Cirrus@Austlit

'Frank Parker, retired senior policeman and Cliff Hardy's long time friend, has a problem. A case from early in his career involving two doctors, one of whom was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill the other and went to gaol for the crime, is coming back to haunt him. The convicted, now dead doctor may have been innocent, and Parker had been the lover of the beautiful Catherine Castiglione, the doctor's wife.

'Hardy tracks back through the now ageing names and faces, trying to tease out the truth. If the doctor was set up, who was responsible and why? Along the way Hardy encounters dodgy plastic surgeons, a broken-down ex-copper, a voyeuristic cripple and a hireling who wields a mean baseball bat.

'A charismatic player is the son of Catherine Castiglione, a super-bright charmer, who just may be Frank Parker's love child. Animosities, arrogance and ambition create a spider's web around the violence that breaks out as Hardy searches for the spider.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Set in England between the wars, this novel tells the story of an aristocratic family, a house, a mysterious death and a way of life that vanished forever, told in flashback by a woman who witnessed it all and kept a secret for decades.

'Grace Bradley went to work at Riverton House as a servant when she was just a girl, before the First World War. For years her life was inextricably tied up with the Hartford family, most particularly the two daughters, Hannah and Emmeline. In the summer of 1924, at a glittering society party held at the house, a young poet shot himself. The only witnesses were Hannah and Emmeline and only they - and Grace - know the truth.

'In 1999, when Grace is ninety-eight years old and living out her last days in a nursing home, she is visited by a young director who is making a film about the events of that summer. She takes Grace back to Riverton House and reawakens her memories. Told in flashback, this is the story of Grace's youth during the last days of Edwardian aristocratic privilege shattered by war, of the vibrant twenties and the changes she witnessed as an entire way of life vanished forever.

'The novel is full of secrets - some revealed, others hidden forever, reminiscent of the romantic suspense of Daphne du Maurier. It is also a meditation on memory, the devastation of war and a beautifully rendered window into a fascinating time in history.' (Publisher's blurb)

'When journalist Louise Kramer hires Cliff Hardy to find Billie Marchant, Hardy heads for unfamiliar territory of the far southwestern suburbs of Sydney. Billie claims to have information about media big-wheel Jonas Clement - the subject of an incriminating expose by Kramer. Clement doesn't want Billie found and Clement's enemies want to find her first.

'Hardy tracks Billie down, but 'saving Billie' means not only rescuing her, it means saving her from herself. Billie, ex-stripper, sometime hooker and druggie, is a handful. Hardy gets help from members of the Pacific islander community and others, but the enemies close in and he is soon fighting on several different fronts.

Clement and his chief rival, Barclay Greaves, have heavies in the field, and Hardy has to negotiate his way through their divided loyalties. Some negotiations involve cunning but others involve guns. The action takes place against the backdrop of the Federal election campaign, and all outcomes are uncertain.' (Publication summary)

'In 1915 a troopship of Light Horsemen sails from Fremantle for the Great War. Two women farewell their men: Elizabeth, with her background of careless wealth, and Bonnie, who is marked by the anxieties of poverty. Neither can predict how the effects of the most brutal fighting at Gallipoli will devastate their lives in the long aftermath of the war.

'The Wing of Night is a novel about the strength and failure of faith and memory, about returned soldiers who become exiles in their own country, about how people may become the very opposite of what they imagined themselves to be. Brenda Walker writes with a terrible grandeur of the grime and drudge of the battlefield, and of how neither men nor women can be consoled for the wreckage caused by a foreign war.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When family practitioner Logan Hargraves is called out to an unconscious patient, he's amazed to see medical researcher Dr. Charlotte Summerfield. Why is the beautiful American alone in the Outback? Did she come to see him, after their electric first meeting? Logan's hoping for answers – but Charli wakes with amnesia.

'Charli has no idea why she's here, what's happened to her – or if she's even single! All she can be sure of is that the attraction between her and Logan gets stronger, deeper and harder to resist every day....'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When English doctor Elizabeth Blakeny-Smith takes on a six-moth job in the Outback, she’s hoping to take control of her life. But a kiss from a sexy stranger sends the reserved doctor’s pulse racing, and suddenly control is the last thing on her mind! Especially when she discovers the stranger is her new colleague Dr. Mitch O’Neill…

Mitch can’t help but be attracted to the aloof newcomer, and is convinced Elizabeth needs to let her hair down and enjoy life - with him! But will her new-found freedom take her back home - or straight into Mitch’s arms?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'After a late night Tai Bo fitness commercial warns him that his life will be over after 40, Peter Moore decides to pursue a boyhood dream sparked by watching old black and white movies of Sophia Loren riding motor scooters - to putt-putt around Italy on a 1960s Vespa, living la dolce vita.

'Of course, it couldn't be just any Vespa. With his 40th birthday approaching, Peter wanted a bike as old as he was and in the same condition - a little rough around the edges, but still going okay. And it had to have saddle seats. And a temperamental electrical system. And a little too much chrome. Basically the sort of motor scooter you'd see a young Marcello Mastroianni riding wearing a sharp suit and a pair of Ray Bans.

'From picnicking in the Italian alps to attempting to gate-crash Frances Mayes's villa and re-enacting Roman Holiday, Vroom with a View is as much a romance as a travel adventure. Not only does Peter sweep the woman of his dreams off her feet, he falls in love with a side of Italy others rarely see, along with Sophia of course.' (Publisher's blurb)

'When Private Investigator Gemma Lincoln agrees to investigate a missing student from exclusive Netherleigh Park Ladies College, she finds herself drawn into a double murder case surrounded by a wall of silence. Gemma s best friend Detective Sergeant Angie McDonald helps, but Angie is overworked, unsupported by an incompetent superior officer, and crazy in love.' (Publication summary)

'Dr. Dannyella Thompson certainly needed help with her Outback practice, but an English doctor at Dingo Creek? She was expecting more amusement than assistance!

'Dr. Sebastian MacKenzie proved Dannyella wrong at every turn. By the time his two-week stay was up he'd won her over – in every way! But Sebastian had commitments in England. He had to return and he begged Dannyella to come with him. For once in her life Dannyella couldn't make a decision – her soul belonged in Dingo Creek, but her heart was with Sebastian on the other side of the world....'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Annie Beresford is a talented surgeon and trainee consultant. But her wish is for marriage and children before it's too late. She knows she's vulnerable, and that falling for Hayden Robinson, her new boss, is a bad idea. But this man might just be the one!

'Hayden rescues her more than once, and his desire for her is clear, but after one failed marriage he'd rather focus on saving lives. So Annie must help her reluctant knight because she comes to realize they can't be happy without each other – even if he won't believe her yet!'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Wealthy Frederick Farmer died when his weekender burned to the ground. Death by accident, the police found. But his daughter, Dr Elizabeth Farmer, a feisty academic who resembles the younger Germaine Green, hires Cliff Hardy to investigate. Is her only motive jealousy of her father's attractive second wife, now very rich?

'Hardy's search takes hims from the Illawarra escarpment to Wollongong and Port Kembla, and the police are far from co-operative as he tries to unravel the truth. He has his hands full when a panic-stricken call leads to a second case - the search for the precocious daughter of Marisha Karatsky, an exotic, dark-eyed interpreter who gets well and truly under Hardy's guard.

'Hardy has narrow escapes and people die as his probing hits nerves. Corrupt cops, compromised insurance agents, feral bikies as well as a few good guys are drawn into the maelstrom. Hardy battles on through personal turmoil and vicious opposition with all outcomes uncertain and justice a remote ideal' (Publication summary)

'Charles Tingwell is one of Australia's best loved actors with a career spanning over 50 years. From glamourous post-war Hollywood to London in the swinging sixties, to some of Australia's favourite film and stage productions he has a long list of acting credits. This is Bud's life as an actor, director, producer, writer and family man.' (Source: Online)

'Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute's governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling.

'Evelyn defies him - and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge?

'Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh's finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is ripped to shreds while walking his dog -- all this after Evelyn, now a young woman, has reappeared in the city.

'What connects the victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail - each time blaming a mysterious "lamplighter"?

'Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy, and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source of Evelyn's torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of Hell.'

Book Jacket. Scribner, 2003. (Libraries Australia record).

'In this tantalizing tale of Victorian ghost stories and family secrets, timid, solitary librarian Gerard Freeman lives for just two things: his elusive pen pal Alice and a story he found hidden in his mother's drawer years ago. Written by his great-grandmother Viola, it hints at his mother's role in a sinister crime. As he discovers more of Viola's chilling tales, he realizes that they might hold the key to finding Alice and unveiling his family's mystery-or will they bring him the untimely death they seem to foretell?

'Harwood's astonishing, assured debut shows us just how dangerous family skeletons-and stories-can be.' (Publication summary)

'Is it possible to be too much in love? After ten years in London, Martin Blackman returns to Adelaide with his wife and fellow psychiatrist Lucy, blissfully happy. But then he introduces her to his old friend Felix, once a brilliant surgeon, now barred from practising and changed beyond recognition. In the complex triangle that develops, Martin must decide just how far he is prepared to go for Felix. So begins the darkest of journeys for all three of them...' (Publication summary)