Cirrus@Austlit

'In the modern world the old traditions are declining - and so is attendance at Rabbi Teichmann's Friday-night sermon. But the rabbi has a plan to win back his congregation, and prove that real faith can embrace both the old and the new. Instigating a tradition that will grow beyond his expectations, the rabbi weaves a simple, entertaining tale around his listeners that resonates with meaning. Soon the rabbi finds that his congregants are not just talented listeners, and stories of universal experience and the meaning of life begin to take hold of both audience and reader alike.' (Publication summary)

'In this compulsively readable book John Button reflects on the patterns in his life, from growing up in his father’s house in Ballarat to his days as a cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. He is a natural storyteller who writes memorably about his childhood, his school days and his emerging political allegiances.

'Button paints vivid pictures of life inside parliament before he became Minister for Industry and Commerce in 1983, a job he was to hold for ten years. In recounting the challenges he faced Button always understands that politics is just one part of life. In this fascinating, stylish and hilarious memoir, he writes honestly about how politics works and why it often fails to work.'  (Publication summary)

'International thriller investigating the shadowy past of Raphael Ben Ari, a Polish Jew who has risen to become the Prime Minister of Israel. The author, who has had careers in journalism and marketing, has published several non-fiction books, including TThe Pregnant Father'. This is his first work of fiction.'(Publication summary)

'Connected stories featuring the same narrator, Sam; beginning in a lower middle-class beach suburb in Melbourne and ending in a Carlton cafe 30 years later.' (Publication summary)

'The Traitor's Contract offers non-stop action when Jack Halloran, a brilliant war hero, turns traitor. After a brutal attack on his counter-intelligence organization, Halloran knows he's being hunted. It's fight or flight and Halloran never runs. Teaming up with a rogue IRA boss, he enacts a terrorist attack that will shake the world to its core.' (Publication summary)

'Reaching across continents, these allusive, richly textured stories are unified by moments of dislocation in which certainties are eclipsed by unfamiliar terrain. A last, transforming embrace between Indian lovers heralds their separate journeys into arranged marriages; an elderly woman discovers a kinship with her neighbour through their mutual isolation; a young woman's beauty is ravaged by fire; a schoolteacher, fettered by responsibility, learns from her brash students during a Queensland summer heady with the smell of sugar cane; a decaying amaryllis plant mirrors the pain of the artist who obsessively sketches it, and a woman devastated by her friend's death, is shocked by her own secret exultation in living.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Virago ed.)

'Novel set on a cattle station in the Kimberleys, WA, about Bayard, a young district policeman and his Aboriginal prisoner, driven there for safety from a tribal revenge party.'

Source: Trove.

'On a vast sheep station in the outback, Raymond Gillen goes swimming in the lake one night and is never seen again. After the failure of local police to solve the mystery, bony arrives disguised as a horse-breaker, and uncovers a story of sexual tension and murder. The lake is evaporating in the intense drought - only when it dies will the mystery be solved. Apart from its strengths as a crime novel, this is probably the best book ever written about drought in Australia.' (Publication summary)