Cirrus@Austlit

'A highly adorable and addictive love story that explores whether "the stars" can or should be a guide through life and what happens when one woman tries to give "the stars" a little help. 

'When childhood sweethearts Justine (Sagittarius and serious skeptic) and Nick (Aquarius and true believer) randomly bump into each other as adults, a life-changing love affair seems inevitable. To Justine anyway. True, she hasn't seen Nick in thirteen years, one month and three weeks, but who's counting? She's pined after him all the same, and now that Nick lives in the same town, a struggling actor to her struggling magazine reporter, he'll surely realize his own unchanged feelings, take the reins and jump at the chance to rekindle their relationship. Right? Well, no. Nick, she learns, is an astrological devotee, and his decision-making, romantic and professional, is guided solely by the infallible horoscopes in his favourite magazine. The magazine Justine happens to work at. Perhaps the stars' guiding forces could use a little journalistic reimagining?

'It's only a few tweaks to the Aquarius column, just a little push to get him to realize they're meant for one another. It's nonsense in the first place, what could possibly happen? Aquarians everywhere are about to find out, when the doctored horoscopes, ostensibly published to steer Nick and Nick alone, end up reverberating in the lives of the column's devoted readers, showing the ripple effects of what can happen when one woman decides to take the horoscopes, and Fate itself, into her own hands.

'Spanning exactly one year, as the earth moves through all twelve stars signs, Star-Crossed is a delicious, intelligent and affecting love story about fate, chance and how we all navigate the kinds of choices that are hard to face alone.' (Publication summary)

'Two summers, decades apart. Two women whose lives are forever entwined. And a house that holds the secrets that could free them both.

'At twenty-six, Lillian feels ancient and exhausted. Her marriage to Charles Oberon has not turned out the way she thought it would. To her it seems she is just another beautiful object captured within the walls of Cloudesley, her husband's Chilterns manor house. But, with a young step-son and a sister to care for, Lillian accepts there is no way out for her. Then Charles makes an arrangement with an enigmatic artist visiting their home and her world is turned on its head.

'Maggie Oberon ran from the hurt and resentment she caused. Half a world away, in Australia, it was easier to forget, to pretend she didn't care. But when her grandmother, Lillian, falls ill she must head back to Cloudesley. Forced to face her past, she will learn that all she thought was real, all that she held so close, was never as it seemed.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Tom Hope doesn’t think he’s much of a farmer, but he’s doing his best. He can’t have been much of a husband to Trudy, either, judging by her sudden departure. It’s only when she returns, pregnant to someone else, that he discovers his surprising talent as a father. So when Trudy finds Jesus and takes little Peter away with her to join the holy rollers, Tom’s heart breaks all over again.

'Enter Hannah Babel, quixotic smalltown bookseller: the second Jew—and the most vivid person—Tom has ever met. He dares to believe they could make each other happy.

'But it is 1968: twenty-four years since Hannah and her own little boy arrived at Auschwitz. Tom Hope is taking on a batttle with heartbreak he can barely even begin to imagine.' (Publication Summary)

'The fires on the hills smouldered orange as the women left, pockets charged with ashes to guard them from the night. Watching them fade into the grey fall of snow, Nance thought she could hear Maggie's voice. A whisper in the dark.

'"Some folk are born different, Nance. They are born on the outside of things, with a skin a little thinner, eyes a little keener to what goes unnoticed by most. Their hearts swallow more blood than ordinary hearts; the river runs differently for them."

'Nóra Leahy has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year, and is now burdened with the care of her four-year-old grandson, Micheál. The boy cannot walk, or speak, and Nora, mistrustful of the tongues of gossips, has kept the child hidden from those who might see in his deformity evidence of otherworldly interference.

'Unable to care for the child alone, Nóra hires a fourteen-year-old servant girl, Mary, who soon hears the whispers in the valley about the blasted creature causing grief to fall upon the widow's house.

'Alone, hedged in by rumour, Mary and her mistress seek out the only person in the valley who might be able to help Micheál. For although her neighbours are wary of her, it is said that old Nance Roche has the knowledge. That she consorts with Them, the Good People. And that only she can return those whom they have taken...' (Publication summary)

'Myfanwy Thomas returns to clinch an alliance between two deadly rivals, and avert epic - and slimy - supernatural war such as the world has never known.

'After years of enmity and bloodshed, two secret organisations with otherworldly abilities must merge, and there is only one person with the fearsome powers - and bureaucratic finesse - to get the job done. Rook Myfanwy Thomas must broker a deal between deadly rivals the Checquy - a centuries-old covert British organization that protects society from supernatural threats; and the Grafters - a centuries-old supernatural threat.

'But an assassination attempt threatens to derail the whole process, and Myfanwy must dispatch two young agents - one from each side - to track down an extremist faction and destroy it before a devastating war is triggered.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An abandoned house…

'After a particularly troubling case, Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police and retreats to her beloved grandfather’s cottage in Cornwall. There she finds herself at a loose end, until one day she stumbles upon an abandoned house surrounded by overgrown gardens and dense woods, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

'A missing child…

'June 1933, and the Edevane family’s country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. For Eleanor, the annual party has always been one of her treasured traditions, but her middle daughter, Alice, sixteen years old and with literary ambitions, is especially excited. Not only has Alice worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she’s also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn’t. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night sky, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great they leave Loeanneth and never return.

'An unsolved mystery…

'Seventy years later, in the attic writing room of her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family’s past and seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

The compartments in our father's life were not the separations he needed to build to preserve his sanity. They were his sanity. When he fell in love... when he fell to the abjection he deserved, the walls began dissolving. And once the walls came down between all three, or now four, of his lives, so did every other retaining wall - between past and present, present and future, self- and non-self, dream and wakefulness. The walls were his sanity. Love had driven him mad....

'This is the story of John Wonder, a man with three families, each one kept secret from the other, each one containing two children, a boy and a girl, each called Adam and Evie. As he travels from family to family in different cities, he works as an Authenticator, verifying world records, confirming facts, setting things straight, while his own life is a teetering tower of breathtaking lies and betrayals...

'This is a stunning novel that again and spectacularly confirms Malcolm Knox as one of our brightest stars, an imaginative tour de force that ranks alongside the best work of Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis, David Ireland and Peter Carey. '

'The Guardian famously wrote of Malcolm, 'If Winton is an aria, Knox is early Rolling Stones', but this time around he's got the orchestra along as well and every single note rings deep and rich and true. This bedtime story told by children to adults is jaw-droppingly original, breathtakingly audacious and dazzlingly accomplished... ' (Publication summary)

'On a sultry summer's day in 1980, five friends stumble upon an abandoned lakeside cottage hidden deep in the English countryside. For Kat and her friends, it offers an escape; a chance to drop out for a while, with lazy summer days by the lake and intimate winter evenings around the fire. But as the seasons change, tensions begin to rise and when an unexpected visitor appears at their door, nothing will be the same again ...

'Three decades later, Lila arrives at the same remote cottage. With her marriage in crisis, she finds solace in renovating the tumbledown house. Little by little she wonders about the previous inhabitants. How did they manage in such isolation? Why did they leave in such a hurry, with their belongings still strewn about? Most disturbing of all, why can't she shake the feeling that someone might be watching her?' (Publisher's blurb)

'In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men.

'Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes's spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her, as he attempts to salvage her soul. As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes's ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn't she?

'Based on a true story, Burial Rites is a deeply moving novel about personal freedom: who we are seen to be versus who we believe ourselves to be, and the ways in which we will risk everything for love. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland's formidable landscape, where every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?' (Publisher's blurb)

'In 1920s Glasgow, Beattie Blaxland falls pregnant to her married lover Henry just before her nineteenth birthday. Abandoned by her family, Beattie and Henry set sail for a new life in Australia. But life is not about to follow the plan that Beattie had hoped for and fate will play her a cruel hand...

'In 2009, London, prima ballerina Lydia Blaxland-Hunter is also discovering that life can also have its ups and downs. Unable to dance again after a fall, Lydia returns home to Australia to recuperate. But on arrival she is presented with some surprising news - her recently deceased and much-loved grandmother Beattie Blaxland has left her Tasmanian property to Lydia.

'Told through the eyes of a young Beattie Blaxland and a contemporary Lydia Blaxland-Hunter, this is an emotionally charged, seductive tale of self-discovery, secrets and surprises.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Don Tillman is a forty-year-old geneticist with undiagnosed Aspergers. When he wants to find a partner, he approaches the project the only way he knows - systematically. He creates a questionnaire designed to find the perfect woman - a punctual, non-drinking, non-smoking female who will fit in with his regimented lifestyle. When Rosie appears on the scene, she fits none of Don's criteria - but she does turn his life upside down.'

Source: Wheeler Centre website,
Sighted: 28/05/2012

'"The body you are wearing used to be mine."

'So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions in a series of letters her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

'She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of an MI5ish secret organisation called the Checquy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain (who knew?). She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

'In her quest to uncover which member of the Checquy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters such wacky folk as a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children with bizarre traits are transformed into Checquy operatives, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Pig is an adventure-thriller about Alan Treval, a conservationist who sets out to trap a monstrous black pig whose lethal tusks have already massacred several dogs, and almost ripped a man to pieces.

'This feral fugitive assumes human proportions when it calculatingly evades capture and seems to be hell-bent on killing Treval, and his teenage son, Michael.

'Like an insane despot, this king piglords over the other wild pigs in the area and seems to mastermind the relentless destruction of the surrounding landscape.

'Treval enlists the support of a local farmer Tom Robbins and his daughter Anne. They join forces against the pig and even try to flush it out with a light plane piloted by Anne.

'Pig plunges us into a gripping chase sequence with Treval fighting a lethal animal, a harsh environment, and a pattern of senseless destruction by masses of ravaging feral pigs.

'The harrowing climax to the book will leave you in a state of nervous exhaustion and disquieted about the fragile balance between man and his environment.

'Pig epitomizes what can happen when nature goes out of control.'

Source: Goodreads.

'Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long-lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen-year-old girl, Edie's mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper, her twin sisters and their father, Raymond, author of the 1918 children's classic The True History of the Mud Man. In the grand and glorious Milderhurst Castle, a new world opens up for Edie's mother. She discovers the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, the dangers.

Fifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother's riddle, she, too, is drawn to Milderhurst Castle and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.' Source: www.allenandunwin.com/ (Sighted 03/11/2010).

'It's February 1946, and Robert Booker is just home from the war. Home is a pretty weatherboard house in Summer Hill, where his wife, Catherine, is waiting. They haven't seen each other for three years, yet they are separated by so much more than time.

'Robert is haunted by the battlefields of New Guinea, and Catherine harbours the guilt of her affair with a charismatic US marine - and other secrets too painful to confront. Her heart divided between two men, she finds herself longing for what she has lost. With all that's changed between them, can Catherine and Robert find their way back to each other?' (From the publisher's website.)

'Mara, a young Australian, falls deeply in love with John, a big-game hunter who lives on the spectacular grasslands of East Africa. He promises everything Mara is looking for, and she joins him there, full of hopes and dreams. But three short years later, their safari lodge is in trouble - and so, too, is their marriage.

'When a Hollywood movie crew descends to film on location, Mara knows this could be the lodge's salvation. The success of the shoot depends on her, and she thrives on her sudden responsibility and independence. But she also finds herself dangerously attracted to the film's leading man.

'A poignant love story set against the breathtaking backdrop of Tanzania, The Hunter's Wife explores a young woman's heartfelt struggle to reconcile duty and desire. Amid the gritty reality of the hunter's world and the make-believe realm of the film-maker, Mara finds that passion must be measured against courage, and that fate will reward the brave.'