Cirrus@Austlit

'Gary Chance is an ex-Australian army driver and nightclub bouncer turned professional thief and in need of a job. An offer comes from a former employer, once notorious Melbourne social identity, now aging owner of a failing S&M club, Vera Leigh.

'A shadowy real estate developer is trying to squeeze Leigh out of a rapidly gentrifying city. But she has a rescue plan that involves one of Australia’s biggest heists, Melbourne’s Great Bookie Robbery. On April 21, 1976, a well organised gang stole as much as three million dollars, a fortune at the time, from a Melbourne bookmakers club. The money was never recovered. No one was ever charged. And everyone associated with the crime has since died, either by natural causes or violently.

'Leigh maintains that money was not the only thing stolen that day. So was a stash of uncut South African diamonds. And she wants Chance’s help to retrieve them. Problem is, they are not the only ones looking.

'The heist always goes wrong and the consequences, even half a century later, can be deadly.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This book explores the history of Horwitz Publications, one of Australia’s largest post-war pulp publishers. Although best known for its cheaply produced, sometimes luridly packaged softcover books, Horwitz Publications played a far larger role in mainstream Australian publishing than has been recognised, particularly in the expansion of the paperback that took place from the late 1950s onwards.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The scant academic attention Australia’s pulp publishing industry has received to date tends to focus on pulp as a quickly and cheaply made form of disposable entertainment, sold to non-elite audiences. This paper will examine Australian pulp fiction from a different standpoint, one which links New Modernist Studies and the history of the book. This approach, referred to as pulp modernism, is used to question the separation of low and high publishing culture, dominant for much of the twentieth century. I apply this methodology to late-1950s and early-1960s Australian pulp fiction by examining the Name Author series released by Sydney-based Horwitz Publications, one of the largest pulp paperback publishers in the decades after World War II. The series took prominent mid-century Australian authors and republished them in paperback with covers featuring highly salacious images and text. The series offers a glimpse into a uniquely Australian version of pulp modernism. It also yields valuable insights into the changing dynamics of local publishing and literary reputation in mid-century Australia, and the little researched operations of Horwitz Publications.' (Publication abstract)

'From the late 1950s onwards, Sticking It to The Man tracks the changing politics and culture of the period and how it was reflected in pulp and popular fiction in the US, UK, and Australia. Featuring 400 full-colour covers, the book includes in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies, articles, and reviews from more than 30 popular culture critics and scholars. Works by street level hustlers turned best-selling Black writers Iceberg Slim, Nathan Heard and Donald Goines, crime heavyweights Chester Himes, Ernest Tidyman and Brian Garfield, Yippies Anita Hoffman and Ed Sanders, and best-selling authors such as Alice Walker, Patricia Nell Warren and Rita Mae-Brown, plus a myriad of lesser-known novelists ripe for rediscovery, are explored, celebrated, and analysed.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The first comprehensive account of how the rise of postwar youth culture was depicted in mass-market pulp fiction. As the young created new styles in music, fashion, and culture, pulp fiction shadowed their every move, hyping and exploiting their behavior, dress, and language for mass consumption and cheap thrills. With their lurid covers and wild, action-packed plots, these books reveal as much about society's deepest desires and fears as they do about the subcultures themselves. Featuring approximately 400 full-color covers, many of them never before reprinted, along with 70 in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies, and previously unpublished articles, the book goes behind the scenes to look at the authors and publishers, how they worked, where they drew their inspiration and--often overlooked--the actual words they wrote. It is a must read for anyone interested in pulp fiction, lost literary history, retro and subcultural style, and the history of postwar youth culture.' (Publication summary)

'A film sequel is always a risky venture, and thus it is with Goldstone, Ivan Sen's follow-up to his 2013 outback crime drama, Mystery Road. But it is just one risk the writer–director–cinematographer director takes with this film.'  (Introduction)