Cirrus@Austlit

'Eight years ago, I spent two weeks on a writing retreat with the well-known writer Bri Lee, before her name was well known. At the time, I was twenty-six and had recently published my debut short story collection. She was twenty-four and had recently sold her debut memoir. We didn’t vibe. I suspect that my style of working didn’t look like work to her, that I annoyed her by doing stuff like banging the ice tray on the counter while she typed at the kitchen table. Her working style looked like work. She struck me as equal parts ambitious and insecure—qualities that I shared and didn’t enjoy seeing in another.'  (Introduction)

'Amid-career genre change is always cause for attention. Best known for her fearless investigations into institutional sexual abuse, it is hardly surprising that Louise Milligan should transfer her journalistic nous and commitment to social justice into the realm of crime fiction. Pheasants Nest is part of a movement in post-#MeToo crime fiction, which has flourished in Australia and abroad in the past decade. It challenges the norms of the genre to centre victims and amplify the reverberations of violence against women (recent examples include Jessica Knoll’s Bright Young Women and Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name).' (Introduction) 

'Four books into my career, I’m still learning to discern promotion that is paid for from that which arises ‘independently’ from the community. When I wasn’t invited to do events at interstate bookstores as a debut author in 2016, and again as a sophomore in 2018, I assumed it was because the booksellers weren’t interested in my work. Now that I’ve just completed my first interstate book tour, and am casually employed at a bookstore that sometimes hosts events, it’s glaringly obvious to me that most bookstores don’t have the budget to cover the costs. It’s also obvious that, even if they are covered by a publisher’s marketing budget, the onus often remains on the author and their networks to ensure that events are well-attended. While an event in my home state was at capacity, thanks to family and friends, I opted to cancel two others when my publicist informed me of the low booking numbers.' (Introduction)

''I chose the jagged rocks, the broken bones, the spattered brains. I chose beauty. I'd choose it again.'

'Luna Lewis is white. But her friends aren't, nor are her brothers, nor her one-time Princess of Indonesia-finalist stepmother. After transforming from pudgy preteen to 'exotic' beauty, Luna reinvents herself as 'Luna Lu' and takes her ticket out of the most isolated city on earth. However, as her international modelling career approaches its expiry date, Luna must grapple with what she's sacrificed - and who she's become - in her mission to conquer the world.

'Featuring an intersecting cast of glamour-hungry public schoolgirls, WAGs, mining heiresses, backpacker-barmaids, and cosmetic nurses, West Girls examines beauty, race, class divisions, and social mobility in Australia's richest state. It's also a devastating catalogue of the myriad, inventive ways in which women love and hurt one another.'(Publication summary)

'An early-morning jogger. An alleyway. A young woman’s mutilated body. A set-up familiar enough to warrant its own Television Tropes category (‘Jogger Finds Death’). Yet before catching sight of the latter-day Black Dahlia being pecked at by ibises somewhere off Enmore Road, unlucky passer-by Reagan Carsen is caught in a spider’s web: a simple but effective visual metaphor for the wider web that connects her to the first victim of the fictional ‘Sydney Dahlia’ serial killings.' (Introduction)

'There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen,’ Vladimir Lenin has been credited with saying, with reference to the Bolshevik Revolution. It’s a sentiment that immediately springs to mind when reading Jessica Stanley’s A Great Hope, a début that, while not billed as historical fiction, is deeply concerned with history and its making.' (Introduction)

'Rachel isn’t the last woman in the world, but she might as well be. Cloistered in her bushland home on Yuin country, in New South Wales, Rachel’s days consist of birdsong, simple meals prepared from a pantry stocked with home-made preserves, and glass-blowing in her private studio – a craft that is both her livelihood and her religion. It’s a peaceful yet precarious existence. The land is scarred by bushfires. Rachel’s senses are attuned to the absence of wallabies and small birds. For all her proficiency with sourdough starter, Rachel isn’t self-sufficient. Her older sister, Monique, provides an emotional tether to the world, while townswoman Mia delivers supplies and transports Rachel’s glassworks to a gallery. When Mia fails to show, Rachel rues the lack of a back-up plan. When Hannah, a young mother, raving about a nation-wide outbreak of death, arrives on her doorstep with a sick infant, luddite Rachel must choose between taking Hannah’s word for it or rejecting her.' (Introduction)

'In a hotel room on a sleepy Pacific island, Judy Novak waits. And worries.

'It isn’t the first time 29-year-old problem child Paulina has kept her mother waiting. But Judy can’t ignore the island’s jagged cliffs and towering pines — or the dread that Paulina has finally acted on her threats to take her own life.

'When Paulina’s body is discovered, Judy’s worst fears seem confirmed. Only, Paulina didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.

'So begins a thorny investigation, wherein every man on the island is a suspect yet none are as maligned as Paulina: the captivating newcomer known for her hard drinking, disastrous relationships, and habit of walking alone.

'But, above all, Paulina is her mother’s daughter. And death won’t stop Judy Novak from fighting for Paulina’s life.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'When William Blake wrote of seeing ‘a World in a Grain of Sand’, he meant the details: their ability to evoke entire universes. So did Aldous Huxley when, experimenting with mescaline, he discovered ‘the miracle … of naked existence’ in a vase of flowers. More recently, Jenny Odell’s bestseller How To Do Nothing: Resisting the attention economy (2019) made a case for rejecting productivity in favour of active attention to the world around us.' (Introduction)

'The morning I may win a life-changing amount of money, I try to look worthy of it. My new dress hangs, tags intact, as I watch the clock in my Park Hyatt bathrobe. Ten minutes pass. I send a Facebook message. No reply. I’ve already deposited $100. If I’m being ghosted, I only have myself to blame. Starving artists shouldn’t waste money on professional hair-and-makeup. Twentynine-year-old women should know how to apply foundation.' (Introduction)

'In an unnamed land under the thrall of a mysterious coup, mountain-dweller Ren wants only to live off the grid, undisturbed by human contact. Ren’s familiarity with the natural world becomes a liability when a band of soldiers comes seeking information that only she can provide: the whereabouts of a fabled bird with the ability to make it rain.' (Introduction)

'In this multi-perspective novel, Mirandi Riwoe trains her piercing postcolonial gaze on Gold Rush-era Australia, lending richness to the lives of the Chinese settlers who are often mere footnotes in our history. Ying and Lai Yue are outsiders before their arrival in Far North Queensland, where they have gone to find their fortunes after their younger siblings are sold into slavery. While Ying struggles with hiding her gender in the male-dominated goldfields, Lai Yue is haunted by his betrothed, Shan – killed in a landslide back in China – and by his failure to protect the family from penury. Meanwhile, in nearby Maytown, a white woman, Meriem, grapples with her exile from respectable society while working as a maid to local sex worker Sophie.' (Introduction)