Cirrus@Austlit

'Joanne is bright and bubbly and loves being with her friends.

'Joanne also has autism.

'What does that mean for Joanne, her friends and her family?

'Hello to Me! is about understanding children with disabilities, and how that awareness can lead to greater compassion, tolerance and friendship.'  (Publication summary)

''I've been told that I'm married to my music, and - fair enough - I have to admit it's the most successful marriage I've had in my life.'

'For 70 years, Chris Finnen has grooved to the music in his mind - and magically transposed it to the guitar. From jumping on stage as a precocious 15-year-old to jam with Billy Thorpe, and also The Loved Ones, to joining Australia's legendary blues band Chain, Chris has wowed audiences and is revered as one of Australia's most beloved guitarists. His lively story, covering five decades of touring, is sprinkled with Chris's own brand of witty Finnenisms.'  (Publication summary)

'As a title for this sumptuous new book, Wendy Sharpe: Many lives felt just right. Wendy Sharpe (born 1960) leads many lives: those of artist, collaborator with writers and performers, and prodigious traveller with homes in Sydney and Paris. Sharpe has touched many lives, from the East Timorese at a time of war, to refugee women or those who've been in jail. The title also resonates with Sharpe's family tree, which includes a number of Ukrainian psychics.

'Although an atheist, Sharpe is fascinated by the possibility of a parallel spirit world. The idea that we might all have many lives, rises to the surface on the artist's canvases.

'In this book, journalist Elizabeth Fortescue tells Sharpe's story from her beginnings as a shy child on Sydney's northern beaches to her current position as one of Australia's most celebrated artists. Art critic John McDonald discusses how Sharpe's international travels have inspired her art. Senior curator Justin Paton focuses on Sharpe's fascination with light and dark, both metaphorical and actual. Drawing specialist Anne Ryan teases out the role of drawing in Sharpe's overall practice. Journalist and writer Scott Bevan vividly recalls travelling with Sharpe when she was an Australian official war artist. And journalist and author Stephanie Wood brings an observant eye to Sharpe's practical humanitarianism.

'Wendy Sharpe: Many lives boasts more than 200 images of Sharpe, her studio, her home and work. A timeline, CV and index are included, creating a framework around the ongoing story of this consummate creator.'  (Publication summary)

'In A View from the Horizon one of South Australia's most influential political reformers tells his life story with frank disclosure.

'Five years after he graduated as a lawyer, aged 28, Peter Duncan entered the South Australian Parliament as the member for Elizabeth. In just his first year in parliament, the young reformer introduced a Private Members' Bill, which later prompted former Chief Justice Michael Kirby to describe him as 'the father of homosexual law reform in Australia'.

'Three years later, in 1975, he became Attorney-General in Don Dunstan's socially progressive Labor Government. Amid controversy and negotiation, he initiated a raft of reformist legislation, notably the abolition of capital punishment and the criminalisation of rape in marriage.

'Peter Duncan resigned from state politics in 1984 to take on the new federal seat of Makin for the Hawke Labor Government. He became one of few politicians who have served as a minister in both a state and the federal parliament. As parliamentary secretary to the Attorney-General in the Keating Government, he worked on the Disability Discrimination Bill, passed into law in 1992. He describes this as the achievement of which he is most proud.

'His post-parliamentary life is distinguished by successful ventures and disappointments along the way. He's had his share of tragedy, with the premature death of his wife, journalist Julie Duncan, in 2005. Now in his 70s, Peter Duncan's passion for justice and fairness in an unfair world remains undiminished. He lives in Lombok and with his partner Puspa runs a popular hotel.

'As his former political comrade and longtime friend Lynn Arnold writes, Peter Duncan's A View from the Horizon is 'funny, sad, insightful, totally honest, idiosyncratically Australian and unambiguously authentic'.'  (Publication summary)

'Jan Andrews' Noticing is a vibrant celebration of life: insights and sparkling moments of bright day - 'the lapis carpet' of fallen jacaranda flowers, 'the evanescent colour' of Chartres windows, a dancing child. There are also measured reflections on the many rooms of grief, the prospect of death, and the care of an ageing parent: 'the door to my father is closing'.

'Jan has a quick eye for the oddness and humour of animal and human behaviour, from office politics and Jasmine at Newspoll to a boobook owl, a burmese cat, and a squadron of squabbling finches.

'Sharp snippets of wit abound, and also deep feeling.'  (Publication summary)

''She was a good person when she wasn't drunk.'

'Debbie's earliest memory of her mother is that her mother was not there, but any story of neglect always has two sides.

'When Debbie's daughter, Heather, says she wants to write a book about her upbringing, Debbie begins to string together jagged memories of growing up with Stella, and it's proving more painful than she could've ever imagined.

'Part memoir, part biography, part imagination, Little Bit is a story with a third side. Told in the alternating perspectives of Debbie and Stella, Heather writes the story of her mother's and grandmother's lives, where addiction is rife and regret is a constant, and where survival for a woman in a man's world is anything but straightforward. Fiction or nonfiction, this is a book that cannot be categorised and will not be quiet.'  (Publication summary)

'Dame Nellie Melba is, arguably, the most famous of all Australian women and her portrait graces Australia's highest denomination banknote. Blessed with an exceptionally fine voice, Melba forged a spectacular career for herself in the rarified world of grand opera and was acknowledged as a 'Queen of Song'. Triumph after triumph crowned her 44-year-long career and her admirers included numerous famous composers and the monarchs of many countries. Melba also provided a role model for other Australians who followed in her footsteps onto the stages of the world's great opera houses. Melba's private life was almost as colourful as the plots of the operas in which she sang. A turbulent marriage that ended in acrimonious divorce, custody battles, a doomed love affair with a member of the French royal family, health problems and a press campaign of criticism about her character taxed Melba's stamina and her courage.' (Publication summary)

'Stories in history habitually relate the deeds of men but less frequently speak of the equally important contribution of women. When Irish immigrants began arriving in the new colonies of Australia and New Zealand they energetically contributed to the development of a new culture. This was especially true in the area of social progress.

'Irish Women in the Antipodes: Foregrounded is a collection of Irish women's contributions to life in the Antipodes, stories that have been neglected or insufficiently acknowledged. The contributors have used all available tools to find these women in the archives, public records, newspapers, and family histories, taking them from the proverbial footnotes of history to the foreground.

'The first seven chapters focus on Irish women in South Australia, an under-researched group among the Irish diaspora regardless of gender, and while there are new accounts of women that readers may know of such as Mary Lee and Bee Walshe, this volume introduces us to many more of these pioneering women whose hidden lives have now been brought to the fore.' (Publication summary)

'From its earliest years, South Australia was the most German of the Australian colonies.

'As they contributed to the founding and consolidation of a British colony, Germans observed the processes of dispossession and subjugation that changed the lives of First Nations peoples around them forever. More than that, they participated in those profound and tragic changes. Importantly, German settlers and visitors left behind records of the events they witnessed.

'This volume collects those precious records and makes them available - most for the first time in English - to a modern Australian readership. It charts the course of German-Australian encounters from first contacts, through the ruptures and violence of a relentlessly expanding European presence and into the twentieth century. As it documents the astounding cultural wealth and complexity of Indigenous peoples under siege, it also lays bare the grim logic of the forces driving their world towards destruction.' (Publication summary)

'From 'Big Shot' to 'Swindler'. From 'palatial two-storey Kensington Park home' to 'the cold cells of Adelaide Gaol'. Racier newspapers gloated when Harry Hodgetts was convicted of fraud and false pretences in September 1945.

'Hodgetts was Adelaide's leading stockbroker, with 4000 clients, including a governor and governor-general. He gave outstanding service to lacrosse and cricket, educational institutions and the Royal Institute for the Blind but he is best remembered as the man who struck a deal to have the young Don Bradman move to Adelaide, play cricket for South Australia and work part-time in his office.

'How did things go so wrong for Hodgetts? With his wealth of historical knowledge, John Davis has written the complex and riveting story of this hard-working, gifted social climber, his fall into bankruptcy and a prison cell, and the scandal that haunted Bradman's reputation.'

'Wilf Healy lives in the wheatbelt town of Selwyn, works in Monk's Irish pub, delivers letters, drives the school bus, holds the place together. But he's had enough, wants to retire - to forget his nephew Connor, at war with the world, his brother Brian, visiting from America, his niece Orla, sick with blood cancer. Although he plans, and tries, he can't leave. Something is holding him back.

'As the young people flee, the old people die, the drugs arrive in Selwyn, Wilf has to decide what's important. Shining Like the Sun is about the value of promises, of words and actions that might save a failing community. In the process, Wilf learns there's no such thing as retirement.' (Publication summary)

'Like rocks, we are shaped by forces over time. Despite being eroded, fractured, immersed, put under pressure - The Rocks Remain. Always was, always will be.

'Through poetry and prose, twenty-five Aboriginal writers share narratives that embody: strength of family and community; love found and lost; enduring relationships with the Land and nonhuman others; honouring Elders and Ancestors; expressions of place and belonging; asserting sovereignty; talking back to the colony; and envisioning Blak futures. Voices of new and emerging writers are intertwined with writers of renown, with a strong representation of writers with connections to South Australia. This collection is both timeless and timely.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'But there I stand, with one hand resting on his shoulder, and I wonder what I was feeling in that moment. Why did I place my hand there? Was it for comfort, for reassurance, or to show that he was mine?

'Emma Werner, now an old woman, is domineering, cold and difficult to love. But she has not always been so. What happened to Magdalena Johanna Emma Scholz, the bright young woman she once was? And why does she still take flowers to the grave of her first love?

'Emma turns to the journals she has kept for sixty years to rediscover her old self, and to reclaim her future. They reveal the story of a survivor: a woman who suffered but never wavered, whose strength of will and self-belief helped her endure and make a life for herself and her family in a small town in the Riverina.' (Publication summary)

(Publication summary)

'On Luck Street builds on The Elsewhere Variations, Nearly Lunch, and Waldo's Game - taking the reader around the corner, and around the world. From a small circus in Nepal, to a florist in New York, and the streets of Coogee and Fitzroy.

'Connivers, chancers, charmers - those trapped and those who would break free. To what extent do any of us trust our luck?'(Publication summary)

'Waldo's Game extends the reach of The Elsewhere Variations and Nearly Lunch - going around the corner, and around the world. From supermarket aisle to art gallery - from nocturnal shiftiness in industrial zones to dawn reckonings ... in bedrooms, on wild coastlines.

'The world as it looks to other people, not all of them looking at the same thing. What are they at? What is their game?' (Publication summary)

'Mood is a memoir that perfectly suits our times, and our collective journey to understand how we are shaped by our identities. It is a testament to hard-won growth through self-knowledge.

'Roz Bellamy is a first-generation Jewish Australian who identifies as non-binary. They met their wife, Rachel, as a university student, as the pair made their first tentative forays into queer culture - and fell in love - through a Buffy the Vampire Slayer online message board. As a young teacher, Roz's longstanding anxiety intensified, as past trauma of being bullied in their own schooldays and the creeping toll of antisemitism in the classroom undermined their burning desire to be the 'perfect' teacher.

'Therapy to treat their distress became a deeper inquiry. As Roz began to investigate and unfurl the various strands of their identity, and how they intersect to make them who they are, they were handed more pieces of the puzzle.

'Mood is a story about love, family and self-fulfilment, while living with mental illness. It's also a candid, absorbing inquiry into the self, and the rewards of embracing who you are, in all its complexity and contradictions. Even - especially - when it's hard.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Is it possible to break the cycle of failures in one's love life? Toby Hill, a bachelor for many years, finds himself startled out of his withdrawal from social life by a chance meeting. What happens when a chance encounter - a black swan - arrives in Toby's reclusive life?

'Why did Viv want him to come to her home for the review of the grant application instead of her office? Why was he silly enough to agree to this?

'Following in his father's footsteps, searching the world for his next adventure, learning about food, wine and love, Toby realises that what he thought was unconditional love was more to do with youthful lust. He has to admit that journeying with a female companion has its drawbacks.

'Da Capo is a coming of age story as Toby steps into the unknown, trying to understand life's complexities and betrayals in his search for fulfilment, love and commitment.' (Publication summary)