Cirrus@Austlit

'The word 'Aborigine' comes from Latin and translates as 'from the beginning'. It is an apt name for the first people who discovered Australia. Australian Aborigines survived here for at least 40,000 years, if not longer, before Europeans arrived. How they made their way to Australia no one knows, yet one thing is certain: indigenous Australians discovered Australia long before Europeans even knew a great southern continent existed. In the late 1700s, Britain was divided by class struggles and overflowing with criminals. Some people were extremely wealthy, but most lived in poverty and struggled to find work. Just as technology has changed the way we live today, in the 1800s, Britain was in the grip of the industrial revolution. Jobs once performed by people could be quickly and cheaply carried out by machines, so many workers suddenly found themselves unemployed. As a result, slums sprang up all over the country. There were no benefits for those who were unemployed, and many turned to petty crime, picking pockets, or prostitution to feed their families or pay their debts. When he left Plymouth in August 1768, Lieutenant. James Cook was a forty-year-old Royal Navy man from Yorkshire. His vessel was a 29.8-m former coal carrier once called the Earl of Pembroke, which had been converted and renamed the HM Bark Endeavour. Many people mistakenly think Cook claimed Australia for the British at Botany Bay. It was actually nearly four months later, on 22 August 1770, that Cook raised the British flag at Possession Island, off the far northern coast of Queensland, and claimed the eastern coast of Australia 'by the name of New South Wales'. Cook made several errors in doing so.' (Publication summary)

'Amedeo is Cruxim — an immortal dark angel who knows neither his purpose nor his past, save but to feed on the supernatural beings that plague the earth. When his one weakness, the girl and novice nun Joslyn, is taken and turned by his enemies, Amedeo vows never to rest until evil is expunged from his world — even if that means killing Joslyn along with her vampire brethren.

'On his quest, he meets Sabine: a guardian. Half-woman, half-lioness, she is a Sphinx who has been protecting humans from vampires since the dawn of time. But when she fails in her task of protecting a young boy, she is relentlessly pursued by her evil employer, Dr. Claus Gandler, a scientist collecting a sideshow of freaks.

'When the stakes are eternity in a cage, what will Ame sacrifice to save one or both of the women he loves?' (Publisher's blurb)

'Before European settlement, about 700 Aboriginal nations - each of which had their own Dreaming songs, laws, customs and beliefs and spoke one of 250 or so languages - existed in Australia by the time Europeans began to explore this continent in the 1600s. First Australians is a comprehensive book for primary school audiences about Aboriginal life and customs. Indigenous people had inhabited Australia for at least 40 000 years, if not longer, which makes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures the oldest continuing human cultures on the earth. Find out what kind of houses they built, the food they ate, the clothes they wore as well as how they adapted to life after the British colony arrived in 1788. ' (Source: TROVE)

'Raised by humans, Toby has watched his human "brother" and "sister" g o to school once they turn five. He wants to be a student just like them . But are wombats allowed to go to school? How will Toby follow his drea m? Every child imagines animals living as humans do in this story "' (Publication summary)