Cirrus@Austlit

'From a Dublin childhood to London, then on to Europe, to Asia and Australia, there is a deep engagement with the world in this book about growing up, about human and animal connectedness, about friendship, love and loss. Power understands the uncanniness and endurance of memory. He can make us laugh, and then stop us in our tracks at the profundity of this business of meeting life. Each of these short chapters is beautifully complete; together the whole thing shimmers. In the most delightful and subtle of ways, the language, trajectory and wisdom of Tell it to the Dog underscores our need to embrace our own vulnerabilities, to confront our experiences and memories, and to believe as Jane Austen once wrote, that 'when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure'. (Synopsis)

'Nestled on a windswept coastline, life in Tidetown is quiet and assured. But after a mysterious and mystical black-skinned slave is shipwrecked on its shores time-honoured traditions are unsettled. As events unravel the unfinished business of the barbaric Fishcutter murder comes back to haunt the townsfolk and the unforgettable twins, Perch and Carp, return.

'In the wider world, rumours of wars, disease and corruption endanger the livelihood and the very existence of this sleepy town. Will Mayor Bruin provide a vision for the future? Can the monks on the Island of Good Hope offer salvation in a time when faith is tested? Can Judge Omega keep evil at bay?

'All the while, Oscar Flowers, free from his Tidetown childhood, is on his own adventurous quest in lands beyond the sea: a pilgrim's progress striving for home and purpose, and in search of what it means to be a man.

'In Robert Power's masterful third novel, Mrs April, Brother Moses, Oscar and other much-loved characters that first appeared in the magical In Search of the Blue Tiger reconnect in an unexpected and mesmerising tale of adventure and spirit.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In these sixteen tales, Robert Power captures the joys and frailties of seemingly ordinary lives with extraordinary perception and wit. The stories take us from a Manhattan diner to a train station in Vietnam, from the Wild West to small town Australia, in a dazzling display of faith in language and in life.

'A man staying in New York pretends to be blind and inveigles his way through the defences of a lonely diner waitress; a child beggar in Vietnam makes his determined way through loss and into the world; a father falls prey to the temptations of the internet; a client discovers his psychiatrists startling secret; and a wife sends a beautiful, but shocking, letter to her husband, the postman. Each delicious story transports the reader into another world and life with authorial grace and an assured lightness of touch.' (Publication summary)

'A novel of psychological precision, social and political observation and Hitchcock-like suspense.

London-based scientist Anthony Malloy has made a discovery that will hugely benefit global health. A pharmaceutical company is keen to market his invention of the single-use syringe, but its backing comes at a terrible price. What ensues entangles Anthony in a web of intrigue and blackmail that has unforeseeable and surprising consequences for him and the women in his life: his radical sister, his musically gifted daughter and his soon-to-be-ex-wife. His dilemma-fuelled and conscience-ridden journey takes him from London to Vietnam and Thailand and then on to Chicago and Bogota. ' (Publisher's blurb)

Robert Power's story about a man's visit to New York, and his callous treatment of a lonely waitress he meets in a diner there, has come second in The Age short-story award.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 'Eleven year old Oscar Flowers is on a quest to make sense of the strange world of adults that surrounds him in the seaside town of Tidetown. The bizarre behaviour of his parents and great aunt impels him to search for the blue tiger, a powerful and beautiful animal that will save his family from themselves. Mrs April, the town's librarian, helps Oscar in his pursuit of knowledge and generously shares her great love of books with him. A deep and wondrous friendship develops. Yet as Oscar falls under the influence of his peers, the fishmonger's peculiar twin daughters, Perch and Carp, he becomes embroiled in a dark crime of vengeance with seemingly disastrous consequences.

'Hugely positive and an imaginative tour de force In Search of the Blue Tiger is at once a celebration of books and reading, an affecting love story between a widowed town librarian and a lonely troubled child and a gripping testament to the way that any of us can move beyond the mistakes of our past to a new beginning.' (Publication summary)