Cirrus@Austlit

'Vegemite is perhaps Australia's most enduring cultural icon. But how did this pungent, salty black paste, which for most of us is how we start the day, come to be created?

'Cyril Callister was a passionate scientist and innovator, and his story is inextricably bound with that of our country through the first half of the twentieth century, through two world wars and the Depression. He was the grandson of a gold miner who arrived in Ballarat in the 1850s. His own father, a widower, raised a small army of kids, and Cyril was the first to go to university. He was sent to England during WWI and in the 1920s was employed by the flamboyant and entrepreneurial Fred Walker, charged with the task of creating a substance that would, in time, be named Vegemite. Cyril remained at Kraft until his death in 1949. He was a progressive boss and encouraged further training for all of his staff, many of them women.

'Cyril was also a husband and father to three children - two were struck down by polio as children, while the third, a fighter pilot, was tragically killed while on a dawn air sortie in the Trobriand Islands, east of PNG during WWII.

'The Man Who Invented Vegemite is a must-read for all of us interested in remarkable Australian stories. Jamie Callister, sets out to learn more about the grandfather he never met and, along the way, discovers that extraordinary things can happen to (almost) ordinary people.' (From the publisher's website.)

'A few years from now, climate change has produced global drought. Wars over water are becoming commonplace.

'When communications are cut from an Australian Antarctic station and two colleagues go missing, maverick glaciologist Luke Searle and his team are unaware they have fallen victim to a plan to harvest Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier for water. Yet the ruthless leader of this secret project has a second plan, far more ambitious and destructive than the first, which will give his country unchallengeable military power and make him exceedingly rich. But the plan risks destroying the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing sea level rises that will not only wipe out low-lying cities, but whole countries.

'With their station burned to the ground and the team under fire, Luke Searle must not only survive the harshest environment on Earth but battle a mysterious assailant to stop a global catastrophe. Who has hatched this plan, how far will he go, and what will it take to stop him? With complex and intriguing characters, and plot threads skilfully woven together into a surprising and dramatic climax, Thirst will entertain and enthral. Based on L.A. Larkin's experiences in Antarctica and her interviews of scientists who have visited the remote Pine Island Glacier, Thirst is a chilling and explosive action thriller that is a startling reminder of the fragility and power of Earth's most precious resource. ' (Publisher's blurb)

'A compelling, jaw-dropping collection of stories from Andrew Fraser's high-profile career as a criminal defence lawyer.

'Andrew Fraser has made mistakes in his life. Big mistakes. And he has paid a hefty penalty for them. A flash, arrogant and highly successful criminal lawyer, he made a great deal of money defending a huge range of clients before a spectacular fall from grace in the late 1990s through his cocaine addiction. 

'In Any Case is the compelling blue-chip collection of Fraser's fascinating stories of people he has defended over the years as well as his own battles with the law, and himself.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'In 1862, Sonya Tolstoy married the greatest author the world has ever known, Leo Tolstoy. For forty-eight years they shared their lives in a union that was at once passionate, collegial and combative. Sixteen years younger than her husband, Sonya bore him thirteen children and worked for years as his copyist, rewriting countless drafts of his timeless novels. Both were mercurial and passionate personalities and, towards his end, Tolstoy deserted her.

In War & Peace and Sonya, Russian scholar Judith Armstrong tells Sonya's own story exploring their devotion and ambivalence to one another, their passion for great literature and the powers of the imagination, and showing us just how remarkably true to life fiction Judith Armstrong can be.' (Publisher's website)

'As you read this, more than a hundred thousand ambulance medics across the planet are responding to emergencies. They are scrambling under crashed cars, carrying the sick down flights of stairs, resuscitating near-dead husbands at the feet of hysterical wives, and stemming the blood-flow of gunshot victims in seedy back alleys. A good number too are just as likely to be raising an eyebrow at some ridiculous, trivial complaint their patient has considered life threatening enough to call them for.

'Paramedico is a heart-stopping, white-knuckle ride about a paramedic at work in an ambulance, attending emergencies in far-flung places such as England, Iceland, Macedonia, Mexico, Pakistan, The Philippines, South Africa and Thailand - at the time of the 2004 tsunami. This is also a brilliantly written collection of wild tales of wild people whose lives are so different from our own that it's hard to believe they really exist. Gilmour is able to make us stop and think not only of how to live a life, but how precious life is and how important it is to protect it.' (From the publisher's website.)

In June 2009 Mark Logue was contacted by the producers of The King's Speech, a film based on the relationship of Logue's grandfather Lionel Logue with George VI, for information on his grandfather. While supplying information from family papers and from online and published references, Mark Logue became aware that his grandfather's archive was incomplete. Inspired by the film and wanting to tell the complete story of his grandfather, Logue continued to research and write, with Peter Conradi, a biography of Lionel Logue. In the process he discovered much of the missing parts of his grandfather's archive.

Source: Mark Logue, 'Introduction', The King's Speech : How One Man Saved the British Monarchy (2010): ix-xiv

'Ethan Grout realises it's his 27th birthday when he receives a card from the fitness centre he recently quit along with the only job he had ever held. Having moved into a tiny room above a busy city bar, the buzz and lights of downstairs and the street soothing him to sleep, Ethan takes a new job, and another, and even another - collecting a life as he goes. Ethan Grout journeys through life, challenging himself to create his own gang of misfits when being alone just won't do any more.

'This bittersweet novel will strike familiar chords with anyone who has suffered through jobs that resemble glee clubs, cults or blind dates, and who have tried to fit in even when it all just seems too hard.' (From the publisher's website.)

'In 406 BC, to seal a tenuous truce, the young Roman Caecilia is wedded to Vel Mastarna, an Etruscan nobleman from the city of Veii. The fledgling Republic lies only twelve miles across the Tiber from its neighbour, but the cities are from opposing worlds so different are their customs and beliefs.

'Leaving behind a righteous society, Caecilia is determined to remain true to Roman virtues while living among the sinful Etruscans. Instead she finds herself tempted by a mystical, hedonistic culture which offers pleasure and independence to women as well as a chance to persuade the Gods to delay her destiny. Yet Mastarna and his people also hold dark secrets and, as war looms, Caecilia discovers that Fate is not so easy to control and that she must finally choose where her allegiance lies.

'Exploring themes of destiny versus self-determination and tolerance versus prejudice, The Wedding Shroud is a novel that vividly captures a historical time and place while shining a light on the lives of women of the ancient world.' (From the publisher's website.)

'"The photo was clearly sexual, all skin and limbs. It was a CCTV image, which looked to be from security footage. Lucas leaned forward to read the accompanying paragraph. Within half a sentence it was as though a foot had crashed through the monitor and kicked his teeth in. He closed his eyes and willed himself to wake up. He checked again. The image was still there. My god, look at the goofy smiles. No wonder the world was laughing. Under normal circumstances, he'd be laughing too. If the face that was front-and-centre didn't belong to a member of his family."

'Lucas Dekker is celebrity offspring, twice over. His Australian father, Charlie, has recently retired from a stellar football career in the Premier League. His English mother, Monica, is a self-help guru, who has sold millions of books with her pro-family message. But when Charlie's involvement in a bizarre sex scandal hits the tabloids, the Dekkers' own family dynamic will never be the same again. Making News is a darkly hilarious story about celebrity culture, the media and what really goes on behind the smutty front pages that everyone loves to read.' (From the publisher's website.)