Cirrus@Austlit

'Even in death, Cassidy is larger than life.

'Charles Parnell Cassidy is a powerful politician. He's a backroom fixer generous, but also greedy and cunning. Martin Gregory is his disenchanted protégé who, having married Cassidy's daughter and become a success on his own terms, scorns his father-in-law.

'When the terminally ill Cassidy arrives in London to die, he makes Gregory the executor of his will and sets a complex trap by offering him the keys to a vast empire of wealth and corruption spanning Australia and Southeast Asia. With Cassidy's evil influence ever-present Gregory tries to unravel the old man's complicated obligations and debts, while struggling to ensure the security of his family.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.' (Publication summary)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)

'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.)

'A story of friendship and love set in the goldfields of Western Australia in the 1890s. The determined Sally Gough braves hardship and danger in this classic tale of pioneering Australia.' (Source: Bookseller's website.)