Cirrus@Austlit

'At seventeen, Maeve is naively single-minded about pursuing a life in the theatre. After a rigorous audition process, she secures a position at one of the most competitive drama schools in the country. Leaving behind the security of her childhood home in Queensland, Maeve moves to Melbourne and devotes herself to the course.

'The expectations of the faculty are made clear from the outset: to avoid failure, the process must be adhered to without question and, as the youngest student at the school, Maeve knows she must gain life experience in order to inhabit her roles. With the encouragement of her new classmates, Maeve explores the darker pockets of her personality, disastrously blurring the line between the characters she must play and herself.'

Source: Abstract.

'All Frances wants is a cure for her daughter, but that would take a miracle, and miracles aren't something Frances believes in anymore.

'Newly divorced from her pastor ex-husband and excommunicated from the church community she once worked within, she wrestles alone with the prognosis of her terminally ill child. Any suggestion of 'divine intervention' is salt in the wound of her grief. So when Frances is forced to take in a homeless and pregnant teenage girl who claims to have had an immaculate conception, she's deeply challenged.

'But sixteen-year-old Mary is not who she seems, and soon opens the door to perspectives that profoundly shift Frances's sense of reality, triggering a chain of astonishing events. It seems that where there is the greatest suffering lies an unexpected magic. Frances begins to hold hope for her family's future, but the miracle prayed for is not always the one received.

'Immaculate is a provocative and tender exploration of loss, identity and healing, and the secret worlds we hide within in order to survive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'How can we know the truth of our own lives? This question troubles Matilda, as she looks back on her time with her foster brother, Sem. Matilda remembers long hours at the swimming pool. Celeste, a girl who lived downstairs with her artist mother. Sem disappearing for hours, then days. Her father yelling in the driveway. A car coming to take Sem away.

'Five years later, Matilda lives in Melbourne with her mother. Sem is now a memory she has locked away. Until, at a party, Matilda reconnects with Celeste and then Sem. Celeste and Matilda move out to the coast near Eden to house-sit. Sem follows, but as the long summer drags on, the atmosphere in the house becomes claustrophobic. When Sem starts disappearing again, Matilda finds herself on unsteady ground, haunted by their past.

'One morning, after a night at the pub, Matilda wakes up scratched and hungover, with no memory of the previous night. Sem is once again gone. This time, for good. Matilda becomes consumed by an obsession to know if she is responsible for Sem's disappearance. But the truth struggles to fit into a neat story.

'Part absorbing mystery, part riveting family drama, A Place Near Eden is a story of the pursuit of truth and the ways we fail those we love.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"In those first moments, that admission felt precious to me: it was something that I alone had been deemed worthy enough to carry and I was grateful. I was grateful to finally know, but I still couldn't speak."

'Something was wrong, she knew it, but she was entirely unprepared for what he would tell her.

'Viewed through the lens of a relationship breakdown after one partner discloses to the other that they are transgender, this autofiction spans eighteen months: from the moments of first discovery, through the eventual disintegration of their partnership, to the new beginnings of independence.

'In diaries and letters, Now That I See You unfolds a love story that, while often messy and uncomfortable, is a poignant and personal exploration of identity, gender, love and grief.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Set in the 1800s, Gabriel Fox is newly arrived to Van Diemen’s Land from England. Drawn by the promise of his heart’s desire and compelled to distance himself from pain at home, Gabrielle is on a quest to find a woman called Maryanne Maginn. His guide, a cannibal who is not all he seems, leads him north. As Gabriel traverses this wild country, he uncovers new truths buried within his own memory.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.