Cirrus@Austlit

'Deep inside Tracy's body live the organs of the peritoneal cavity.

'Ute, a wandering womb.
Rage, an existential spleen.
Gaster, a gleeful gorger.
Liv, a workaholic liver.

'But there is also Baby, an ever-growing tumour, and Baby's child Bunny, whose cells are multiplying alarmingly.

'Together, the organs must fight for homeostasis ... and Tracy's survival.

'The Vitals is Tracy Sorensen's cancer memoir transformed by imagination into something far richer and stranger. Narrated by her internal organs, it will make you infinitely more aware of the peculiar world inside your body, and illuminate all the hidden parts that make you human.' (Publication summary)

'Part memoir, part urgent appeal, Claire Dunn’s new book explores how our urban lives can become more intimate with nature.' 

'Have we done with the man in the open-necked shirt solemnly enjoying his ice cream? It would appear not. For a long time he was there in the flesh, as real as you or me. You could, if you wanted to, examine the hairs on his shins or press your hand to the pocket containing a biro and a small packet of Benson and Hedges. You could breathe in the cigarette and beer smell of him. But then he began to melt along with his ice cream in the sun. The sweetness melts and mingles with skin. You look again and he has become digital, a low-resolution copy of a copy, a little jagged around the edges. He is perhaps blending with parts of the caravan park in the background. Still, we have not done with him. We wait for him to lick again. To catch one more glimpse of that living tongue.'  (Introduction)

'Storyland carries us into new imaginative places – past, present and future.'

'In Understory Inga Simpson invites us to be more truly here than we were before.'

A magnificent novel about fate, Australia and what it means to be human... it just happens to be narrated by a galah called Lucky.

It's 1969 and a remote coastal town in Western Australia is poised to play a pivotal part in the moon landing. Perched on the red dunes of its outskirts looms the great Dish: a relay for messages between Apollo 11 and Houston, Texas.

Radar technician Evan Johnson and his colleagues stare, transfixed, at the moving images on the console -although his glossy young wife, Linda, seems distracted. Meanwhile the people of Port Badminton have gathered to watch Armstrong's small step on a single television sitting centre stage in the old theatre. The Kelly family, a crop of redheads, sit in rare silence. Roo shooters at the back of the hall squint through their rifles to see the tiny screen.

I'm in my cage on the Kelly's back verandah. I sit here, unheard, underestimated, biscuit crumbs on my beak. But fate is a curious thing. For just as Evan Johnson's story is about to end (and perhaps with a giant leap), my story prepares to take flight...