Cirrus@Austlit

'It's 1913, and Lily’s comfortable middle-class Melbourne life is completely upended when she falls in love. As she sits in the hall of her private school, portraits of past headmistresses frowning at her, she realises the ‘glaring, unalterable fact’ that she is pregnant, the father a young stablehand called Bert. Her parents disown her: the first of many wrenching challenges she must face. She marries Bert and they have a few happy months together in rural Woodend, where their daughter is born. When the war starts, Bert volunteers and Lily is thrown very much on her own resources. After Bert returns home, Lily has to face the most momentous decision of her life.

'Lily’s role as mother, musician, wife and lover, leads her to confront issues of patriarchy, nationalism, love… and the value of a human life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A world where the sun never sets; where there is no day and no night; and where shadows never move. Beyond an oasis of light, the freezing outer darkness stretches far away. In this strange environment we follow the stories of three remarkable young people. Together, these three must struggle to save their world. And in saving it, they change it and themselves forever. Here's what Bruce Gillespie, editor of the award-winning critical magazine *SF Commentary* says about it: "A real winner... Unputdownable... I found the characters instantly interesting, and the novel keeps on delivering surprises that undermine one’s expectations about the world they live in. And the landscape itself remains very vivid and interesting... If any novel deserves the top awards in the YA category, it is this one." And one of the book's first readers says: "It had me spellbound... knocked my socks off!"' (Publication summary)

'The Riddling: that’s what Britons call the day that their world was pierced full of Holes. Mysterious portals to and from other planets, huge and tiny, appear everywhere, causing chaos. In this midst of this disaster, a father must struggle to help his family escape. In other stories: augmented reality collides with sordid fact; a snake-oil salesman runs from a nameless horror; two adventurous young men encounter the sole inhabitant of a frozen city; a golden tower conceals a mystery at its heart; and we experience a very different take on the walking dead. These are but a few of the fascinating short stories and pieces of flash fiction by David R. Grigg contained in this collection' (publication blurb).

'Forty-three stories of speculation and fantasy by David R. Grigg, exploring the future and the past, the horrific, the humorous, the mysterious, the fantastic, and the merely disturbing.