Cirrus@Austlit

'Twenty years after the first boy vanished along the Brisbane River, psychologist Madeleine Jeffries is called home to help untangle a chain of similar disappearances. To do so she must confront secrets and guilt from her own past.

'The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies is an exploration of grief, responsibility and repercussions, and the way childhood actions can echo throughout our lives.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Dante and Johnno are unlikely childhood friends, growing up in the bustle of steamy, wartime Brisbane. Later, as teenagers, they learn about love and life amidst the city's pubs and public libraries, backyards and brothels, Moreton Bay figs and tennis parties. As adults, they make the great pilgrimage overseas and maintain an uneasy friendship as they seek to build their lives.

'An affectionate and bittersweet portrait, Johnno brilliantly recreates the sleazy, tropical half-city that was Brisbane and captures a generation locked in combat with the elusive Australian dream.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Penguin).

'At 17, Rachel Hill was the girl most likely to succeed. At 27, with an Honours degree and a career as a travel writer, she wonders if marriage is the only thing missing from this perfect trifecta.

'But one distrastrous life decision changes everything. Suddenly she is living back at home in her childhood bedroom – a room still celebrating 1987. She’s also working as a nanny for a surly six-year-old, proof-reading erotic fiction and crucifying movie themes on the piano.

'With Su-su-sudio in the cassette deck, Rachel tumbles head first into a ‘quarter-life’ crisis. As she revisits her idea of perfection, she finds that happiness is living the life you want to live, rather than the one you’re expected to.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."

'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)