Cirrus@Austlit

'It's been five long years since violence erupted between young migrants and local police in Melbourne's inner west. A police-led trip to hike the Kokoda Trail hopes to rebuild relationships in the community, but as training gets underway, fresh allegations of racial profiling have everyone on a knife-edge.

'For wannabe rapper Ali, pride is hard to come by in the commission towers as both gentrification and his best friend's court date creep closer.

'Classmate Tyler's anger - at his dysfunctional family, and a world that denies his dreams - is close to ignition, and the way out is dangerously narrow.

'Young and idealistic teacher Anna's life is in disarray, but she knows she has to take a stand against the school system that's failing her students.

'And Paul, a cop new to the beat, quickly realises that it'll take a lot more than community policing to repair the mutual mistrust with local youth.

'From the vial-studded stairs of the high-rises to the melting pot classrooms of secondary schools, to the mud-sucking jungle of Kokoda, No Church in the Wild is a deeply researched, richly imagined novel that interrogates the jaggedness of contemporary Australian society and the prejudices that still underpin it.' (Publication summary)

'In one way or another, isn't everyone on the run?

'A survivor of Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires takes asylum with old friends in the Dandenong Ranges. An editor-in-chief drives his sister halfway around the country to an east-coast rehabilitation clinic. A single mother flies to Perth with her autistic son for one last holiday. A father at the end of his tether tries to survive the chaos of the Sydney Royal Easter Show. A group of young friends hire a luxury beach house in the final weeks of one of their lives. A postman hits a pedestrian and drives off into the night.

'When There's Nowhere Else to Run is a collection of stories about people who find their lives unravelling. They are teachers, lawyers, nurses, firemen, chefs, gamblers, war veterans, hard drinkers, adulterers, widows and romantics. Seeking refuge all across the country, from the wheat belt of Western Australia, the limestone desert of South Australia, the sugarcane towns of Queensland, the hinterland of New South Wales to the coastline of Victoria, they discover that no matter how many thousands of kilometres they put between themselves and their transgressions, sometimes there's nowhere else to run. (Publication summary)