Cirrus@Austlit

'With his PEA licence restored and strapped for cash, Cliff Hardy is reluctantly drawn into a scheme to claim the reward on a 17-year-old abduction case.

'Hardy is distracted by a hot new lover, but when one of the schemers ends up dead, the case gets his full attention. Who paid the cops to suppress the ransom note and how come they're always one step ahead of Hardy?' (Publication summary)

'Sex, sport and steroids - an explosive mix.

'They called him the Black Prince. Southwestern Uni's top athlete, Clinton seemed to have it all: he was destined for sporting stardom and lucky in love - then it all went terribly wrong.

'Now Clinton won't rest until he's avenged his girlfriend's death. He's after the dealer who sold Angie bad steroids and nothing's going to get in his way. Can Cliff Hardy find him before he ends up on a murder charge - or dead? The trail leads the Sydney PI all the way to an Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland and back to the shadowy world of illegal boxing.' (Publication summary)

'Petra Penfold-Knight, accustomed to her own way from birth, grows up to lead a religious cult whose devotees wear red shoes. The cult attracts members through Petra's magnetism, as well as by more sinister means, such as stealing baby girls from their mothers. An angel is assigned as guardian to Petra, and must continually examine his own moral position as he hovers beside the woman and observes child-stealing, violence, rape and murder committed in the name of religion. Contains descriptions of sex, coarse language, strong violence, child abuse and drug use.

Source: Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7390982

'A disembodied voice crackles through an empty room; an imposing figure from ancient mythology towers gloriously over mere mortals in a modern Hypermarket; a girl floats out of her material body to become a savage bird of prey. That's weird!' (Publication summary)

'Rick's cousins are two specks floating on the horizon, leaving him far behind on the treacherous bush track. He looks at his punctured tyres in dismay. Ten kilometres. If he walks, he'll be too late to save them. If he runs, he'll expire in the heat.

'Somewhere across the flats, in between the red-dirt back roads, there's real trouble happening. Rick has never felt so alone; the land around him feels as alien as the moon - nothing like the city.

'But now is no time to hesitate... Ian and Nita are depending on him.

'Then the voice of his dead father comes ringing: 'Don't use up all your energy at once. Walk twenty, run twenty.''

Source: Publisher's blurb (2019 republication).

'When Mike Langford, a war photographer with a reputation for unusual risk-taking, disappears inside Cambodia, he becomes a mythic figure in the minds of his friends. The search for him which is at the heart of this novel explores the personal highways that led him to war, and to his ultimate fate.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Part autobiography, part cultural history, some will read Memoirs of a Slow Learner as a comic anatomy of the corpse of Australian small-l liberalism. Others will see in it a journalistic record of the times. Yet others a moving personal statement. It is a unique departure in Australian autobiography. Commenting on this new edition, Coleman writes: ‘Looking back across twenty years I see more clearly than I did at the time that the real origin of Memoirs of a Slow Learner was my immersion in the poetry of James McAuley (my co-editor at Quadrant.) I had already written one response to his work and genius, The Heart of James McAuley (Connor Court). His autobiographical poems moved me deeply, especially his 'Letter to John Dryden'. It distantly echoed a similar family background to mine (freethinking father, Protestant mother), a similar education in a secular state grammar school and Sydney University, infatuation with Marxism, mysticism and Christianity. But whereas McAuley found a resolution of his quest in the Catholic Church, I persevered with secular liberalism, in the belief that imagination and feeling could still moisten its parched landscape. Several writers published rejoinders to McAuley’s poem – Jack Lindsay, Amy Witting, A.D.Hope. Memoirs of a Slow Learner was mine. It could be called 'A Letter to James McAuley'. In the years since I have come to accept many of McAuley’s criticisms of my liberal secularism – many but not all. I am now more sceptical of the freethinkers who influenced me in my youth such as the philosopher John Anderson and far less sceptical of church leaders who deplored their influence. The conversation continues.’' (Publication summary)

'When Todd Barnes, war veteran and popular drinking mate, leaves Cliff Hardy a tidy sum to find out who killed him, Hardy can hardly refuse - and he needs the money. Todd's widow and some of his cronies are not always cooperative, however, and it's hard to tell friends from enemies, especially when it comes to the mysterious Kevin O'Fearna, known as O'Fear.

'Hardy's battered Falcon takes him from the familiar mean streets of Sydney to equally dangerous bushland, where he's on his own up against heavy odds. A not-unfamiliar situation for Sydney's most enduring private investigator.' (Publication summary)

'Max and Christina are the adopted children of a cult called the White League. They have been indoctrinated for most of their lives by their parents, and by the man they call Ratface, a high-ranking cult official. When Ratface kidnaps another child, Max and Christina find the courage to plan their escape.'  (Publication summary)

'The woman was dangerous, even over the phone. Cliff Hardy knew he should have listened to his instincts when he first met Paula Wilberforce.

'Instead he becomes embroiled in a high-society family full of old rivalries and hatred, his gun is stolen and he is wanted in relation to a shooting.

'He has to find the answers quickly, before the murderer strikes again. The only lead he has is a mutilated photograph. Whose face is it? And what are those strange shadows in the background?' (Publication summary)