Cirrus@Austlit

'The bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton, returns with All Our Shimmering Skies - a glorious novel destined to become another Australian classic.

'Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain overhead, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: a razor-tongued actress named Greta and a fallen Japanese fighter pilot named Yukio. ‘Run, Molly, run,’ says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia’s wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber’s coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run.

'All Our Shimmering Skies is a story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves. It is an odyssey of true love and grave danger; of the darkness and the light; of bones and blue skies. A buoyant, beautiful and magical novel abrim with warmth, wit and wonder, a love letter to Australia and the art of looking up.' (Publication summary)

'This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going.

'Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

'By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.' (Publication summary)

Nine-year-old Sam Kellow's family has fallen on hard times - the buyer for his mother's latest painting has disappeared, and his gambler father has no immediate prospects for making money. Therefore it falls to Sam to find the 'Big Bazoohley' - the windfall his father insists will arrive when they need it most - and he slips out of their Toronto hotel room to do just that. However, he is soon kidnapped by a strange couple who want to enter him in the Perfect Kiddo contest, in lieu of their own son who is in bed with chicken pox. The prize for the contest is a part in a commercial and $10,000, and it doesn't take Sam long to work out a way to turn this bizarre series of events into the solution for his family.