Cirrus@Austlit

'A blockbuster memoir from one of Australia's most powerful voices, Long Yarn Short is the incredible story of a young woman's journey - from being stolen from her family as a child to becoming a top advocate for First Nations young people.

'At just ten years old, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts was forcibly removed - stolen - from her family, community and kinship systems. After eight years in various out-of-home care placements, Vanessa fled the system, reconnected with kin and returned to country for the very first time. Only then did she begin to heal.

'In this book, Vanessa embarks on an extraordinary work of truth-telling, exposing the ongoing violence visited on Black children, their families and their communities by the systems that claim to protect them. As a survivor of out-of-home care, a practising lawyer fighting for the freedom of others and now also a mother herself, she takes an unflinching look at the heartache and trauma caused by racist family policing, the shameful rates of child removals and the steady pipeline of First Nations children into the criminal justice system.

'Long Yarn Short is a story of struggle, grief and love; a call to action from one of the most powerful voices of her generation. As a leading expert in children's and young people's rights, Vanessa invites readers to imagine solutions for a better world - a world of support and empowerment, not punishment - and demands that they listen when she says, 'We are still here.''  (Publication summary)

'An exquisite celebration of First Nations languages from a selection of Australia's finest Indigenous writers, all wrapped up in a handsome hardback that's perfect for Christmas gift giving.

'Words to Sing the World Alive celebrates First Nations languages from across the continent. Forty First Nation writers and thinkers, journalists and lawyers, artists and astronomers come together to reveal their favourite and significant words. Words that evoke the power of childhood and the wonder of Country; that explore the essence of mother, of fire, of time. Words that are imbued with family and belonging, and that surprise with their connections.

'Join contributors including Kim Scott, Tara June Winch, Daniel Browning, Terri Janke, Jeanine Leane, Nardi Simpson, Dan Bourchier, Ellen van Neerven, Alice Skye, Bruce Pascoe, Anita Heiss, Thomas Mayo, Evelyn Araluen, Claire G Coleman and Mykaela Saunders as they share their words to sing the world alive.' (Publication summary)

'Shapeshifting, co-edited by Jeanine Leane and Ellen van Neerven, is a wide-ranging collection of nonfiction by First Nations writers that breaks new ground. These lyric essays push the boundaries of nonfiction beyond the biographical or the academic, with pieces that experiment with form and embark on carefully crafting and re-crafting interventions that both challenge and expand existing genre structures. Shapeshifting brings to the fore a whole new genre waiting to take shape, to be formed, informed and re-formed by First Nations Australian writers. Contributors include Charmaine Papertalk Green, Jim Everett, Jenni Martiniello, Natalie Harkin, Mykaela Saunders, Daniel Browning, Evelyn Araluen, Alison Whittaker, Rhianna Patrick, Melanie Saward, Timmah Ball and Hugo Comisari..' (Publication summary)

'A funny, moving middle-grade novel about change and friendship from the award-winning author of Meet Me at the Moon Tree

'When Sid sets off on her annual summer holiday to the Shipwreck Coast, she's desperate for some familiarity after a year of unwanted change. Two weeks with best friend Lou, who she only gets to see when they go camping every year, is exactly what Sid needs. Mostly, she can't wait to continue their search for the millions of dollars' worth of riches that disappeared in a tragic shipwreck over a hundred years ago.

'But Lou has brought along popular new school friend Hailey, who's more interested in boys than treasure hunting. So while Lou is busy chasing Hailey's approval, Sid is left scrambling to catch up, wondering when everything changed. Can Sid protect her heart from getting shipwrecked too?'  (Publication summary)

'The enthralling sequel to the multi-award-winning fantasy epic The Wintrish Girl - perfect for fans of Nevermoor and Discworld

'After rescuing Princess Seraphine from the evil Malevolents, Penn thought her fate had finally changed. But Seraphine is ignoring her again and now Penn has to undergo a terrifying interrogation. The ruthless Inquisitor has been summoned to uncover the truth behind the return of Malevolence to Arylia and fingers are pointing at Penn.

'Her only hope is to find The Lost History, a book that might be the key to unlocking both the Inquisitor's and her own mysterious past. But Penn and her loyal friends aren't the only ones searching for it. Someone else is hunting The Lost History - to destroy it.

'Even as she races to retrieve the book, Penn knows that if she digs up her past, she might not like what she finds. Because Malevolence has started calling to her and she's finding it strangely hard to resist...

'Another thrilling adventure, this time featuring at least six impossibly daring escapes, important life lessons about truth and spare socks, a sinister game of Twenty Questions and a cursed family tree. And some very dangerous cheese.'  (Publication summary)

'A beguilling collection of poetry from the 2023 winner of the Thomas Shapcott Prize for Poetry

'I was thinking of wild things and what we make of them.

'Portraits of Drowning is lyric poetry at its best. In these rich and varied poems, Madeleine Dale reveals water as the lifeblood of our ecosystems but also our imaginations, energising romance and tragedy, troubling history and myth. Sustaining eye and ear, heart and mind, this is a debut of exquisite skill.'  (Publication summary)

'A dazzling and impressive follow-up to Money's highly acclaimed debut, how to make a basket.

'We gather marks. Our bodies, our stories, our histories and our world are made of an infinite amount of visible and invisible moments. We make marks to record, to remember, to honour, to protest. We mark time, for no matter how many times the sun sets, always it rises in a new dawn.

'Jazz Money returns with her much anticipated new poetry collection to ask about all the ways we rise to a moment. mark the dawn is a celebration of community and gathering, while negotiating the legacies of intersecting histories as a queer First Nations person. These poems sing out with love declaring that, despite everything that has come before, we remain glorious, abundant, sexy, joyous and determined.' (Publication summary)

'What world record would you like to break? The biggest slice of cake eaten in one go? The highest trampoline bounce? The most socks put on one foot? This hilarious middle-grade novel from the author of How to Be Prime Minister and Survive Grade Five is perfect for fans of Nat Amoore and Tim Harris.

'Sam is a kind and thoughtful eleven-year-old, but he's not particularly great at anything. His sister, Ava, is a soccer star, and his best friend, Vihaan, is an award-winning artist. The one thing Sam is good at is knowing all about the extraordinary feats in the Big Book of Records.

'When Sam is set a class project about a moment he's proud of, he can't think of anything and takes inspiration from his favourite book. He knows he'll be proud of himself if he can break a world record!

'But breaking a world record isn't easy. And things get even harder when someone close to Sam needs his help and he must decide- will he be good? Or be the best?' (Publication summary)

'A warm and engaging memoir about freedom, adventure, and fathers and sons, set against the sumptuous backdrop of Corfu.

'At the age of eighteen, Kari Gislason arrives on the island of Corfu after a life-altering encounter with his father in Iceland. Looking for adventure, he decides to stay after meeting 'the Pirate', a mysterious Greek stranger who offers him work - only to find himself eventually fleeing the island, leaving behind a debt he promises to repay.

'Three decades later, as a father of two teenage sons, he returns to Corfu with his family. As he revisits his memories of the island, he begins to understand that this place has shaped the adult he has become, and that the inevitable letting go of his own children lies ahead.

'Full of the colour and vitality of the Greek islands, Running with Pirates traverses the joys and challenges of parenthood, the fearlessness of youth, the debts of our past, and the stories we tell ourselves and our children.' (Publication summary)

'From award-winning author Johanna Bell and exciting new illustrator Huni Melissa Bolliger comes a playful story about what's possible when you let your curiosity run wild.

'Digger digs down. Digger digs deep, deep into the ground.

'Join happy-go-lucky Digger as he ditches the boredom of backyard life for an underground adventure. What will he find? What won't he find?

'Packed with colour and hidden treasures, this is the perfect picture book for small children who love dogs, digging and discovery.' (Publication summary)

'From humble beginnings in the remote Pilbara, psychologist and Nyamal woman Tracy Westerman has redefined what’s possible at every turn. Despite neither of her parents progressing past primary school, and never having met a psychologist before attending university, Tracy went on to become the first Aboriginal person in Australia to complete a PhD in Clinical Psychology, rising to become one of the country’s foremost psychologists. Against significant odds, she commenced her own private business to challenge the way the mental health profession responds to cultural difference, and recently established a charitable foundation and scholarship program to mentor Indigenous people from our highest-risk communities to become psychologists.' (Publication summary)

'Four weeks, 344km and one inspiring river journey

''I want to go with the river's flow, not against it. I want to follow where the river leads - to listen, to observe, hopefully to learn.'

'When novelist and experienced hiker Simon Cleary sets off to follow the course of the river that has so influenced his life, he hopes that by walking its banks - from its source to where it empties into the bay - he will better understand the power and impact of this immense waterway on the environment and communities who rely on it.

'Cleary's ambitious journey, alone and with companions, explores the ways rivers connect landscapes, ecologies, histories, communities and myth. But his journey along the unpredictable and magnificent Brisbane River threatens to be cut short by one of the wettest autumn months on record. Over four eventful weeks and 344 kilometres we are witness to the river in all its beauty and fury.

'Everything is Water considers our complex relationship with nature through flood, drought, time and place. It is an inspiring pilgrimage that invites us to connect with nature and also to navigate our own path.' (Publication summary)

'A searing indictment of the media's failures in reporting Indigenous affairs - and a powerful corrective that shows how Black journalism can pave the way for equality and justice.

'From one of this country's leading Indigenous journalists comes a collection of fierce and powerful essays proving why the media need to believe Black witnesses and showcasing ways that journalism can be used to hold the powerful to account and make the world a more equitable place.

'Amy McQuire has been writing on Indigenous affairs since she was seventeen years old and, over the past eighteen years, has reported on most of the key events involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including numerous deaths in custody, the Palm Island uprising, the Bowraville murders and the Northern Territory Intervention. She has also drawn attention to the misrepresentations and violence of mainstream media accounts, and also to their omissions and silences in regards to Indigenous matters altogether. In myriad ways the mainstream media has repeatedly failed to report accurately, responsibly or comprehensively on Indigenous affairs.

'Black Witness is the essential collection of First Nations journalism that we need right now - and always have.' (Publication summary)

'A dazzling new poetry collection from award-winning poet Judith Bishop, a conclusion to her trilogy focused on time.

'Perched on a tablecloth with glasses

for a summer drink- life, on its haunches

like a kitten, thoughtful.

Extending a paw- What happens if?

'Circadia is a shattering testament to the fragility of life and the weight of the present. Exquisitely attuned to atmosphere and emotion, Judith Bishop's poems grieve the daily devastations of war, extinction, illness, death, and disconnection, yet find their way back into clearings transfigured by the energies of art, children, and the sheer incandescence of existence.

'These fiercely empathetic poems range deep into the woods of present, past and future time. With visionary imagination and rapt musicality, this concluding volume in Bishop's award-winning trilogy on time sings in the mind long after reading.' (Publication summary)

'Small Town. Big Secrets. The second Dana Gibson mystery.

'When child protection worker Dana Gibson arrives in the sleepy rural town of Killarney, she has one goal in mind- locate the whereabouts of foster child Jayden Maloney and return him to care. What she isn't anticipating is an unexpected attraction to her colleague's younger brother Sean, or to become embroiled in their simmering family feud. When criminal allegations surface against a member of the local parish and a police task force discovers an increase in drug trafficking across the border, Dana is forced to consider that Jayden's disappearance is not simply a case of a teen on the run. To complicate matters further, torrential rain leads the Condamine River to break its banks, and the town gets cut off.

'As Dana continues to ask questions, tensions peak with the rising flood waters and she soon realises that the tightknit community is not all that it seems. As long-held secrets start to unravel and loyalties are questioned, Dana must make a decision about who she can trust and how much she is willing to fight for what she believes in.' (Publication summary)

'Nova Weetman’s unforgettable memoir reflects on experiences of love and loss from throughout her life, including: losing her beloved partner, playwright Aidan Fennessy, during the 2020 Covid lockdown; the death of her mother ten years earlier; her daughter turning eighteen and finishing school; and her own physical ageing. Using these events as a lens, Nova considers how various kinds of losses – and the complicated love they represent – change us and can become the catalysts for letting go.

'This is a moving, honest account of farewelling a partner of twenty-five years, parenting teenagers through grief, buying property for the first time at the age of fifty, watching Aidan live on through his plays, and learning to appreciate spending hours alone with only the household cat for company. Warm and wise – and often joyful – Love, Death & Other Scenes ultimately focuses on the living we do after losses and what we learn from them.'  (Publication summary)

'A triumphant story of hope and survival

'I am dying. I know that I'm dying, despite not having been told by my doctors that I am dying. I know I am dying because I'm in the dying room.

'Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis, survived a double-lung transplant at the age of twenty-one and faced a rare cancer at the age of thirty. What she has endured should have killed her, but her humour, courage and optimism became her best survival skills.

'From her hospitalised childhood to her many friendships, loves and losses, Carly-Jay shares the fickle nature of life with candour and warmth. She writes with compelling insight about organ donation, opioid addiction and survivor's guilt, while still managing to find joy amongst the wreckage.

'Breath is a stunningly frank and darkly funny memoir about living, dying and trying to breathe.' (Publication summary)

'A stunning new work of poetry combined with a selection of the best of David Brooks' award-winning career

'A bottle of Romanee Conti sells for $785,000, while bodies are dug by hand from earthquake rubble in Indonesia because the local government couldn't afford the earth-moving equipment to do so while people were still alive. Elephants are shot and skinned by poachers and remote Indigenous communities are shut down for want of infrastructural funding. And with tenderness and humility, a simple gift of peanuts to magpies, sheep and a tentative rat reframes the place of the human in the world.

'David Brooks's longstanding concerns for justice and the relationship between human and non-human animals infuse and enliven his work. Wise, lyrical and timely, The Other Side of Daylight distils a long and honoured poetry career with a marvellous selection from his five previous volumes and The Peanut Vendor, a collection of forty-eight luminous new poems.' (Publication summary)

'From the 2022 David Unaipon winner comes an outstanding and timely collection of speculative fiction imagining futures where Indigenous sovereignty is fully reasserted.

'In this stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection, Mykaela Saunders poses the question—what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?

'Each of the stories in Always Will Be is set in its own future version of the Tweed. In one, a group of girls plot their escape from a home they have no memory of entering. In another, two men make a final visit to the country they love as they contemplate a new life in a faraway place. Saunders imagines different scenarios for how the local Goori community might reassert sovereignty - reclaiming country, exerting full self-determination, or incorporating non-Indigenous people into the social fabric - while practising creative, ancestrally approved ways of living with changing climates.

'Epic in scope, and with a diverse cast of characters, Always Will Be is the ground-breaking winner of the 2022 David Unaipon Award. This is a forward-thinking collection that refuses cynicism and despair, and instead offers entertaining stories that celebrate Goori ways of being, knowing, doing - and becoming' (Publication summary)