Cirrus@Austlit

'A powerful literary page-turner about two young people in a race against time to reach a monumental solar eclipse, from famed Australian novelist Inga Simpson'

'We haven't always lived like this . . .'

'Fin grew up by an observatory, learning about telescopes and planets, inspired by the passions of her mother and father, then leaders in their fields of astrophotography and astronomy. Those days are long over. Now Fin, her mother, Dianella, and a band of outliers live deep off the grid, always on amber alert and always ready to run.

'In the outside world, things are not good: extinctions and a loss of diversity threaten what's left of the environment. With a new disaster looming, Fin finds herself thrust into an unlikely partnership with a stranger who has appeared in their camp. Terry is one of a new breed of evolved humans, the Incompletes, who are widely distrusted. But the pair will need to work together during a dangerous journey if they are to play their part in a plan to help restore the natural world - and humankind.

'The Thinning is both an exquisitely written novel of nature and urgent psychological suspense by the bestselling and acclaimed author of Willowman, The Last Woman in the World and Mr Wigg.'  (Publication summary)

'From the critically acclaimed author of Mr Wigg comes an enthralling literary novel about a batmaker and a gifted young cricketer, set around the time the game began changing. For fans of Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

'Cricket has a willow heart. Batmakers around the world have tried everything, crafting bats from birch, maple, ash, even poplars . . . After two hundred years, cricket bat making is still beholden to a single species: salix alba caerulea - or white willow

'Reader Cricket Bats, one of the last traditional batmakers back in the old country, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive in a small workshop. Allan lives alone, all but estranged from his adult daughter, quietly going about his days with the cricket commentary for company.

'When Todd Harrow, a gifted young batter, catches Allan's eye, a spark is lit and Allan decides to make a Reader bat for him, selecting the best piece of willow he's harvested in years to do so.

'As Harrow charts a meteoric rise to the highest echelons of the sport, leaving his equally talented sister's dreams in his wake, Allan's magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in Allan and bringing him back into himself. But can Allan's fledgling renaissance - hanging as it does on the magic of that bat - carry on after Harrow is cursed by injury and a strained personal life?

'Set as the new short form of the game began to gain prominence, Willowman is a love letter to the art and beauty of cricket and a meditation on the inner lives of certain kinds of men and women, for whom it is a way of life. Award-winning author Inga Simpson writes exquisitely about a national sport you will never view the same way again.' (Publication summary)

'AFTER THE FIRES. AFTER THE VIRUS. THEY CAME. A remarkable literary novel from the multi-award-nominated Australian writer

'It's night, and the walls of Rachel's home creak as they settle into the cover of darkness. Fear has led her to a reclusive life on the land, her only occasional contact with her sister.

'A hammering on the door. There stand a mother, Hannah, and her sick baby. They are running for their lives from a mysterious death sweeping the Australian countryside.

'Now Rachel must face her worst fears: should she take up the fight to help these strangers survive in a society she has rejected for so long' (Production summary)