Cirrus@Austlit

'Ninety years after they were thought to have died heroically in the Great War, the stretcher-bearer Simpson and his donkey journey through country Victoria, performing minor miracles and surviving on offerings left at war memorials. They are making their twenty-ninth, and perhaps final, attempt to find the country’s famed Inland Sea.

'A Comedian well-known on the so-called comedy circuit for his dry tales told of a childhood lived in a small country town, in which he, the Comedian, always played the loser, having married a pop singer and aspiring actress with whom he now lived in a large house in Camberwell, could not understand why one night at a high-profile comedy venue a heckler should stand up and start repeatedly screaming the word Hypocrite! at him. Indeed, it was said of this Comedian, who, shortly after this incident, retreated behind the high walls of his Camberwell mansion, that he was never so funny as he had been before it, although in the opinion of many he had never been funny at all.'  (Publication abstract)

The dilapidated old caravan might be full of musty carpet and faded dreams, but for years a mother and daughter have called it home.

With nowhere else to go, Judy and daughter Donna live on top of each other, knowing the other won’t leave: they’re stuck, and will be till the end.

Judy holds court from the caravan’s double bed, surrounded by pills, a breathing machine and a flat-screen TV. Donna is just desperate not to die there. Donna’s looking to be whisked away by a Tinder date, but as the phone pings and Judy sucks oxygen from a mask in the tiny, cluttered space, they bicker and make up, scream and threaten violence and dream of better things.

Bitter and hilarious, tender and toxic, Caravan is a darkly comic look at life on the margins and the universal need for love.' (Production Summary)

'It begins with the normally healthy Beth - aged-care worker, wife of David, mother of Lettie and Gem - feeling vaguely off-colour. A locum sends her to Dr Yi for some tests. 'There are a few things here that aren't quite right,' says Dr Yi, 'and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that can lead us to the bigger wrongs that matter.' Beth is sent on to Dr Twoomey for more tests. Then to another specialist, and another referral after referral sees her bumped from suburb to suburb, bewildered, joining busloads of people all clutching white envelopes and hoping for answers. But what is actually wrong with Beth - is anything, in fact, wrong with her? And what strange forces are at work in the system? As the novel reaches its stunning climax, we realise how strange these forces are. Unnerving and brilliant, Some Tests is about waking up one morning and finding your ordinary life changed forever.' (Publication summary)

'They were going to tell stories. Let's go away for the weekend, said Megan, and leave our phones behind and turn off the computers and television and stop time because time is moving too fast and soon we'll all be saying where the hell did our lives go? We'll cook some food and drink some wine and each tell a story.

'It is the middle of winter. Seven friends travel to a remote coastal beach house for the weekend. Without phones, internet or television, they sit around the fireplace, telling stories – each exposing the foibles of humankind. But as a storm rolls in and torrential rain cuts the party off from the outside world, it soon becomes clear that some secrets are best kept hidden.

'Demons is an extraordinary novel by one of Australia's great writers.' (Publication summary)