developed such a characteristic literary style that it’s easy to forget that The Choke is only her third novel for adults. Here, her child narrator is Justine Lee, who is 10 in the early ’70s when the story starts. Justine has severe dyslexia, a crippling shyness and lives with her pop in poverty and neglect on a bush block, called Pop’s Three, on the banks of the Murray where it narrows (the choke of the title). She’s surrounded by misogyny and peril: from her Pop, an unpredictable former prisoner of the Japanese; from her two older half-brothers, who live close; from her violent, criminal father, Ray, who visits occasionally; and from a nearby estranged branch of the family, who have good reason to hate Justine’s.' (Introduction)

'Anna George’s first book was the well-regarded crime thriller What Came Before. Her new novel, The Lone Child, is less criminal and more psychological in focus, but it’s just as thrilling. It’s a story about the effects of motherhood and the moral choices made while under intense psychological pressure.' (Introduction)

'In My Lovely Frankie, the acclaimed YA writer Judith Clarke’s latest novel, Tom Rowland is 16 years old in the 1950s when he has a religious epiphany of sorts. He’s so struck that he defies the wishes of his loving but not terribly observant parents and enrols at St Finbar’s, a seminary on the coast. It’s hellish. Tom is lonely and homesick until he meets the boy in the cell next door, Frankie Maguire, who has been forced to the seminary after his fundamentalist parents catch him having sex (through no fault of his own). Tom falls for the tortured Frankie, causing a swirl of emotions around his relationship with God and Catholicism, his sexuality and his future as a priest.' (Introduction)

'In the prologue of Mark Brandi’s award-winning debut novel, Wimmera, something unusual is discovered by two young boys in a fast-flowing river. It’s a green wheelie bin with the lid bolted on, “like someone wanted it closed up really tight … like they didn’t want what was in there to ever come out”.'