Cirrus@Austlit

'Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

'Problem is, they’re not alone.

'So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Turns out everyone can use a friendly neighbourhood gangster in their life now and again.

Jay Malkoun isn't the type of man who lets a little thing like being blown up slow him down. In March 2019, a car bomb outside a gym in Athens detonated the Mercedes Jay's children had been riding in less than an hour earlier. It was an explosion heard around the world, as global media, law enforcement agencies & underworld cartels speculated on who had moved to assassinate the former gangster and retired leader of one of the world's most feared and powerful underworld organisations. There were a hundred possible suspects. Jay has some ideas about it too.

'Now, in this gripping true crime autobiography, for the first time, Jay tells his story, that of one of the most fascinating and complex figures that Australia has ever given the world. Jay is street-fighter from Melbourne's roughest suburb who rubs shoulders with movie stars and opera singers. Convicted drug trafficker and champion horse breeder. Survivor of the Melbourne underworld wars, and ten years in Australia's most brutal prison. Nightclub enforcer and peacemaker. Strip-club mogul and incurable romantic. A family man of deep religious faith who is capable of extreme violence when pushed. A loving father and a loyal son. A negotiator of multi-million-dollar deals in both the boardroom and the backroom. The one-time leader of one of the most influential and powerful outlaw motorcycle clubs the world has ever seen, whose power extends across the globe. Now, the author of this stunning autobiography.

Confronting, confounding, hard to the core, and laugh-out loud funny, this is Jay Malkoun in his own words - a compelling narrative of violence, contradiction, and redemption. It is both an unprecedented tour of the underworld, and a compelling exploration of a man who has lived a hundred lifetimes in one and is now ready to tell his story. (Publication summary) 

'Cat is like any other teenager who wants to fight the powers that be. There's just one complication . . . her mother is the Prime Minister of Australia.

'Catalina Parkes Perez is used to living a pretty normal life. But when her mum is thrust into the role of Prime Minister, Cat's life becomes anything but.

'Life at The Lodge means having every moment scheduled and every outfit pre-approved. But it's not just the dinner parties and daggy dresses - Cat and her mum disagree on practically everything, especially the government's climate policy.

'Now someone is trying to sabotage the new Prime Minister - putting Cat, and everything she loves, in danger. Will she, with the help of some new friends, be able to make things right, for her family and the country?

'Inspired by the original program created by Tristram Baumber and Matthew Allred, as seen on ABC TV.'   (Publication summary)

'The squad you love is out of time. Prepare for the thrilling finale in the epic, best-selling Aurora Cycle series about a band of unlikely heroes who just might be the galaxy's last hope for survival.

'Is this the end?

'What happens when you ask a bunch of losers, discipline cases, and misfits to save the galaxy from an ancient evil? The ancient evil wins, of course.

'Wait. . . . Not. So. Fast.

'When we last saw Squad 312, they working together seamlessly (aka, freaking out) as an intergalactic battle raged and an ancient superweapon threatened to obliterate Earth. Everything went horribly wrong, naturally.

'But as it turns out, not all endings are endings, and the team has one last chance to rewrite theirs. Maybe two. It's complicated.

'Cue Zila, Fin, and Scarlett (and MAGELLAN!): making friends, making enemies, and making history? Sure, no problem

'Cue Tyler, Kal, and Auri: uniting with two of the galaxy’s most hated villains? Um, okay. That, too.

'Actually saving the galaxy, though?

'Now that will take a miracle.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Luther Fox, a loner, haunted by his past, makes his living as an illegal fisherman, a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, he grew melons and played guitar in the family band. Robbed of all that, he has turned his back on music. There's too much emotion in it, too much memory and pain.

One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each other no matter how dangerous it is, and out on White Point it is very dangerous.

Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature. Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion, and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.

'The most ingenious, unique novel you will read all year, where you choose your own story as you travel across the world

'You’ve grown roots, you’re gathering moss. You’re desperate to escape your boring life teaching English in Jakarta, to go out and see the world. So you make a Faustian pact with a devil, who gives you a gift, and a warning. A pair of red shoes to take you wherever you want to go.

'But where will you choose to go?

'To New York, to follow your dreams?

'To Berlin or Amsterdam? Lima or Tijuana? Or onto a train that will never stop?

'You’re forever wandering, everywhere and nowhere, but are you ever home?

'The choices you make may mean you end up as a tourist or an undocumented migrant, a mother or a murderer, and you will meet many travellers with their own stories to tell. As your paths cross and intertwine, you’ll come to realise that no story is ever new.

'The Wandering is a novel about the highs and lows of global nomadism, the politics and privileges of travel and desire, and the freedoms and limitations of the choices we make, by one of Asia’s most exciting writers. It’s a playful and ingenious reminder that borders are real, that turns the traditional adventure story on its head.' (Introduction)

(Publication summary)

'Charismatic, intelligent and handsome, George Scott is unlike any other bushranger. Born into a privileged life in famine-wracked Ireland, Scott's family loses its fortune and is forced to flee to New Zealand. There, Scott joins the local militia and fights as a soldier against the Maori in the brutal New Zealand wars.

'After recovering from a series of serious gunshot wounds, he sails to Australia and becomes a Lay Preacher, captivating churchgoers with his fiery and inspiring sermons.

'But Scott is also prone to bursts of madness. The local villagers back in Ireland often whispered that a 'wild drop' ran in the blood of the Scott family. One night he dons a mask in a small country town, arms himself with a gun and, dubbing himself Captain Moonlite, brazenly robs a bank before staging one of the country's most audacious jailbreaks.

'After falling in love with fellow prisoner James Nesbitt, a boyish petty criminal desperately searching for a father figure, Scott finds himself unable to shrug off his criminal past.

'Pursued and harassed by the police, he stages a dramatic siege and prepares for a final showdown with the law - and a macabre executioner without a nose.

'Meticulously researched and drawing on previously unpublished material, Moonlite is a brilliant work of non-fiction that reads like a novel.

'Told at a cracking pace, and based on many of the extensive letters Scott wrote from his death cell, Moonlite is set amid the violent and sexually-repressed era of Australia in the second half of the 19th century.

'With a cast of remarkable characters, it weaves together the extraordinary lives of our bushrangers and the desperation of a young nation eager to remove the stains of its convict past.

'But most of all, Moonlite is a tragic love story.

'For these are the dying days of the bushrangers and Captain Moonlite is about to make his last stand.' (Publication summary)

'Nala the koala has lost her home. She searches far and wide, but some places are too sandy, some are too scary and some are just too small! Where have all the trees gone?

'A sweet story that gently touches on displacement, finding your home and preserving precious environments.

'All royalties from sales of this book will be donated to charity to help protect koalas and other Australian animals in need.' (Publication summary)

'Based on everyone's favourite song, join our own pygmy shark for a swim in the oceans of Australia. Who will Baby Shark meet and will Baby Shark make it home safely?' (Publication summary)

''It's a good story, Samuel. You're a piece of living history.'

'Oxford 1863: Young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years' servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia.

'When Samuel boards the transport ship Belgravia, he is stripped of his clothing and even his name, and given regulations of when to rise, eat, clean and sleep. On arrival at Fremantle Prison, hard labour is added to the mix and he wonders if life can get any worse. The only solace he finds is a love of reading, which allows the likes of Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist to become his lifelong friends.

'Samuel is granted a ticket of leave in 1867 and full freedom in 1871, but what sort of life can a man forge for himself in the colony, with no skills, no money and no family? Will it be the beginning of the life he has always dreamed of, or do some sentences truly never end?

'A colourful recreation of the life and times of the last known convict to be sent to Australia, The Last Convict is a moving study of old age and loneliness, as one social outcast finds meaning in his impoverished life through the power of literature. Meticulously researched and brilliantly woven into an engaging fictional account, it is an unforgettable story by an award-winning writer and historian.' (Publication summary)

A compelling new thriller from the author of Greenlight. When a popular TV presenter shoots himself live on air, his twin brother calls on the help of Jack Quick (from Greenlight) to help him search for answers – and they uncover a disturbing link to a suicide in their past . . .

'One million witnesses. One impossible murder.

'At 9.04pm, Sam ‘Midnight’ Midford delivers his light entertainment monologue to kick off his nightly current affairs show. He’s nervous and his assistant is convinced he’s about to propose to his girlfriend live on air. But instead of a ring, he pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head.

'When child pornography is discovered on his work laptop, it is assumed that Sam killed himself before his dark secret was revealed.

'But Sam’s grief-stricken twin brother Harry is adamant that the porn was planted and is convinced Sam was murdered. He may have pulled the trigger on live TV, watched by millions, but Harry believes someone made Sam do it. He hires Jack Quick, TV producer and true crime podcaster, to help him discover the truth.

'Together Harry and Jack watch Sam’s final broadcast more closely and in a reflection on the TV monitor behind Sam they see the scrolling words from the teleprompter: I thought you wanted this. Don’t back out on me now.

'Did someone talk Sam into killing himself via the teleprompter? And what could someone say to make a person shoot themselves in front of one million viewers? What secret did Sam have that would be enough to compel him to take his own life? And what is the link with the suicide of Sam’s girlfriend Lily 13 years before?' (Publication summary)

'Why would the police come back looking for a dead man?

'Young widow Tilly is making a new life for herself, keeping house for the rangers at the Binboona Wildlife Sanctuary in the isolated wilderness of the north-western Gulf Country. Caring for injured wildlife and helping to run the popular tourist campsite are just the distraction she needs from everything she left behind when her husband, Gerry, and young daughter were lost at sea.

'But when the police show up asking questions about Gerry, the peaceful routine she's built is disrupted as she begins to question what really happened to her family. The arrival of botanist Connor stirs up even more emotion and has Tilly questioning who she can trust. When she and young ranger Luke stumble across evidence of wildlife smugglers on a visit to the local caves, suddenly her sanctuary is no longer safe and it becomes clear the past has well and truly come back to haunt her.

'Set against the lush backdrop of the Northern Territory with its vibrant birds and deadly wildlife, this is a chilling and highly evocative family mystery about the wild and dangerous things that can happen in the most remote and untamed corners of our country.'  (Publication summary)

'Hi! I'm Katie.
'I have a wobbly tooth that won't come out! But it's not going to spoil my trip to the beach. We're going to eat mangoes and play beach cricket!'  (Publication summary)

'Hi! I'm Eve.
'I live at a roadhouse in the Nullarbor. We don't get many visitors. But today my cousin Will is coming. We'll have so much fun!'  (Publication summary)

'Maggie Cotton's life is a hot mess.

'In one day, she's dumped by her boyfriend, disinherited by her mum, and kicked off the three-year degree course she'd stretched to a decade. And that was before she received the letter saying she owed the government $70,000.

'But that's no reason to grow up, is it?

'With a decrepit 1960s caravan to call home, Maggie has to prove to her mother she can survive without a safety net, stop her loyal best friend Jen from marrying a scumbag, and convince her sexy workmate Rueben that she's not a walking disaster. For someone who's spent her life avoiding hard work, she sure can move mountains when she's got a little motivation - just don't ask her to move the caravan.'  (Publication summary)

'Four best friends and an ocean full of adventure!

'Sophia, Willow, Chloe and Olivia have been best friends since they were merbies. Even though they don’t go to school together, whenever they come home to Turtleville for the holidays, they are inseparable.

This holidays, something super exciting is happening – Turtleville’s first Talent Show! Sophia can’t wait. She was born to perform! The besties enter as a group, but will Sophia’s love of the spotlight ruin everything?

'Whatever happens, the show must go on!

'This series has been created in house by our super talented editors with illustrations by Adele K. Thomas.'  (Publication summary)