Cirrus@Austlit

'A heartfelt, funny and uplifting debut about two failing marriages, two strangers falling in love, two friends embarking on a catering business - and the four funerals that connect them all 

'This is a story about Clare, Louisa and Chris. And sometimes Paul, and less often, Beth. It is most certainly not about frittatas (a terrible concession), and more to do with lemon tart (a perfect contrast of textures).

'It is about what to do when your husband tells you that he doesn't love you anymore. And what to do when your wife leaves you after too many rounds of IVF. 'It's about helping your new friend with her funeral catering business, and discovering that, sometimes, the most unlikely of pairings are the very, very best. It is about food that is outrageously good and comforting to sad people. And, for once, not being sensible, and throwing away everything you know.

'Catering, like life, doesn't always go according to plan, and as Clare, Louisa and Chris's stories become more intertwined, they will learn that life will always manage to break in to remind you of just how good it can be.

'This is a book about living. After all, the thing about death is that it makes life important.'(Publication summary)

'The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.

'The house lights lower. 

'The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness. '

'As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.

'Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.

'As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.' (Publication summary)

'An operatic fantasia by Richard Mills, ’Tis Pity reunites the creative forces of international chanteuse Meow Meow and director Cameron Menzies to create a brand new work, following their acclaimed production of The Seven Deadly Sins.

'Richard Mills composes a flight of fancy on ‘selling the skin and the teeth’. A song cycle on the complexities of sex, pleasure, survival and salvation, trade transactions and razzle dazzle rouge through the ages, from Ishtar to the Internet, the vamp, the saint and the mirror, suckers and succour, preaching and pragmatism.

'Be drawn into a fantastical history of the concubine, the courtesan, the conqueror, the queen and the sing song girl. With texts ancient and modern, old and original.' (Production summary)