Cirrus@Austlit

'A fabulous debut of folk tales and fantasies by an award winning author and illustrator.

'Small fires start in the hearts of Kathleen Jennings’s characters and irresistibly spread to those around them. Journeys are taken, debts repaid, disguises put on, and lessons offered — although not often learned — in these fantastic tales. Jennings’s confident voice lulls readers into stepping off the known paths to find “Undine Love,” “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” and further unexpected places and people.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In a kingdom where magic is banned and rules abound, Princess Emer escapes to the forest. When an accursed raven pecks her hand, Emer is transformed and finds herself at the heart of a war between her mother and her aunt. Only the Crown of Feathers can set them all free, and Emer must find it and her true self along the way.'(Publication summary)

'In a fairy tale equal parts gorgeous and gruesome, village couples seek approval for marriage from a stag with golden rings adorning its horns. That is until one suitor, determined to convince a woman to fall in love with him, makes a rash decision.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Walk into a fairy tale world that’s not quite what you might expect.

'Lara’s life of lonely drudgery changes when she gains an unlikely friend and learns that acts of kindness can bring their own rewards. High-born Niamh knows the kennel boy is her soulmate, but when she seeks help from the Otherworld, her future takes a surprising turn. Bella runs away from home on a stormy night and finds shelter in a strange old house, where she meets a shy kitchen hand, his autocratic mother, and a mouse. Young soldier Katrin makes her weary way homeward after a terrible defeat. A chance encounter with an old woman plunges Katrin into an adventure involving dogs, treasure and a lost tinder box.

'These four tales celebrate courage and kindness. They are about being to true to yourself and recognising the good in others.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'‘Once upon a time when wishing still helped ...’

'Return to the dreaming streets of the cathedral-city of Lodellan, where a new generation of characters face fairy tales and nightmares. Cordelia Parsifal has an enviable life, hard won, but the ghosts of the past are soon to remind her that no sin or omission goes unnoticed. Slumbering saints awake, hind-girls dance, boys become bears, and the fate of the upper- and under-earths rests on the whim of a single, volatile creature.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer, the terrifying creatures who live in the depths of the sea: safety for their merchant ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have suffered as a result.

'When Mirin's grandfather dies, her grandmother puts in train a plans to restore their glory - but at the price of Mirin's freedom. Finding amongst her grandfather's papers evidence that her parents may still be alive, Mirin is determined to escape and discover the truth about her origins. This takes her on a treacherous journey to Blackwater, the estate her parents built when they fled Hob's Hallow, but on arrival Mirin finds the estate in decline and her 'Uncle Edward' in charge: where are her parents, and who is this Edward Elliott really?

'A story of mystery and magic and the strange creatures that lurk beneath the waves.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'How can people work on trains? Read on trains? There is so much happening outside!

'With these words, World Fantasy and Hugo Award-nominated artist Kathleen Jennings opens the door to a graceful, nuanced world of travel vignettes. With an affinity for words that’s equal to her celebrated artwork, Jennings captures the passing landscape with an illustrator’s eye for detail and a poet’s command of rich language and startling metaphors.

'Originally published over the span of three years while travelling across Massachusetts, New York State, and England, Travelogues collects Kathleen’s travel vignettes together for the first time.

'Each of these nine journeys is infused with wonder and rich, unfamiliar landscapes, and those who climb aboard will forever look at train travel with new eyes.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Strange what chooses to flourish here. Which plants. Which stories.

'Bettina Scott lives a tidy, quiet life in Runagate, tending to her delicate mother and their well-kept garden after her father and brothers disappear — until a note arrives that sends Bettina into the scrublands beyond, searching for answers about what really happened to this town, and to her family.

'For this is a land where superstitions hunt and folk tales dream — and power is there for the taking, for those willing to look.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Picador ed.)

'Dachshund droids, sinister crones, shapeshifting children, a plethora of witches, dragonstalkers, familiars, slithering eels and, of course, bats, flit and fly through these pages, aided and abetted by Kathleen Jennings’s inspired pencil drawings. Stray Bats is a madcap miscellany consisting of fifty vignettes based on poems by Australian women. Lanagan delights in playing with language, rhyme, and rhythm.

'This could be the perfect gift for that slightly otherworldly person in your life—or for yourself, when you need a moment of magic, a dip into darkness, a spark of light.

'For the reader who would like to explore further, there are a list of poems that inspired the author and notes on where those poems might be found.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A composer in an unstable city-state accidentally discovers the perfect singer for his work—a clockwork man—and sows the seeds of revolution.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Produced to mark Angela Slatter's Guest of Honour role at Conflux13.

Includes short story 'The Tallow-Wife', 'Fragments from the Citadel', and an essay on the art of the world by Kathleen Jennings.

Return to the dreaming streets of the cathedral-city of Lodellan, where a new generation of characters face fairy tales and nightmares. Cordelia Parsifal has an enviable life, hard won, but the ghosts of the past are soon to remind her that no sin or omission goes unnoticed.

'One English village. Two thousand years of stories.

'People have always come to make wishes at the Silver Well: in Pagan times and Christian, during revolution and war. When Rosie arrives in the tiny village of Cerne Abbas with a broken heart, she becomes connected across the centuries with others who have yearned for something. Seven stories, set in seven time periods, reveal the deepest longings of the human heart.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.