Cirrus@Austlit

'What do you get when you cross a painfully awkward boy, some lofty comedic ambition and a dead best friend? Answer- Norman Foreman.

'Norman and Jax are a legendary comedy duo in the making, with a five-year plan to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe by the time they're fifteen. But then Jax dies before they even turn twelve.

'Norman's mum Sadie knows she won't win Mother of the Year anytime soon, and she really doesn't know, or care, who Norman's father is. But her heart is broken when she discovers her grieving son's revised plan- 'Find Dad' and 'Get to the Edinburgh Fringe'.

'If meeting his dad and performing at the Festival are the two things that will help Norman through this devastating time, then Sadie is going to make them happen.

'So mother and son set off from Cornwall, with their friend Leonard in his vintage Austin Maxi, on a pilgrimage to Edinburgh - to honour Jax and to track down a few maybe-fathers on the way . . .' (Publication summary)

''And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'

'Faith isn't so different from most women her age; She's thirty-two, single, has the requisite dysfunctional family, an even more dysfunctional best friend, a busy and challenging job, and in her weaker moments dreams of perhaps some day meeting a man that will ignite her senses and take her away from all this.

'The trouble is, while she aches to see the good in the world, Faith is constantly confronted by the bad. After having heard one too many love-gone-wrong stories and being left feeling helpless in the aftermath of yet another woman fleeing yet another violent man, Faith, a legal counsellor in a women's crisis centre, has just about given up. Not just on the big ideas like hope, love and trust, but even on the chance of getting a decent haircut or meeting an ordinary, non-psychotic, bloke.

'One night a twist of fate finds Faith wringing out years of unshed tears in a suburban veterinary clinic. It is a night that will slowly change the way Faith sees herself and that will allow her to finally understand what she has always needed to know: that before you can save others you have to save yourself.' (Publisher's blurb)

'The fires on the hills smouldered orange as the women left, pockets charged with ashes to guard them from the night. Watching them fade into the grey fall of snow, Nance thought she could hear Maggie's voice. A whisper in the dark.

'"Some folk are born different, Nance. They are born on the outside of things, with a skin a little thinner, eyes a little keener to what goes unnoticed by most. Their hearts swallow more blood than ordinary hearts; the river runs differently for them."

'Nóra Leahy has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year, and is now burdened with the care of her four-year-old grandson, Micheál. The boy cannot walk, or speak, and Nora, mistrustful of the tongues of gossips, has kept the child hidden from those who might see in his deformity evidence of otherworldly interference.

'Unable to care for the child alone, Nóra hires a fourteen-year-old servant girl, Mary, who soon hears the whispers in the valley about the blasted creature causing grief to fall upon the widow's house.

'Alone, hedged in by rumour, Mary and her mistress seek out the only person in the valley who might be able to help Micheál. For although her neighbours are wary of her, it is said that old Nance Roche has the knowledge. That she consorts with Them, the Good People. And that only she can return those whom they have taken...' (Publication summary)

'Natalie is a young Gold Coast mother with a loving husband, two small children and a happy lifestyle. While helping her mother move house, she finds a little box containing a Burmese artefact. When Natalie learns its unique history through a letter left by her great-great uncle, it ignites an interest in its country of origin and her uncle's unfulfilled plans for this curio.

'Her investigations collide with her own dramatically changing circumstances and create a catalyst for a moral dilemma that challenges the core of her marriage as she finds herself immersed in two very different golden lands.' (Publisher's blurb)

'From nineteenth-century England to present-day Australia - a riveting story of secrets and scandal.

'1891: Orphaned as a small child, Tilly Kirkland found a loving, safe home with her grandfather in Dorset. But nineteenth-century England is an unforgiving place for a young woman with limited means and as her grandfather's health fails, it seems perfect timing that she meets Jasper Dellafore. Yet her new husband is not all he seems. Alone in the Channel Islands, Tilly finds her dream of a loving marriage is turning into a nightmare.

'2012: Bestselling novelist Nina Jones is struggling with writer's block and her disappointing personal life. Nothing is quite working. After a storm damages Starwater, her house on Ember Island, she decides to stay for a while and oversee the repairs: it s a perfect excuse to leave her problems behind her on the mainland. Then Nina discovers diary pages hidden in the walls of the old home. And a mystery unravels that she is determined to solve.

'Though the two women are separated by years, Starwater House will alter the course of both their lives. Nina will find that secrets never stay buried and Tilly learns that what matters most is trusting your heart. '

'In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men.

'Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes's spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her, as he attempts to salvage her soul. As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes's ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn't she?

'Based on a true story, Burial Rites is a deeply moving novel about personal freedom: who we are seen to be versus who we believe ourselves to be, and the ways in which we will risk everything for love. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland's formidable landscape, where every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?' (Publisher's blurb)

'It's been ages since Jo, Helen, Ereka and CJ first became friends through their mothers' group-back then, life revolved around their small children. Now their kids are pre-teens and teenagers with attitudes, iPods and raging hormones, and life is feeling emptier for some mothers, more liberating for others.

'While away together in an old country house with a couple of new friends and plenty of wine and food, it's not long before the women are discussing men, marriage and parenting, sharing intimacies and confiding vulnerabilities. Friendships are put on the line as the bonds between them are tested and the weekend takes some unexpected turns.

'Picking up where the international bestseller Secret Mothers' Business left off, The Reunion is an insightful, funny and often biting novel about the challenges women face as their bodies change, dreams fade and kids grow up. Ultimately it explores what it means to be a good friend, a good person and a good mother-and suggests that all love is about learning to let go.' (Publisher's blurb)

'In answer to a call from the Otherworld, poet and troubadour Marie de France travels to the borderlands of Wales with her beloved knight and betrothed, Llew. When the travellers are set upon in a plot to steal Marie's ancient necklace, dwellers of the Otherworld of Oakenfast come to their rescue, led by the mysterious Greenleaf.' (Publication summary)

'Marie de France, poet and lover of the famed Richard the Lionheart, is determined to free her faithful knight Llew from the spell that has transformed him into a swan. But to do so she must travel from France to St Non's Well in the magical land of Wales.

'Frustration mounts as the very heavens themselves seem to conspire against Marie's departure from the court of Richard's father, Henry II, at Anjou. And when at last she embarks for Britain, Marie finds she must interrupt her journey again to pay homage to Richard's brilliant, exiled mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, at Salisbury.

'On reaching Eleanor's court, Marie's strange and vivid dreams of an ethereal lady of the flowers are the first hint of the machinations of the magical Otherworld in Llew's fate. And so begins an extraordinary adventure which will change Marie's life irrevocably'.

Source: bookseller's website.

'Marie de France, the young wife of an elderly Breton lord, finds the course of her life forever changed by an encounter with a mysterious knight in a deep and dangerous forest filled with magic. A year later, newly widowed, and on her way to her ancestral home, Marie comes face to face with another aspect of her destiny in a passionate encounter with the famous Richard the Lionheart. Like Marie, Richard is a poet and troubadour. But he's also the second son of the king of England, Henry Plantagenet, and his wife, Eleanor d'Aquitaine, not to mention betrothed to the king of France's daughter... But something even more dangerous than the political considerations of kings is stalking Marie, and when long shape-shifting shadows from the past reach out to claim her, she must face their terrifying powers...'.

Source: bookseller's website.