Cirrus@Austlit

'Bogdan Vulpe's empire is ruled with an iron fist. No one disobeys. That had been his way in Romania; so why should the City of Melbourne be any different?

'Killing Justice leads you into a world of unbridled violence. Murder, extortion and anything else that Volpe needs to succeed will be used. If he has to take retribution against officers of the highest court in the land, so be it.

'This latest challenge to Tony Signorotto and his loyal team is his toughest yet. Not only is he battling a violent criminal gang, but changes in the ranks of his beloved Carlton police force will pit him against an ambitious, careerist police Superintendent more interested in glory than justice. The fight to uphold the laws of the State continue in the gripping fourth instalment in the Tony Signorotto crime series.' (Publication summary)

'A coming of age story in a family where chaos is normal, the ludicrous is everyday, and the improbable is unexceptional. When you're growing up in such a turbulent environment, what could make it worse? Try adding lots of money, unequally shared!

'It Grows on Trees is a rollicking ride for Nelson and his astonishing collection of relatives and hangers-on that takes him across generations, several nations, affairs (both love and financial), and somehow or other... out the other side.' (Publication summary)

'Two Tongue World is a richly evocative collection of poems by the Greek/Australian poet, Maria Koukouva. Sub titled, The Diaspora Dialogues, the poems are indeed a dialogue between past and present, between the cultures of origin and upbringing, between the generations of a family.

'Deeply personal, these poems will strike a chord with everyone affected by the migrant experience and will enlighten and enthral those who have not had to live through the upheaval of migration. Koukouva unflinchingly confronts the pain and exhultation of growing up in the baffling world of the new migrant. She chronicles her growing up at once enveloped and estranged from the culture of her origin, the pain of trying to fit into a new world, and the maturation of a love and acceptance of the cultures, new and old, which have shaped her.

'This is an important collection. Koukouva brings a wonderfully sharp observation to her poems. They are at once clever, poignant, loving, enraged, joyful, and profound.' (Publication summary)

'The sonnets of Howard Firkin explore both the form and structure of the sonnet and its application in encapsulating the experiences of modern life.' (Publication summary)

'The Tercets is a remarkable poem, remarkable for its length, audacity, and for the lush, deft skill of its author, Jack Farrugia. Although it is a narrative poem telling of the aching longing of lost love, cast as a pilgrimage through the landscapes of the Levant, it is perhaps more accurately described as a descriptive poem, a landscape at once external and interior. It does not rely on incident to tell its story, but conjures a narrative of a stream of images, of the experience of the senses, of the hallucinatory imagination of the pilgrim. We travel with the pilgrim through his unending, footsore journey, through his remembered past, and through his questioning of his life and pilgrimage and its ultimate goal.

'Told in spare, three line stanzas which give the poem its title, Jack Farrugia has created a masterwork: a poem of breathtaking depth and range and beauty. It is an extraordinary achievement.' (Publication summary)

'Speakeasy is the first collection of Perth poet, Ellie Cottrell. It is a sparkling work, presented in two parts: Conceal and Reveal.

''Conceal' groups poems of self-doubt, of longing, of regret. 'Reveal' answers those poems in a celebration of love, lust, and the joy of life shared and explored. Although these poems are engagingly joyful and immediately appealing, they repay careful reading and re-reading. This short collection announces a wonderfully skilled new poet.' (Publication summary)

'When Alan’s mother rings to beg him to return to the family home for the final weeks of his father’s life, he baulks, unwilling to be around the man who tried to control every moment of his childhood and adolescence. But he is at the sick man’s bedside when his father makes an extraordinary request. Alan is tempted but does he follow through?

'Smothered is the coming of age story of a socially isolated young man told with unsparing skill and sympathetic insight.

'Alan grows up in a baffling world of stifling normality. His father, Tosh, is an ambitious man of more energy than talent; his mother is a caring woman who accepts the necessity of being seen to respect a conventional life. As he struggles to find purpose and worth, Alan is drawn through a tangle of drugs, self-harm, and self-serving friendships, always unable to free himself from the quagmire of family life and expectation. His final confrontation with his father and his past is both terrifying and consoling.

'Smothered is a work of great understanding, told with skill, humour, and compassion.' (Publication summary)

'Martha Landman is a poet who writes on Kaurna land in Adelaide, South Australia. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies in Australia, the UK, US, and South Africa.

'In her new collection, Like Scavenger Birds, she explores themes of identity, belonging, love, loss, ageing, and resilience, drawing on and finding resounding echoes in the richness and variety of life in Australia and Africa.

'This is a generous and thoughtful collection by a leading Australian poet. With vivid imagery and lyrical language, she invites her readers on a journey of discovery and reflection as she scavenges for meaning and beauty in the physical landscape and in the complexities of human relationships.' (Publication summary)

'Artful Women is a collection of poems celebrating the achievements of women in Art. Helen Cerne casts an inquisitorial eye over the roles women have played (or to which they have been relegated) and presents a work that is simultaneously joyful, wonderous, admiring, outraged, angry, playful, and deeply personal. This is a remarkable collection of poems, and one which is certain to have you discovering new artists, re-examining the art you thought you knew, and possibly even insisting that a few old boys share their pedestals with the women who worked alongside them.' (Publication summary)

'Joel Schueler is a singer-songwriter, novelist, and poet. The Amnesia of Tulips is a richly varied collection of poems, presented in three parts. It shifts between poetic styles and forms, exploring experience and insight and constructing an unrestricted language of thought. The book presents fifteen poems in 'The Collection Proper' which it follows with a generous 'Encore' of four poems. It closes with a musician's nod to his influences and favourites with another four poems in 'Tribute Corner'.' (Publication summary)

(Publication summary)

'When a wandering writer drifts back to an Indian guest house he has known for decades, he confronts his past, people from it, and finally himself. Written on an Asialink India literature residency, direct from a sold-out Adelaide season, award-winning writer and actor, Stephen House, presents, “The Ajoona Guest House”. Following his nationally acclaimed, “Appalling Behaviour” & “Almost Face to Face”, this latest monologue, opens the door on a dangerously beautiful, hidden New Delhi world.' (Production summary)

'Since 2009, PS Cottier has been committed to posting a new poem each week on her blog, pscottier.com, usually on a Tuesday. That discipline has not only given her a collection of thirteen years of writing from which to choose the rich selection for this book, but also the playful title of the collection!

'Tuesday's Child is Full is a diverse, sprawling, wildly entertaining collection of poems from a poet at the very top of her game. She writes with a fearless accuracy and a sympathetic wit. Her poems are calm and profound and effortlessly display the universal in the domestic. She is a modern pastoral poet, not only celebrating the wild and untamed, but placing our experience of an urban everyday in a natural setting, whether that is the death of that most unheroic of pets, a guinea pig, or the act of contemplating a mango. Her poems have the power to awaken an appreciation of the eternal and beautiful all around us.' (Publication summary)

'The Tragedy of the Little Black House is the second book of poetry by acclaimed Tasmanian writer, David L. Hume. It is a tale of now and then, a short story for one sitting or a long poem of many courses, set in a small valley at the bottom of the world.'(Publication summary) 

'Hidden Valley is a multi-faceted love story that examines its human actors as searchingly and lovingly as it examines the town in which it is set and its powerful and mysterious past. It is a love letter to an entire town, a region, and the endless rivers of history in which it is placed.

'David L. Hume has created an exquisite story of love, folly, strength, weakness, and weaves it all into a tender history of the lives of generations of ordinary and extraordinary people. It glows with the author's love of his subject.' (Publication summary)

'Senior Sergeant Tony Signorotto and his loyal team of blue have fought many battles against crime in the heartland of the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton.

'Now a new threat has emerged, and it is one of their own in the blue uniform. Do they trust him to see if he can save himself and his career? Or do they give him just enough rope to hang himself?

'This thrilling conclusion to Copsey's 'Justice' trilogy will take them on a journey that spans illegal gambling, the Russian mafia, an international begging scam, and down a one-way path of murder and kidnapping.

'In a fight to contain the destruction, Tony Signorotto and Phil Stone put their careers on the line. Signorotto leads from the front and tries to save his wayward colleague; Stone faces the ignominy of a forced retirement if they cannot stop a ruthless Russian gangster. Can a local police force do its job when international diplomacy is muddying already muddy water?

'The Hand of Justice is an intriguing mix of politics, policing, and power. The stakes are high and reputations will be made or lost.' (Publication summary)

'Carla de Goede's poems are poems of the celebration of survival. And they are a celebration, even the harrowing, the startling, the shocking poems. They celebrate the survival of the poet and the survival of her attempts to understand her world and to communicate her understanding to us.

'Although most of her poems seem centred in an urban world, they are infused with an arcadian magic. Buildings, seen from a train, are 'running like concrete emus'. Pedestrians walk past 'like speeding skinks'. An abandoned house is 'all dark windows / and skulking cats'. A white-coated scientist is 'like a kite stuck in a tree'. The natural world is everywhere in her poems and refuses to be excluded.

'De Goede's poems are intriguing, unsettling, hopeful, and joyful. She writes of 'scraping ink together / like I know what I'm doing'.

'She knows what she's doing.' (Publication summary)

'If I can, you can! is a love story and the life story of Hayden Walsh, a 30-year-old who lives with cerebral palsy. Hayden is a partner, a father, a disability advocate and has a special bond spanning more than 20 years with former AFL Collingwood Coach Nathan Buckley, who has provided a moving foreword for this book.

'Hayden's life journey has been filled with challenges from the day he was born, physical, mental and emotional. With an infectious smile and equally contagious zest for life, Hayden overcomes countless hurdles with good humour and humility, becoming a role model and inspiration for those he encounters.' (Publication summary)

'It's Franny's eighth birthday and she's getting her first pet - a cockatiel called Prince Ping Pong.

'She's always wanted someone to love, and more importantly, someone to love her back. But when Prince Ping Pong starts loving their daughter the wrong way , Joan and Richard are thrown into an absurdist parenting nightmare. They must try to remove the deviant bird while conserving what's left of Franny's innocence.

'After all, these are her formative years.

'Love Bird explores the natural process of childhood sexual development and how it is controlled, twisted and warped - often by those who mean to protect it.'  (Publication summary)

'Howard Firkin's withering look at life in Mullock, a small Australian town with big plans and bigger characters.

'What happens when one of the town's least respected inhabitants becomes one of its most important? Will Granny Beggard's eccentric scheme to avoid another drink driving charge derail Mullock's glorious future?

'Sad, funny, wholly unlikely, and wholly predictable, the end of Granny Beggard's dreams are the start of a brand new Mullock.' (Publication summary)