Cirrus@Austlit

'Some secrets won’t stay buried.

'‘Scott's lost expedition was still here, she thought – frozen, preserved, waiting to be rescued from the thaw. The truth lay beneath the surface, and she was going to bring it up.’

'In 1912, five British explorers struggle across the freezing Antarctic landscape, through howling winds and plummeting temperatures, seeking the safety of their camp.

'Today, as the world’s ice sheets begin to melt and surrender their secrets, renowned glacial archaeologist Missy Simpson works to discover the true cause of the explorers’ deaths – a subject that has intrigued researchers for more than a century.

'Her colleague, Cambridge professor Jim Hunter, is working on his own scientific mysteries – and is willing to risk everything to solve them.

'In hallowed halls of learning and on the icy polar plateau, these risk-takers must grapple with the unfathomable power of the natural world and the dramatically changing weather – while navigating their own complicated relationships.

'Drawn from the pages of history and cutting-edge science, Thaw is a gripping read that will forever change how you see the frozen continent – and those who seek to conquer it.' (Publication summary)

'They tell us that human happiness lies only in the future. But what if it really lies in the past?

'Hobart, 2022- a city with declining population, in the grip of a dark recession. A rusty ship sails into the harbour and begins to unload its cargo on the site of the once famous but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known to the world as GoFA.

'One day the city's residents are awoken by a high-pitched sound no one has heard for two generations - a factory whistle. GoFA's owner, world-famous tycoon Dundas Faussett, is creating his most ambitious installation yet. He's going to defeat the internet's dominance over our lives by establishing a new Year Zero: 1948. Those whose jobs and lives have been destroyed by Amazon and Uber and Airbnb are invited to fight back in the only way that can possibly succeed" by living as if the internet and the smartphone had never been invented.

'The hold over our lives by Gates, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and the rest starts to loosen as the revolutionary example of Factory 19 spreads. Can nostalgia really defeat the future? Can the little people win back the world? We are about to find out.' (Publication summary) 

'April, 1947. In a run-down farmhouse on a remote Scottish island, George Orwell begins his last and greatest work: Nineteen Eighty-Four.

'Forty-four years old and suffering from the tuberculosis that within three winters will take his life, Orwell comes to see the book as his legacy – the culmination of a career spent fighting to preserve the freedoms which the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century have threatened. Completing the book is an urgent challenge, a race against death.

'In this illuminating novel, Dennis Glover masterfully explores the creation of Orwell’s classic work, which for millions of readers worldwide defined the twentieth century. Simultaneously a captivating drama, a unique literary excavation and an unflinching portrait of a beloved British writer, The Last Man in Europe will change the way you understand Nineteen Eighty-Four.' (Publication summary)