Cirrus@Austlit

'We All Fall Down is a vivid and compelling narrative of middle class friends and families, relationships and the contemporary workplace.

'Kate and Hugh Drysdale, like many couples, buy a house that stretches them to the limits financially. Hugh looks at the soaring property market, the fact he's earning a good salary, and all the signs of a booming economy and believes everything will be fine. And it is, until the advertising company he works for hits a rough patch: two major pieces of business walk out of the door, and a new creative director from the UK is brought in.

'Set in Sydney when world economic instability is beginning to bite, this is very much a book of our time. Peopled with unforgettable characters, it is a disturbing, but affecting portrait of family, the workplace, and the costs of playing, or not playing the game.' (From the publisher's website.)

'It is 1995. Milan Zorec, an aspiring yet rejected novelist, travels from England to Bosnia to join the Serbian forces as a sniper in Sarajevo, in the final months of the longest siege in history. He's determined to find a story that no publisher will be able to damn with the words, "I feel I've seen this before."

'In doing so Milan journeys from innocence into the slow burning grip of darkness. Among his fellow snipers, the lost souls who make up Ratko Mladic's army, Milan gains the ammunition to write his masterpiece - the novel that hasn't been written before.

'Alternating between London and Sarajevo, I Hate Martin Amis et al is a chilling, blackly humorous novel that will appeal to both lovers of the word and anyone who's fallen short of their ambitions. Peter Barry's stunningly original, award winning debut isn't just about literary failure, though. It's a compelling portrait of the dreamer, and bores down into the very centre of things - why we write, why we read, how we might live in these, the strangest of times.' (From the publisher's website.)