Cirrus@Austlit

'How long can you run from a lie, if that lie is what your life is founded on?

'In a near future all identity information is encoded in digital language. Nations know where everyone is, all the time. Not everyone agrees with this constant surveillance, and when the system is hijacked and shut down, all global borders are closed. The world is no longer connected, and there is no back-up plan to establish belonging, ownership or trade.

'Scarlet Friday, whose job is to correct historical record, is stranded on the wrong side of the globe. Befriended by a stranger, she grabs an old, faded history book and writes her own version over the top—a record of the Great Undoing on the run.

'But in deciding what truth to tell Scarlet must face her own history. How do we navigate identity when it is all a lie? She must reckon with her past before she can imagine her future.' (Publication summary)

'The new novel from the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Australian author Alexis Wright, in a limited edition hardcover.

'Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.' (Publication summary)

''I only ever asked you for one thing,' my father said, a quiver in his voice. 'Just this one thing.' It was as though I had smashed the Ten Commandments.
'Oh father,' I cried in Arabic, grovelling at his ankles while my mother and siblings looked on. 'The one thing you ask of me - is everything.'

'Bani Adam has known all his life what was expected of him. To marry the right kind of girl. To make the House of Adam proud.

'But Bani wanted more than this - he wanted to make his own choices. Being the first in his Australian Muslim family to go to university, he could see a different way.

'Years later, Bani will write his story to his son, Kahlil. Telling him of the choices that were made on his behalf and those that he made for himself. Of the hurt he caused and the heartache he carries. Of the mistakes he made and the lessons he learned.

'In this moving and timely novel, Michael Mohammed Ahmad balances the complexities of modern love with the demands of family, tradition and faith. The Other Half of You is the powerful, insightful and unforgettable new novel from the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of The Lebs.' (Publication summary)

'Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness. The sign taunts a fool into feeling some sense of achievement, some kind of end- that you have reached a destination in the very least. Yet the sign states clearly, Darnmoor is the gateway, and merely a measure, the mark, a point on a road you begin to move closer to a place you might really want to be.

'Darnmoor is the home of the Billymil family, three generations who have lived in this 'gateway town'. Race relations between Indigenous and settler families are fraught, though the rigid status quo is upheld through threats and soft power rather than the overt violence of yesteryear.

'As progress marches inexorably onward, Darnmoor and its surrounds undergo rapid social and environmental changes, but as some things change, some stay exactly the same. Our protagonist characters are watched (and sometimes visited) by ancestral spirits and spirits of the recently deceased, who look out for their descendants and attempt to help them on the right path.

'When the town's secrets start to be uncovered the town will be rocked by a violent act that forever shatters a century of silence.

'Full of music, Gamillaray language and exquisite description, Song of The Crocodile is a lament to choice and change, and the unyielding land that sustains us all, if we can but listen to it.' (Publication summary)

'Tragic family circumstances force siblings Ying and Lai Yue to flee their home in China to seek their fortunes in North Queensland. Life on the gold fields is hard, and they soon abandon the diggings and head to nearby Maytown. Once there, Lai Yue finds a job as a carrier on expeditions, taking him far away from his sister. Ying remains in the township, where she works in a local store and strikes up an unlikely friendship with Meriem, a young white woman with a troubled past. Maytown is a place where violence frequently erupts and, when a serious crime is committed, suspicion falls on all those who are considered outsiders.

'Evoking the rich, unfolding tapestry of Australian life in the late nineteenth century, Stone Sky Gold Mountain is a heartbreaking and timeless story about those exiled from family and place who encounter discrimination yet yearn for acceptance.'   (Publication summary)