Cirrus@Austlit

'Harry Gordon, sports hero and merchant banker, finds that despite his best efforts, a year after taking over the family steel business it is on the brink of collapse. Then he discovers that the seemingly random events leading to this point are not simply related to market forces. In a race against time that becomes a matter of life and death, Harry is forced to draw on all his skill and courage to avoid certain disaster.' (Publication summary)

'The non-fiction story of one of Australia's first spies and a founder director of the spy agency ASIO.

This is a deeply researched work that has the subject's eldest son discovering things about his father he never knew. Valdemar (Val) Wake travelled to four Australian states and Territories in pursuit of his father's story and even visited the home of the spy agency in Canberra ASIO. Val Wake convinced ASIO to release his father's personal files which have now become a treasure trove for researchers trying to get the dirt on ASIO (almost a cottage industry in Australia.) The story deals in detail with World War Two and Bob Wake's work with the British and Americans. At the start of the Japanese war he was sent on a secret mission to Singapore to try and reconcile differences between the British high command and the Australian high command. Bob Wake served in the Commonwealth Investigation Branch, Military Intelligence, Commonwealth Security Service and ASIO.' (Source: Author's website http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?AuthorID=78603)

'Rosanne Dingli's stories deal with art, music, and literature, and are intensely concerned with location and atmosphere. They combine diverse meanings of intimacy experienced by a fascinating assortment of characters, at different times, in different places.

Uneasy familiarity between friends thrown together by a difficult love for one woman, or the bond of siblings, are forms of intimacy that can border on contempt. Artists, musicians and writers can have such similar intense feelings ... or such diverse emotions, about similar situations. Lovers' tenderness can endure because of deep understanding. Betrayal, confusion and joy live side-by-side with disappointment, bewilderment and elation, and always, there is that sense of involvement, of relationship.

This is an excursion into how close, or how distant, two individuals can feel. Enjoy this special bijou collection of fifteen previously published and awarded stories' (publisher blurb).

'In a quiet English village two bodies are discovered.

'Both murdered.

'But it is the manner of the death that most startles amateur detective Belinda Lawrence.

'They were both slain in a way that perfectly replicates the death a medieval English king.

'But why? ' (Publisher's blurb)

'This collection of thirteen stories brings Rosanne Dingli's recollections of Malta vividly to life. Some are family anecdotes, some are folkloric, and others are figments of the author's imagination. The reader's task is to distinguish which is which. In all the stories, one can feel the atmosphere and enjoy the descriptions of place, time and people, whether they embellish a mystery, a journey, a lover's dilemma or a family saga' (publication blurb).