Cirrus@Austlit

'Freja finds herself in Rome almost by accident. Her mother is ill in a Swiss sanatorium, but before she went, she made sure that Freja would be safe, living with her old friend Tobias. Tobias is happy to oblige, but is quite unprepared for the floods of tears that overcome Freja when she thinks about her mother. tobias is a writer of mystery who-dun-its and Freja has recently discovered a pile of them under the phone. One evening tears overcome her yet again and, looking around for inspiration, she happens to see the book she's reading at the moment, Rome's Reward.'  (Introduction)

'It wasn't a dream. The water was still there - the biggest flood he had seen in his life. The Indus River had become a sea. It fills Jehan with despair. where is he? Where is Amir, his younger brother whom he was holding onto when he was engulfed by the flood? where are is parents, last seen trying to stop the mud walls of their house collapsing? When he becomes fully conscious , he discovers he is wedged in a tree along with the string bed he had clung to as he was swept down the river.' (Introduction)

'Me and Lazella don't wanna head back to Earth. What's the point of spending a lifetime travelling to be old somewhere we never been before? who knows if the sky would look as blue through a pair of hundred year old eyes anyway. This is Tamara musing near the beginning of quite a long and complicated Space story. Tamara is an orphan brought up by her Aunt Lazella and smuggled aboard a freighter carrying phosphorous and helium from distant mining operations.' (Introduction)

'The author of this grim account of a bushfire actually knows firsthand what it's like: he ran for safety with his Oma when he was just eleven years old during the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983. Adam Wallace has written the story as if he was the fire itself.' (Introduction).

'This handsome volume is remarkable in several ways. First it marks the 80th birthday of its creator, Robert Ingpen, who already has two books listed for publication in 2016. Secondly, it is a book about his books, nearly 100 of them, and Robert is still hard at work on them.' (Introduction)