Cirrus@Austlit

'Oliver Mol’s Train Lord is a sequence of personal essays journeying around and into a ten-month episode of intense physical and psychic pain. Yet from the opening page of this compelling work, we are carried along by a humour and vitality that reads as courage.' (Introduction)

''The best books are those you revisit over the years ... and with each visit you learn new things about yourself and about the story.' — Mykaela Saunders on Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

'All writers begin as readers.

'This is an ode, a love letter, to the magic of reading. To the spark that's set off when the reader thinks ... I can do this too. Here, twenty-six writers take us through these moments of revelation through the dog-eared pages of their favourite Australian books. Among them, poet Ellen van Neerven finds kin on the page with Miles Franklin-winner Tara June Winch. AS Patrić finds a dark mirror for our times in David Malouf’s retelling of an episode from the Iliad. Ashley Hay pens letters of appreciation and friendship to Charlotte Wood.

'These and many more writers come together to draw knowledge from the distinctive personal and sensory stories of this country: its thefts and losses, and its imagined futures. Australian fiction shows us what it is possible to say and, perhaps, what still needs to be said.

'Reading Like an Australian Writer is a delightful, inspirational and heartfelt collection of essays that will enrich your reading of Australian stories and guide you in your own writing.' (Publication summary)

'With sea-salt authenticity, Belinda Castles sets the Bright family in the sprawling paradise of Bilgola Beach. But darkness is found both in the iconic setting as well as in the disturbing behaviour of one of the family.

'As he tilted the blinds she saw her mother in her tennis whites, standing at the kitchen bench, staring out into the dark bushland that bordered their houses. That was what Tricia did these days, looked into the bush as though it would attack one of them.

'On a sweltering day in a cliff-top beach shack, Jack and Lou Bright grow suspicious about the behaviour of their charismatic, unpredictable father, Charlie. A girl they know has disappeared, and as the day unfolds, Jack's eruptions of panic, Lou's sultry rebellions and their little sister Phoebe's attention-seeking push the family towards revelation.

'Twenty years later, the Bright children have remained close to the cliff edges, russet sand and moody ocean of their childhood. Behind the beautiful surfaces of their daily lives lies the difficult landscape of their past, always threatening to break through. And then, one night in late summer, they return to the house on the cliff...

'Gripping and evocative, Bluebottle is a story of a family bound by an inescapable past, from the award-winning author of The River Baptists and Hannah and Emil.' (Publication summary)

'Set in a small riverside community, The River Baptists tells the story of Rose, bunkered down in a borrowed house overlooking the river, grieving for her dead father and waiting for her baby to be born. It is also the story of Danny, another refugee from life elsewhere, hiding out from his violent father and dreaming of owning a block of land on the river. Then there are the river old-timers, who miss nothing and forget less, and a newcomer who cares nothing for the locals, or the secrets of the past. Set over the course of a long hot tense summer, when sparks constantly threaten to ignite bushfires, the tight-knit riverside community is set alight by confidences betrayed and a renewed age-old grudge.

'And through it all flows the mysterious pulse of the river, indifferent, deep and calm, offering the possibility of life and death, renewal and rebirth.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Rebecca is waitressing at Centrepoint Tower when a woman jumps from the tower with her young child. Losing her own grip on life, and sliding into sexual betrayals, Rebecca too begins to fall, slipping into an urban underworld peopled by lost souls and the voices of ghosts, and in a corner of the city, the past catches up with her.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.