Valérie Malfoy (International) assertion Valérie Malfoy i(A106947 works by)
Gender: Female
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4 15 y separately published work icon The Low Road Chris Womersley , Carlton North : Scribe , 2007 Z1424551 2007 single work novel thriller

'A young petty criminal, Lee, wakes in a seedy motel to find a bullet in his side and a suitcase of stolen money next to him, with only the haziest memory of exactly how he got there. Soon he meets Wild, a morphine-addicted doctor who is escaping his own disastrous life. The two men form an unwilling, unlikely alliance and set out for the safety of a country estate owned by a former colleague of Wild's named Sherman.

'As they flee the city, they develop an uneasy intimacy, inevitably revisiting their pasts even as they desperately seek to evade them. Lee is haunted by a brief stint in jail, while Wild is on the run from the legacy of medical malpractice. But Lee and Wild are not alone: they are pursued through an increasingly alien and gothic landscape by the ageing gangster Josef, who must retrieve the stolen money and deal with Lee to ensure his own survival. By the time Josef finally catches up to them, all three men have been forced to confront the parts of themselves they sought to outrun.' (Publisher's blurb)

2 14 y separately published work icon Cairo Chris Womersley , Carlton North : Scribe , 2013 6008262 2013 single work novel crime (taught in 1 units)

'Frustrated by country life and eager for adventure and excitement, seventeen-year-old Tom Button moves to the city to study. Once there, and living in a run-down apartment block called Cairo, he is befriended by the eccentric musician Max Cheever, his beautiful wife Sally, and their close-knit circle of painters and poets.

As Tom falls under the sway of his charismatic older friends, he enters a bohemian world of parties and gallery openings. Soon, however, he is caught up in more sinister events involving deception and betrayal, not to mention one of the greatest unsolved art heists of the twentieth century: the infamous theft of Picasso’s Weeping Woman.

Set among the demimonde — where nothing and nobody is as they seem — Cairo is a novel about growing up, the perils of first love, and finding one’s true place in the world.' (Publisher's blurb)

6 35 y separately published work icon Bereft Chris Womersley , Carlton North : Scribe , 2010 Z1714866 2010 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 1 units)

'It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world.

In the NSW town of Flint, Quinn Walker returns to the home he fled ten years earlier when he was accused of an unspeakable crime. Aware that his father and uncle would surely hang him, Quinn hides in the hills surrounding Flint. There, he meets the orphan Sadie Fox - a mysterious young girl who seems to know more about the crime than she should.

A searing gothic novel of love, longing and justice, Bereft is about the suffering endured by those who go to war and those who are forever left behind.' (From the publisher's website.)

3 23 y separately published work icon Things We Didn't See Coming Steven Amsterdam , Collingwood : Sleepers Publishing , 2009 Z1564576 2009 selected work short story (taught in 3 units)

Nine connected stories, ' Things We Didn't See Coming follows a man over three decades as he tries to survive - and to retain his humanity - in a world savaged by successive cataclysmic events.

Opening on the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognisable, we meet the then nine-year-old narrator fleeing the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown of the grid which signals the world's transformation and decline. In the wake of this develop strange, sometimes horrific, sometimes unexpectedly funny circumstances as he goes about the no longer simple act of survival: trying to protect squatters against floods in a place where the rains never stop; harassed (and possibly infected) by a man wracked with plague; functioning as a salaried embezzler of 'the state'; escorting the gravely ill on adventure trips.

Yet despite the violence and brutality of these days, we learn that even as the world is spinning out of control essential human impulses still hold sway - that we never entirely escape our parents, envy the success of those around us and, chiefly, that we crave love' (Harvill Secker website).

4 1 y separately published work icon The Feather and the Stone Patricia Shaw , Rydalmere : Headline , 1992 Z89743 1992 single work novel historical fiction Tragically orphaned at sea, cast adrift in an alien land, Sibell Delahunty applies for the post of secretary-companion to Charlotte Hamilton and undertakes the arduous journey to Black Wattle Station in the Northern Territory to join her employer. The rigours of an isolated cattle station come as a tremendous shock to the gently brought-up English girl, and she is viewed with suspicion by Charlotte's sons. Only Charlotte's own kindness makes life tolerable, helped, in time, by increasing interest from the unmarried son, Zack. When a horrific disaster deprives the station of its mistress, Sibell takes charge of the domestic arrangements, and despite some early mishaps, she earns the grudging respect of the family. She also discovers within herself an unsuspected strength and resilience. But the harsh and unforgiving land is not finished with Sibell yet: her courage and endurance are to be tested to the utmost before she feels truly at home in her adopted country. (Publisher's blurb, back cover).
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