Cirrus@Austlit

'Emile Mercier was possibly Australia's best-loved cartoon humourist. 
He created many satirical characters and parodies of comic heroes of the period, all presented in his unique Australian colloquial style. His serialised stories ran through such a diversity of comic book titles from wartime through the 1940s that it seems unlikely that many readers could have followed every episode.The collection in this book is a partial attempt to redress this, and perhaps help to rescue some of Mercier's work from the unjustified oblivion which ensnares so much of our "popular culture."'  (Publication summary)

'Emile Mercier was possibly Australia's best-loved cartoon humourist. He created many satirical characters and parodies of comic heroes of the period, all presented in his unique Australian colloquial style. His serialised stories ran through such a diversity of comic book titles from wartime through the 1940s that it seems unlikely that many readers could have followed every episode.The collection in this book is a partial attempt to redress this, and perhaps help to rescue some of Mercier's work from the unjustified oblivion which ensnares so much of our "popular culture".'  (Publication summary)

The life of Michael Kent, a former head of Woolworths, in Tasmania.

'Julian Halls has created an unlikely assortment of oddball characters ... and placed them in and around a mouldering, half-forgotten regional museum in Tasmania.

'The complex main plot concerns the relationships between two same-sex couples, one male, one female, and the whole thing is set in motion by a blowfly; it gets even more bizarre after that, although it's never incredible - just like real life.

'Several curious sub-plots emerge and they are skillfully woven into a surprising conclusion. The story is replete with intrigue, passion and downright skulduggery, as well as the finely observed petty tyrannies and bureaucratic absurdities of life in a museum.

'A central theme is that things are never what they seem to be; questions of forgery and authenticity are the mainsprings of the novel, and they apply as much to the people as to the exhibits in the museum.' (Publisher's blurb)