Cirrus@Austlit

'In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money.

'Mary's dual existence will take her to a grand house where she'll serve a French mistress; to the navy where she'll learn who to trust, and how to navigate by the stars; to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, following her one true friend; and finding love among the bloodshed and mud. But none of this will stop her yearning for the sea…

'Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman.

'She will become a pirate…

'Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history's most remarkable figures.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When the odds are against you, it's time to get even.

'Matilda, Jo, Penny and Cressy are all women at the top of their game; so imagine their surprise when they start to be personally overlooked and professionally pushed aside by less-qualified men.

'Only they're not going down without a fight.

'Society might think the women have passed their amuse-by dates but the Revenge Club have other plans.

'After all, why go to bed angry when you could stay up and plot diabolical retribution? Let the games begin...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A funny and tender twenty-first century story of family, friendship, love - and how getting it wrong is sometimes the only way to get it right.

'WHO IS ADA?

'With Sadie she's an Aussie girl in London, a performer, a ball of creativity and a lover of food.

'With Stuart she's funny and quirky, capable of finding romance in a dinner of crisps on a cold harbour and long train rides.

'With her family she's the joker, the peacekeeper, the entertainer.
But she doesn't have to choose which version of herself to be. right?

'Ada's answer to most questions is: yes. Every night is an opportunity to be thrilled and every morning a chance to recount it to her friends, so when she falls for Sadie and Stuart at the same time, she sees no reason not to pursue them both.

'But as the realities of modern life begin to catch up with her, and everyone wants Ada to define herself in relation to them, she feels the weight of the questions: which version of yourself is most true? And do other people enhance your best self, or distort it?

'Go Lightly is a tribute to party girls who'd rather enjoy the present than fear the future or regret the past, and a love letter to the community you find when you're far from home.'  (Publication summary)

'Late in the summer five years ago, when I was recovering from a surgical procedure, I met two women within a few weeks of each other and I saw both of them regularly, always separately, for some months afterwards. Summer did not give way easily that year, and even so we must force our bodies down to sleep in the heat, and even if experience does not give itself up easily to representation, I will lay it down anyway; frame the raw and exigent weeks, the untrustworthy months after the hospital, render it and them, Frida and Sylvia, as closely as possible to reality—or whatever is the feeling of a life and mind lived inside a body.

'A woman leaves the hospital after an operation and starts swimming in a pool in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. There she meets Frida, who is uncannily like her in her experience of illness. Soon after, she meets another woman in a local park, Sylvia, who sees her pain and encourages her to rest.

'The two new friends seem to be polar opposites: Frida adores the pool and the natural world, Sylvia clings to the protection of interior worlds. What begins as two seemingly simple friendships is challenged by what each woman asks of her, of themselves, and their bodies.' (Publication summary) 

'In 1977, twenty-seven-year-old Robyn Davidson set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the sea.

'A life of almost constant travelling followed. From the deserts of Australia, to Sydney's underworld; from Sixties street life, to the London literary scene; from migrating with nomads in Tibet, to 'marrying' an Indian prince, Davidson's quest was motivated by an unquenchable curiosity about other ways of seeing and understanding the world.

'Davidson threw bombs over her shoulder and seeds into her future on the assumption that something would be growing when she got there. The only terrain she had no interest in exploring was the past.

'In Unfinished Woman Davidson turns at last to explore that long avoided country. Through this brave and revealing memoir, she delves into her childhood and youth to uncover the forces that set her on her path, and confront the cataclysm of her early loss.

'Unfinished Woman is an unforgettable investigation of time and memory, and a powerful interrogation of how we can live with and find beauty in the uncertainty and strangeness of being.' (Publication summary)

'Small town Australian historic fiction at its best, from the author of Spring Clean for The Peach Queen

'Please send snaps of my dear mother and father, my sisters Sarah and Evelyn, and my bonzer little poddy calf, Zeus.'

'It's 1917, three years into the Great War, when Edie takes up a teaching post in the small Australian town of York.

'Mourning the loss of her beloved brother on the Front and evading her father's plans for a respectable marriage, she's glad to keep busy teaching at Miss Raison's School for Girls. After a little persuasion, Edie agrees to take part in a comfort scheme sending photos of home to the troops.

'Edie's new venture throws her into the path of the family secrets, scandals and class complexities of her new town and a handsome, exasperating man her father would never approve of. With each new encounter, her world gets bigger and more complex, until Edie's asked to make choices that could turn her cautious life upside down and change the very course of history.

'Drawn from the true stories of Australians during WW1, this is historical fiction at its best. Charming and heartfelt, Snapshots from Home is perfect for fans of Fiona McIntosh, Joy Rhoades and anyone who loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.' (Publication summary)

'This book explores the fin de siècle, an era of powerful global movements and turbulent transition, in Australia and beyond through a series of biographical microhistories. From the first wave feminist Rose Summerfield and the working class radical John Dwyer, to the indigenous rights advocate David Unaipon and the poet Christopher Brennan, Hearn traces the transnational identities, philosophies, ideas and cultures that characterised this era.

'Examining the struggles and aspirations of fin de siècle lives; respect for the rights of women and indigenous peoples, the injustices and hardship inflicted on working men and women, and the ways in which they imagined a better world, this book examines the transformation and renewal brought about by fin de siècle ideas. It examines the distinctive characteristics of this 'great acceleration' of economic, technological and cultural forces that swept the globe at the turn of the 19th century both within an Australian context and on the world stage. Asserting that the fin de siècle was significant for the making of modern Australia, and demonstrating the impact Australian fin de siècle lives had on the transnational and global movements of the era, Mark Hearn traces the turbulent nature of the fin de siècle imagination in Australia, and its response to these dynamic forces.' (Publication summary) 

'Applying a re-envisioned, ecological, feminist hermeneutics, this book builds on two important responses to twentieth- and twenty-first-century situations of ecological trauma, especially the complex contexts of climate change and cross-species relations: first, ecological feminism; second, ecological hermeneutics in the Earth Bible tradition.

'By way of readings of selected biblical texts, this book suggests that an ecological feminist aesthetic, bringing present situation and biblical text into conversation through engagement with activism and literature, principally poetry, is helpful in decolonizing ethics. Such an approach is both informed by and speaks back to the new materialism in ecological criticism.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Over six years of imprisonment on Australia's offshore migrant detention centre, the Kurdish Iranian journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani bore personal witness to the suffering and degradation inflicted on him and his fellow refugees, culminating eventually in his prize-winning book - No Friend but the Mountains - which was painstakingly typed out in text messages while he was incarcerated.

'In the articles, essays, and poems he wrote while detained, he emerged as both a tenacious campaigner and activist, as well as a deeply humane voice which speaks for the indignity and plight of the many thousands of detained migrants across the world.

'In this book, his collected writings are combined with essays from experts on migration, refugee rights, politics, and literature. Together, they provide a moving, creative, and challenging account of not only one writer's harrowing experience and inspiring resilience, but the wider structures of violence which hold thousands of human beings in a state of misery in migrant camps throughout the western hemisphere and beyond.'  (Publication summary)

 (Publication summary)

'1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen.

'Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.

'Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Monsters are culturally meaningful across the world. Starting from this key premise, this book tackles monsters in the context of social change. Writing in a time of violent upheaval, when technological innovation brings forth new monsters while others perish as part of the widespread extinctions that signify the Anthropocene, contributors argue that putting monsters at the center of social analysis opens up new perspectives on change and social transformation. Through a series of ethnographically grounded analyses they capture monsters that herald, drive, experience, enjoy, and suffer the transformations of the worlds they beleaguer.

'Topics examined include the evil skulking new roads in Ancient Greece, terror in post-socialist Laos's territorial cults, a horrific flying head that augurs catastrophe in the rain forest of Borneo, benign spirits that accompany people through the mist in Iceland, flesh-eating giants marching through neo-colonial central Australia, and ghosts lingering in Pacific villages in the aftermath of environmental disasters.

'By taking the proposition that monsters and the humans they haunt are intricately and intimately entangled seriously, this book offers unique, cross-cultural perspectives on how people perceive the world and their place within it. It also shows how these experiences of belonging are mediated by our relationships with the other-than-human.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An irresistible call lured Australian artists abroad between 1890 and 1914, a transitional period immediately pre- and post-federation. Travelling enabled an extension of artistic frontiers, and Paris – the centre of art – and London – the heart of the Empire – promised wondrous opportunities. These expatriate artists formed communities based on their common bond to Australia, enacting their Australian-ness in private and public settings.

'Yet, they also interacted with the broader creative community, fashioning a network of social and professional relationships. They joined ateliers in Paris such as the Académie Julian, clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club in London and visited artist colonies including St Ives in England and Étaples in France. Australian artists persistently sought a sense of belonging, negotiating their identity through activities such as plays, balls, tableaux, parties, dressing-up and, of course, the creation of art. While individual biographies are integral to this study, it is through exploring the connections between them that it offers new insights.

'Through utilising extensive archival material, much of which has limited or no publication history, this book fills a gap in existing scholarship. It offers a vital exploration re-consideration of the fluidity of identity, place and belonging in the lives and work of Australian artists in this juncture in British-Australian history.' (Publication summary)

'Maud Berridge (1845-1907) was the wife of a Master Mariner, and she travelled with him on at least five occasions (1869, 1880, 1882, 1883, 1886), sailing to Melbourne with emigrants and cargo. The first occasion was 1869 just after they were married, when Henry was Captain of the Walmer Castle, and they returned via New Zealand instead of travelling east and around Cape Horn. 
'However, most of Henry and Maud's voyages were undertaken in the three-masted clipper Superb, sailing from Gravesend at the start of summer and leaving Melbourne for home at the end of the year (the southern summer, best for heading east with the trade winds and rounding Cape Horn). Record times taken from London to Melbourne under Captain Henry were 79 days (1878), 76 days (1881) and a final time of 74 days (1886).
'In 1880, Maud and Henry took their two sons (aged six and eight) with them. In 1883, they sailed on from Melbourne to Newcastle in New South Wales to take on a load of coal, then on through the Windward Isles to San Francisco (51 days). Here they stayed for two months exploring SF and surrounds, unloaded the coal and took on a load of wheat (in large bags) at Port Costa. They then sailed down the west coast of the Americas, around Cape Horn and on to Queenstown in County Cork (134 days). The whole voyage took 14 months. There are also some photographs of Henry, Maud and the crew taken in San Francisco, and a photo from the State Library of Victoria showing the Superb at dock in Melbourne.
'Maud wrote diaries of these voyages of which one in particular, that of the 1883 voyage, comprise some 50 000 words. The book  tells Maud's story through her own words and through a number of relevant contemporary documents and paints a picture of the life of a captain's wife in the Victorian era as well as aspects of society in Britain, the US and Australia at the time. Her enthusiasm for new experiences shines through her writing.' (Publication Summary)

'Passions and intrigues abound in this epic historical novel. Kagami follows three families in 19th Century Japan, the Yamamotos and the Okuras, traditionalists dedicated to the old feudal Samurai ways, and the commercial Fukudas, eager to seize trading opportunities opened up by the arrival of Commodore Perry's force in 1853.

'The Kagami, or sacred mirror, is said to reflect the secret self of anyone who looks into it; what will it reveal of Lady Masa, the gentle aristocrat; her son, Renzo, a student at one of the mysterious Seignorial schools, once Japan's only point of contact with the outside world; the swaggering Samurai, Kenichi, and his sharp witted friend, Fukuda; free-thinking Aiko, with her quick tongue, and Osen, the beguiling courtesan?'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2017 ed.).

'Molly Blake is a woman with a gruesome secret from which she cannot escape. A secret which lies buried beneath her husband's camellias – and the fear of its discovery will drive her to madness.

'John and Molly Blake are a quiet suburban couple leading a quiet suburban life. It comes as a shock to John when their happy relationship suddenly begins to break down. Why has a certain waspishness crept into Molly's voice? Why is she withdrawing from him?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Orphaned by the holocaust that consumed Germany during World War II, Hans Herman Baum has no clue to his identity other than a battered name tag. He cannot remember either his parents or his home - his only memories are of many other faceless, homeless children who never smiled or laughed. Brought to live in New York with his great-aunt Trudy, the frightened, bewildered child that was Hans becomes Harm, the warm friendly boy who gradually grows in self-confidence within the close community of the street. But when the tragedy of his past comes back to haunt him, he must try to understand what it truly means to be a child of the holocaust.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2017 ed.)