Cirrus@Austlit

'The thrilling final book in acclaimed Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett’s dark witchcraft series, Palace of Fires.

'The thrilling conclusion to acclaimed Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett’s dark witchcraft series will keep you riveted and enthralled to the very last page.

'To prepare herself for the final climactic battle between dark and light, Lily goes to a remote region of Japan to study under a legendary ninja grand master. But she returns as the Golden Order is about to unleash Ganglia, a disturbance designed to kill thousands and wreak global havoc. Can Lily’s own powers of witchcraft pass the ultimate test in a deadly confrontation with the Beast, son of Satan come to earth?

'She spun around and saw a shape in shadow. Dark on dark. Gleaming eyes and teeth, with an old dank smell of gravesites and death. Then a sudden glint of metal – a sword. The moonlight shifted. Lily gasped and stepped back from the Fallen Priest. He was holding the Soul Cutter.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Lily heard a sound that sent her into a sudden inexplicable panic.
A sound so primitive, it chilled her to her bones.
Try as she might, Lily could not control the fear that surged through her.
The creature was an emissary of Satan.

'As the celestial firestorm night of Unholy nears, Lily finds herself caught deep within the shadow world of black witchcraft - a world more evil than she ever could have imagined.

'In the race to save her mother's soul, Lily will need all of her strength and newfound powers to battle the elite witches hell-bent on her capture.

'A relentless page-turner, with plot twists that will shock and disturb - Unholy unleashes the darkness that seeks to destroy the world as we know it.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'She turned and saw them. Three black shapes in a crowd of colour, moving slowly like scuttling roaches.

'Three women, dressed in leathers, carrying biker helmets.  They had come here to find someone. They had come here to hunt.

'Three hundred years ago, Lily’s ancestor broke a solemn promise signed in blood. And now she is thrust into a shadow world where Satan is real, witches exist and evil is an ancient living thing that seeks to wreak havoc and rule.

'The dark is coming, and only she can stop it.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An ensemble comedy following a group of people of all ages, and from all around the world, as they attempt to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Seeking a unique and private holiday, Harry and Beth charter a boat to drop them off at a remote, deserted coral island. Though all seems idyllic at first, items soon begin to disappear from their camp and footprints appear in the sand. The seemingly deserted island has a ghostly inhabitant, and it demands retribution.

A dying builder, doubting that his much younger wife really deserves the wealth that she will inherit, pays one of his labourers to try and seduce her.

'Soon after getting married, and just after the outbreak of the Second World War, Dr Phillip Spence (Martin Donovan) and his former student Evelyn (Maya Stange) set out for Papua New Guinea to study the culture of the Trobriand Islanders. The two anthropologists intend to further the work others have done on the sexuality and social organisation of the matrilineal society. Tensions quickly emerge between them and the few other Westerners in the area. Their relationship worsens after Evelyn unwittingly transgresses several cultural taboos; Phillip is concerned that her behaviour is negatively affecting his work by changing their relationship with the locals.

'Evelyn pays Mick (Rufus Sewell), a Western pearl trader, to take her to a village of headhunters in the muddy rainforests of the Papua New Guinea mainland so she can get out of Phillip’s way and prove herself with fieldwork of her own. The attraction grows between Mick and Evelyn but she is determined to stay on alone despite the harsh living conditions and the aggression her new cohabitants show towards her. Mick arrives earlier than planned to fetch her because Phillip is dying from dysentery back in the Trobriand Islands. After his death she adopts the mourning habits of the village women by living in a cage. Mick watches over her and, when she returns to her old self, their relationship develops as Japanese soldiers move into the area.'

Source: Australian Screen.

Al and Nikki, inseparable since they met in juvenile detention, make a living through petty crime: Nikki picks up men in bars, drugs them, and then helps Al rob them. But when their latest mark dies and they find that he's carrying a videotape of a prominent footballer engaged in sexual activites with an underage boy, they flee Adelaide and head across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth, pursued by the footballer and the police. But the strain of the journey brings up the traumas of Nikki's past, and the people they encounter begin to turn up dead ...

'Young Spider McCall is an ambulance driver with 'attitude'. Recently resigned, his final assignment is to drive an elderly patient from a hospital in Sydney to her son's farm in the country. It's a long journey and Spider isn't about to miss his own farewell party. Sure enough, when the nurse wheels the old lady towards Spider's ambulance, his fears are confirmed. This could be one long trip!'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Two police officers - male and female - are assigned to escort an Aboriginal woman from an outback town to stand trial in Broken Hill for the murder of a publican who raped her. They are tracked by a Kadaitcha man, an agent of death, a concept Aboriginal culture shares with other cultures. The film sets white against black law and renders it fallible by the way gender, class and race intersect with each other in the characters of the two police officers and their prisoner.'

Source: Libraries Australia

'The true story of Col Turner, a Vietnam veteran who took on a Government, and won. Col Turner returned from Vietnam to discover he had cancer. He lived in a War Service home and all his neighbours were veterans who were also having problems. Col soon began to suspect that Agent Orange was to blame, and so he set out to do something about it.'

Source:

[Television guide], Canberra Times, 18 August 1986, p.24.