Cirrus@Austlit

'Wilf Healy lives in the wheatbelt town of Selwyn, works in Monk's Irish pub, delivers letters, drives the school bus, holds the place together. But he's had enough, wants to retire - to forget his nephew Connor, at war with the world, his brother Brian, visiting from America, his niece Orla, sick with blood cancer. Although he plans, and tries, he can't leave. Something is holding him back.

'As the young people flee, the old people die, the drugs arrive in Selwyn, Wilf has to decide what's important. Shining Like the Sun is about the value of promises, of words and actions that might save a failing community. In the process, Wilf learns there's no such thing as retirement.' (Publication summary)

'Clem Whelan's got a problem: trapped in the suburbs in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 he has to decide what to do with his life. Matriculation? He's more than able, but not remotely interested. Become a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Peter encourages him, but maybe it's just another dead end? To make sense of the world, Clem uses his telescope to spy on his neighbours. From his wall, John Lennon gives him advice; his sister (busy with her Feres Trabilsie hairdressing apprenticeship) tells him he's a pervert; his best friend, Curtis, gets hooked on sex and Dante and, as the year progresses and the essays go unwritten, he starts to understand the excellence of it all.

'His Pop, facing the first dawn of dementia, determined to follow an old map into the desert in search of Lasseter's Reef. His old neighbour, Vicky, returning to Lanark Avenue - and a smile is all it takes. Followed by a series of failed driving tests; and the man at his door, claiming to be his father.

'It's going to be a long year, but in the end Clem emerges from the machine a different person, ready to face what he now understands about life, love, and the importance of family and neighbours.'   (Publication summary)

'As Hitler's war looms, famous Australian artist Roland Griffin returns home from London with his family to live a simple life of shared plums and low-cut lawns in the suburbs.

'In the yard: a daughter, and a son, Hal, growing up with a preoccupied father who is always out in his shed stretching canvases and painting outback pubs. An isolated man obsessed with other people and places. Everything is a picture, a symbol. Even Hal, the boy in the boat, drifting through a strange world of Incredible Floridas.

'As the years pass, Roland learns that Hal is unable to control his own thoughts, impulses, behaviour. The boy becomes the destroyer of family. The neighbourhood is enlisted to help Hal find a way forward. Child actor, a clocker at Cheltenham Racecourse, an apprentice race caller. Incredible Floridas describes Hal's attempts at adulthood, love, religion, and the hardest thing of all: gaining his father's approval.' (Publication summary)