Cirrus@Austlit

'Wilbrook in Western Australia is a sleepy, remote town that sits on the edge of miles and miles of unexplored wilderness. It is home to Police Sergeant Chandler Jenkins, who is proud to run the town’s small police station, a place used to dealing with domestic disputes and noise complaints.
'All that changes on a scorching day when an injured man stumbles into Chandler’s station. He’s covered in dried blood. His name is Gabriel. He tells Chandler what he remembers.
'He was drugged and driven to a cabin in the mountains and tied up in iron chains. The man who took him was called Heath. Heath told Gabriel he was going to be number 55. His 55th victim. 
'Heath is a serial killer.
'As a manhunt is launched, a man who says he is Heath walks into the same station. He tells Chandler he was taken by a man named Gabriel. Gabriel told Heath he was going to be victim 55.
'Gabriel is the serial killer.'  (Publication summary)
 

'Seven years after the death of Edward Hyde, a stylish gentleman shows up in foggy London claiming to be Dr. Henry Jekyll. Only Mr. Utterson, Jekyll’s faithful lawyer and confidant, knows that he must be an impostor – because Jekyll was Hyde. 

'But as the man goes about charming Jekyll’s friends and reclaiming the estate, and as the bodies of potential challengers start piling up, Utterson is left fearing for his life ... and questioning his own sanity.

'From the internationally acclaimed Australian author Anthony O’Neill comes Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Seek, an ingenious, original sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.' (Publication Summary)

'In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Here, Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks imagines that Caleb was befriended by Bethia Mayfield, whose minister father wants to convert the neighboring Wampanoag and makes educating Caleb one of his goals. Bethia, herself desperate for book learning, ends up as an indentured servant in Cambridge, watching Caleb bridge two cultures.'

Source: Readings website, www.readings.com.au
Sighted: 10/01/2011

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)

Queen Scheherazade is kidnapped from Baghdad and must tell a story to save her own life, having told stories for many years to save the lives of other women.

'Ninth-century Baghdad, legendary crossroads of the East. It is nearly twenty years since Scheherazade spun her tales for a thousand and one nights, the tales that saved her life and immortalised the city that she had never seen - until now. But almost immediately she is kidnapped by a party of hashish-chewing assassins from under the Caliph of Baghdad's nose. An ancient prophecy leads the Caliph to despatch an unlikely crew of sailors on a rescue mission. As they venture deeper into the unforgiving desert, losing camels, supplies, and all sense of dicrection, Scheherazade must face her abductors alone. And once again begins to spin a tale to save her life... An adventure full of wit, danger and incident, murder and mystery, poetry and philosophy - and testament to the power of the imagination - Scheherazade sweeps from the historical realities of Arabian life into a world of magic carpets and miraculous beings, seamlessly weaving fact, fiction and fable into a novel rich with all the heady power of the Arabian Nights.'

Source: Back cover