Cirrus@Austlit

'The family secrets are only just beginning to unravel... 

'When her elderly mother is hospitalised after an accident, Vicki is summoned to her parents' isolated and run-down ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to care for her father. She has been estranged from her parents for many years (the reasons for which become quickly clear) and is horrified by what she discovers on her arrival.

'For years her mother has suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness but carefully hidden her delusions and unpredictable behaviour behind a carefully guarded mask, and has successfully isolated herself and her husband from all their friends. But once in hospital her mask begins to crack and her actions leave everyone baffled and confused ... and eventually scared for their lives.

'Meanwhile Vicki's father, who has been systematically starved and harruanged for years, and kept virtually a prisoner in his own home, begins to realise what has happened to him and embarks upon plans of his own to combat his wife.

'The ensuing power play between the two takes a dramatic turn and leaves Vicki stuck in the middle of a bizzare and ludicrously strange family dilemma. All this makes for an intensely gripping, yet black-humoured family drama which will leave you on the edge of your seat.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)

When fourteen-year-old Allie's mother, Mae, mysteriously disappears in the dark waters of the harbor, Allie begrudgingly sets off with Julia, an aunt she barely knows, to stay at the dairy farm where her mother grew up. As the days pass and the heat of the wet season swells, Allie waits for her mother's call, certain that she will reappear. While Julia - determined to undo the damage her family has inflicted upon the land - replants the trees of the forest, Allie lurks around the cabin belonging to her mother's first love, a man who still lives deep within the valley. But when the truth about Mae's childhood and Allie's mythical father, the balloon man, begins to surface, Allie must come to grips with the lies her mother has told her and the secrets buried within the mud-rich landscape. Source: Book Jacket

'When Jack Irish, criminal lawyer turned debt collector, receives a mysterious message from an ex-client, he is too immersed in his misery over Fitzroy's latest loss to take much notice. The next thing Jack knows, the ex-client is dead and he is drawn into a dangerous investigation.' (Publication summary)

'Jack Irish has no shortage of friends. Jockeys and journos, lawyers and standover men, people in nameless occupations who aren’t in the phone book. These days, though, the only family he sees are Irish men in faded football team photographs on the pub wall. So when Des Connors, the last link to his father, calls to ask for help in the matter of a missing son, Jack is happy to lend a hand. But sometimes prodigal sons go missing for a reason.

'As Jack begins to dig, he discovers that Gary Connors was a man with something to hide. And his friends are people with darker, more deadly secrets.' (Publication summary)