Cirrus@Austlit

'Born to deaf parents, John James ("JJ") has always been more at home in Sign language than in spoken English. Recently divorced, he returns to school to teach Sign. His pupils include animal liberationists Clive Kinnear and Stella Todd, foster-parents to a very unusual daughter who is not deaf, but dumb. It's not long before JJ meets the beautiful, sensitive and highly intelligent 'Eliza', and is drawn into a bizarre chain of events..' (Publication summary)

'Is brilliant young film maker Carmel Wise the innocent victim of gangland violence or is she enmeshed in a pornography racket as the press and the police imply? Carmel's businessman father hires Cliff Hardy to find the real reason 'the video girl' was shot dead outside the Greenwich Apartments in Kings Cross.

'Hardy follows a trail which is broken but clear - houses and flats, with the power on and the rent paid, stand empty; photographs and other document lead to Lionel Darcy, owner of the Champagne Cabaret; banks and business houses will supply just enough information to keep Hardy warm.

'The tail takes him to the sunny perninsula, leafy Lane Cove and the industrial waterfront. Hardy finds that every question and every answer had to be paid for in pain and fear. nd to some questions there may be no answers at all...' (Publication summary)

'It's no secret that the people who hire Hardy have nowhere else to turn.

Take Lady Catherine Chatterton, widow of the eminent judge. She's desperate to hand down the mantle of her husband's legal reign (not to mention the money) to someone more deserving than her boozy daughter Bettina.

So she hires Hardy to find her missing grandson - a tall order considering the only evidence of the young man's existence came two years earlier from an ageing drunk. Funny thing - when Hardy finds that drunk there is a helpful photograph... and within the hour, the drunk is dead. Now Hardy's on a murder case.' (Publisher's blurb)

'When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie's tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie's white employers, try to break up his marriage. The Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. The hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins ed.)

'For Tempe Caxton, glamorous television star, life has lost its lustre. Her son was killed in the war, her lover has walked out on her, her job is over and life seems meaningless. Suicide seems to promise an easy way out.

'While recovering from a failed attempt, she discovers a surprising secret in the pages of her dead son's diary - she has a granddaughter. And she soon finds out that her grandchild is in trouble - the family that have raised her are being unfairly evicted from the land they have held for four generations.

'Gradually Tempe is pulled into an alien world, with a new purpose; she is forced to rethink her long-held prejudices, fight for principles she has never before thought about, and find a new reason for living.' (From The House of Books imprint, Allen & Unwin website, 2012.)

'Bronco Jones, part-Aboriginal owner of Emu Station in the north of Western Australia, struggles against the machinations of a businessman and an anthropologist in this satirical portrait of anthropological exploitation of Aboriginal sacred sites.

'Seven Emus Station lies in the wild, red sandstone country back of the north-west port of Dampier. It is the prized property of Bronco Jones, his wife Possum and their bright, honey-coloured brood.

'The wealth of the property lures Appleby Gaunt, 'The Baron' who sweeps Bronco into a series of ruinous financial deals.

'Goborrow, a second-rate anthropologist, seizes the predicament as a means to boost his own credibility, with disastrous results for himself and 'The Baron'.

'An experimental novella, Seven Emus deals with issues of identity, ancestral fidelity and the misguided appropriation of cultural artefacts.'  (Publication summary)

'Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meaningful because of its hero's struggle against his wrongful imprisonment. Elements of romance, incidents of family life and passages of scenic description both relieve and give emphasis to the tragedy that forms its heart.' (Publication summary : Penguin Books 2009)