Cirrus@Austlit

'It could have been any summer evening, but of course it wasn't.
It was the end of some things, the beginning of so many others.

'Nick Wheatley has finished high school, but he isn't ready for the rest of his life. His parents are getting divorced, his sister is downright weird and his best friend and neighbour, Marion, seems to have acquired a boyfriend.

'One hot night, Marion's father is killed in a hit-and-run. There are no suspects and no leads. But a sly tip from the local psychic sends Nick and Marion into the undertow of a strange and sinister world they hadn't known existed in the suburbs - one of inscrutable gangsters, speed-dealing bikies and unpredictable, one-eyed conspiracy theorists.

'It's a world they'll be lucky to survive.' (Publication summary)

'Around you the world is swirling - you pass through a submerged town; the bakery, a wheelbarrow, a bike floating on its side on the main street, its steeples and trees barely visible through the thick water.

'It’s always summer in childhood. I remember when we went to see the Peanuts movie Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown for your birthday. Your dad dropped us off outside the cinema and we accidentally went into the wrong cinema and saw The Deep instead. It was 1977. We were nine years old. Lost treasure, Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt, harpoon guns.' (Introduction)

'A woman's heart contains all things. Her heart is tender and loving, but it has other elements. It contains fire and intrigue and mighty storms. Shipwreck and all that has ever happened in the world. Murder, if need be...'

'1673. Desperate to save herself and her only surviving child Nicolas from an outbreak of plague, Charlotte Picot flees her tiny village in the French countryside. But when Nicolas is abducted by a troop of slavers, Charlotte resorts to witchcraft and summons assistance in the shape of a malevolent man. She and her companion travel to Paris where they become further entwined in the underground of sorcerers and poisoners - and where each is forced to reassess their ideas of good and evil. Before Charlotte is finished she will wander hell's halls, trade with a witch and accept a demon's fealty. Meanwhile, a notorious criminal is unexpectedly released from the prison galleys where he has served a brutal sentence for sacrilege...' (Synopsis)

'Frustrated by country life and eager for adventure and excitement, seventeen-year-old Tom Button moves to the city to study. Once there, and living in a run-down apartment block called Cairo, he is befriended by the eccentric musician Max Cheever, his beautiful wife Sally, and their close-knit circle of painters and poets.

As Tom falls under the sway of his charismatic older friends, he enters a bohemian world of parties and gallery openings. Soon, however, he is caught up in more sinister events involving deception and betrayal, not to mention one of the greatest unsolved art heists of the twentieth century: the infamous theft of Picasso’s Weeping Woman.

Set among the demimonde — where nothing and nobody is as they seem — Cairo is a novel about growing up, the perils of first love, and finding one’s true place in the world.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Maria (MJ) Hyland’s extraordinary second novel, Carry Me Down, was published in 2006, two years after her debut, How the Light Gets In (Canongate, 2004). The critical reception for Carry Me Down was almost universally positive, and the novel was shortlisted for both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Told in the first person from a twelve-year-old’s point of view, Carry Me Down is a perceptive and claustrophobic study of a boy who longs to escape the limitations of his family, his country, his life and his class.' (Introduction)