Cirrus@Austlit

'In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of terrified and broken villagers for company, this story explores coming of age when society - and all its cues - has been washed away. For the few survivors, questions of identity, nature, love, and fear are explored through the eyes of a child, against a backdrop of encroaching water. In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of broken villagers for company, this story explores coming of age when society - and all its cues - has been washed away. In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of terrified and broken villagers for company, this story explores coming of age when society - and all its cues - has been washed away. For the few survivors, questions of identity, nature, love, and fear are explored through the eyes of a child, against a backdrop of encroaching water.' (Publication summary)

'Jelena Dinic came to Australia during the collapse of the war-torn former Yugoslavia and her poems are created from fractured landscapes. Winner of the 2019 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award, this collection beautifully charts the territory where cultures, languages and family life intersect. Dinic publishes in both Serbian and English.'

Source : publication summary

'I still see her sometimes in my sleep. She is walking through the blue and orange lights of the city or in the desert country of red ground, spinifex and oaks. Last night I dreamed she was climbing a green and blue mountain, the kind you see in the tropics, rich and heavy with steam and rain. She is still only a girl in my dreams, but that's how I remember her. In every dream she is walking. In every dream I call out her name. Tania.

'Ten years after the disappearance of her best friend and the death of her mother, Cassandra Noble escapes her country childhood to pursue life as an artist in the city. On the threshold of a promising career as a painter, her creativity suddenly abandons her. Soon after, she finds herself with a lover who wishes to control her just as her father once did.

'While her last painting just might hold the key to why she can no longer create, what will happen when she discovers the two tragic events of her childhood are linked in ways she could never have imagined?

'A New Name for the Colour Blue is a story of the healing power of remembering, of love, and the breathtaking beauty of the natural world.' (Publication summary)

'Sometimes I feel like I'm neither one thing nor another. I live in the Mallee but I don't like the desert. I live on a farm but I get hay fever and I'm scared of goats. I like school but my best mates don't. I'm stuck between stuff. It's like I'm not meant to be here but I am.

'Sandy Douglas knows that life at fifteen is hard, but it's even harder when your mother died a year ago and nothing's gone right since. His brother Red, on the other hand, is eighteen now and working the farm. He's amped up on rage and always looking for a fight. And then there's their dad Tom. He does his best, but - really - he doesn't have a clue.

'As Sandy and Red deal with girls, dirt biking, footy and friendship, both boys have to work out who they want to be, without their mum around. The Mallee, where they live, may seem like the middle of nowhere, but it turns out this is going to be one hell of a year.' (Publication summary)