Cirrus@Austlit

'Quentin ‘Tinny’ Thompson and his German neighbour, Greta, have at least one thing in common. In their tin sheds close to the coast, they are attempting to live out of the firing line of modern society. Tinny’s sons are growing up and one of them, Rock, wants to head to the city and live with his mother, who is sometimes Prue and sometimes Peaches. Greta’s dream of life in Australia began with a school project on the explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt. Heedless of his fate, she decides to follow in his footsteps. However isolation does not guarantee safety. Violence — so visible in a disintegrating Europe — is not contained. It arrives at her shed in the bush in the figure of the disturbed Clive.

Lives do not remain static, even for those who resist change.

Refuge is a tender exploration of love and friendship, families, race relations, the consolations of the natural world and, above all, what it means to belong.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

After years of living in England, Marie returns to the family home in southwest Australia, to a father whose destructive impulses have been curbed by a stroke and to a mother whose passivity Marie never understood. Behind her is Edy and the deep love they shared before he left, suddenly and without explanation. Even further back still is Marie's memory of her father and his fraught relationships with his mother, brother, and stepfather. Yet, when Edy follows Marie back to Australia, her father's shocking revelation brings hidden things to the surface. Thicker Than Water is quintessential Richard Rossiter fiction: an intense, poetic, family drama, as well as a psychological tragedy.' (Publication summary)

'The collection is made up of twenty four stories selected from the Margaret River Short Story Competition. ' (Publication summary)

'Twenty-four stories were selected from 260 entries submitted to the Margaret River Short Story Writing Competition.

These are stories about men, women - and children - who stand aside from the mainstream world, and see it, as Emily Dickinson would say, 'aslant'.

'In Barry Divola's winning story, Knitting, the narrator is a perceptive, no-nonsense, subversive figure who is as hard on herself as she is on the world around her. She is a 'guerilla knitter' who by the end of the story is beginning to warm to her circumstances, the people around her, and, most importantly, herself. The second prize winning story Laps, by Sally Naylor-Hampson, is focused on the ocean and adolescent sexual experience, at Belongil, seventeen years earlier. In this case between an older woman, the wife of the swimming coach, and a fifteen-year old boy, Jasper. The South West Prize winning story by Vahri McKenzie, I Shine, Not Burn, is about family and family history. The underlying issue is the extent to which knowledge of the past may be destructive to following generations.

'This is a collection of tightly written, graceful stories exploring the familiar and the strange by both emerging and established writers.' (Publication summary)

'Weaving an intricate and pulsating web of psychological and physical yearning, Arrhythmia: Stories of Desire is a collection of short fiction whose unifying theme is the manifestation of longing beneath the mundane surface of people's everyday lives.

'Men and women, young and old, urban and rural, contemporary and historical; all are interlinked through a profound familiarity that urges the reader to explore the interior lives of the protagonists - culminating in some surprising revelations that will leave you pondering the continuous influence the past exerts upon the present.

'This distinctive and powerful collection from West Australian luminary Richard Rossiter implies an auto/biographical stance in many of the stories, compelling an intellectual reflection on the very nature of what it means to feel human.' (From the publisher's website.)