Cirrus@Austlit

'A raw, painfully honest, heartbreaking account of a young woman raising herself out of abuse and poverty to become her own hero.

'A roadmap of recovery and transformation, this is the story of becoming heroic in a culture which doesn't see heroism in the shape of a girl.

'At the age of twenty, after a traumatic sexual assault trial, Kathryn Heyman ran away from her life and became a deckhand on a fishing trawler in the Timor Sea.

'Coming from a family of poverty and violence, she had no real role models, no example of how to create or live a decent life, how to have hope or expectations. But she was a reader. She understood story, and the power of words to name the world. This was to become her salvation.

'After one wild season on board the Ocean Thief, the only girl among tough working men, facing storms, treachery and harder physical labour than she had ever known, Heyman was transformed. Finally, she could name the abuses she thought had broken her, could see 'all that she had been blind to, simply to survive'. More than that, after a period of enforced separation from the world, she was able to return to it newly formed, determined to remake the role she'd been born into.

'A reflection on the wider stories of class, and of growing up female with all its risks and rewards, Fury is a memoir of courage and determination, of fighting back and finding joy.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'World-famous free-diver Storm Hisray hits Grace Cain like a bolt from the blue. Instantly smitten, she abandons her life in the city to follow him to his idyllic Pacific island. There he teaches Grace the ways of the deep, and she learns to sink to unimaginable depths on one single breath. As their world narrows to the two of them, she learns, too, the dazzling pleasures of her body - but Storm hides as many secrets as the sea.

'Storm begins training Grace to be his new star, and life is blissful until a female diver is featured on the cover of Sports Weekly as 'The Mermaid of the Deep'. Storm starts pushing Grace further and further beyond her limits - both in and out of the water. As her resistance grows, Storm's temper takes a frightening turn and Grace fears she is in deeper - and more dangerous - water than she has ever imagined possible. With a secret of her own, Grace's fears grow to haunt her, even as she prepares for one last, desperate descent. Deeper than anyone has ever been before, this will be the death-defying moment which will make both of their careers. But is death ready to be defied?

'And now, a year after Grace's record, surrounded by the world's media, Storm prepares for the most important dive of his life. Narrated by a chorus of mesmerising sirens, Storm and Grace explores the dazzling thrill of the deep, and its dangers.' (Publication summary)

'The story of two women living very different, heroic lives in two very different Australias.

'Jess, circus-raised, is a stunt-rider who can outride any man. In the early days of film she finds her calling, playing wild outlaw women who answer to no one. However, when her Chinese circus-owner husband is killed she is left pregnant and vulnerable and, after suffering the cruellest betrayal of all, she finds herself closer to the outlaw's life than she had ever imagined.

'Rose goes to Australia from England in the 1950s, in search of a new life. But neither the new country nor motherhood is what she had expected and, very quickly, she finds herself estranged from those she loves, incarcerated and terrified. Yet Rose is strong, and she will manage not only to save herself, but also to shed new light on Jess's story in a moving and deeply satisfying way.' (Publisher's blurb)