Cirrus@Austlit

'What do you wear to Paris? Ami and I discussed it for hours but I still couldn't think of anything suitable. Ami said a trench coat with nothing underneath but your best underwear. That was only if some boy was meeting you at the airport, I said.

'Eighteen-year-old Lisette has just arrived in Paris (France!) - the city of haute couture and all things stylish - to practise her French and see great works of art. Her clairvoyant landlady Madame Christophe forces her to attend language lessons with a bunch of international students but soon Lise discovers she's more interested in studying boys than art or verbs ...

'When the undeniably hot Anders jogs into her life it feels too good to be true. Things get even more complicated when she is pursued by Hugo, a charming English antiques dealer.

'Can she take a chance and follow her own dreams? How far into the future can Madame Christophe see? And could Lise really be falling in love - in Paris?' (Publication summary)

'Star lives with her mum and her mum's old university friend, Charlie, who has broken up with his wife. Star doesn't always like Charlie - and she certainly doesn't like his two kids, Talia and Gabe. So when Star's mum, Nell, begins to fall in love with Charlie and he moves in properly, Star isn't sure how she feels about it. Charlie hates the way his kids just want to eat Maccas and have mobile phones, so he proposes a complete change of lifestyle. Star discovers that moving to the country doesn't solve her friendship problems - but maybe Charlie has an innovative solution to that as well. After a Japanese Hamani viewing of the new backyard's plum tree, Star finds a friend who shares some of her interests. At the same time she realises that being a step-sister to Talia and Gabe might not be such a bad thing after all.' (Publication summary)

'When grief strikes, you need an ally. For Mimi, that ally is Ableth, the wildly disobedient blue slave. He comes, he goes, he says and does whatever he likes, but he's always there when Mimi needs him most, offering his own brand of crooked wisdom.

'Ableth says, 'You need to learn to look under the surface of things. Look at water. It's just a great expanse of blue with little wavelets and riffs of foam. But underneath the surface are whole worlds of wonder. There are treasures and wrecks and bones . . .'

'But it's hard to look beneath the surface when your Mum is shipwrecked by despair, and you're the only one left to keep things afloat. There's a bric-a-brac shop to run, your first Christmas without a dad, and quite possibly a fugitive taking refuge in your back shed.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Catherine Bateson's new poetry collection has at its centre three lively sequences that address the hard graft of spiritual negotiation. Imagined for present, past and future times, each of them tracks the slow and the sudden dissolution of love - yet love stories they are. Her characters are distinctly and originally conceived, with a habitual storyteller's craft.

'Fore and aft of these sequences are some poems that are more directly reflective. 'Marriage' is the familiar here - or at least the otherness of daughterhood, motherhood and being a lover. 'Beginners', it is suggested, is what we remain.' (From the publisher's website.)