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Showing 1 - 20 of 90 items
By Sonya Hartnett, Penni Russon, Mandy Sayer, Favel Parrett, Kate Grenville, Alice Pung, Joan London, Rebekah Clarkson, Anna Krien, Brenda Walker, Black Inc. Staff, Karen Hitchcock, Gillian Essex, Delia Falconer. 2015
Something Special, Something Rare presents outstanding short fiction by Australia’s finest female writers. These are tales of love, secrets, doubt…
and torment, the everyday and the extraordinary. A sleepy town is gripped by delusory grief after the movie being filmed there wraps and leaves. A lingering heartbreak is replayed on Facebook. An ordinary family walks a shaky line between hopelessness and redemption. Brilliant, shocking and profound, these tales will leave you reeling in ways that only a great short story can. Includes stories by Kate Grenville, Mandy Sayer, Penni Russon, Favel Parrett, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sonya Hartnett, Isabelle Li, Gillian Essex, Brenda Walker, Gillian Mears, Fiona MacFarlane, Joan London, Karen Hitchcock, Charlotte Wood, Tara June Winch, Cate Kennedy, Alice Pung, Anna Krien, Delia Falconer, Rebekah Clarkson.By Alice Pung, Ali Lemerm, Catherine Rey, Diane Armstrong, Danny Katz, Arnold Zable, Chris Flynn, Meg Mundell, Mark Dapin, Kent MacCarter, Maria Tumarkin, Paola Totaro, Alison Lemer, Amy Espeseth. 2013
Joyful Strains collects twenty-seven memoirs from writers describing their expatriation to Australia. These are stories about what they found, who…
they became and what they now think of Australia - stories that provide entertainment, perspective and cause to celebrate our increasingly diverse nation. This is an insightful, compelling and sometimes confronting collection for all Australians. Contributors include: Alice Pung, Danny Katz, Mark Dapin and Diane Armstrong, with an introduction from Arnold Zable.By Samantha Verant. 2014
Samantha's life is falling apart - she's lost her job, her marriage is on the rocks and she's walking dogs…
to keep the wolf from the door. When she stumbles across seven love letters from the handsome Frenchman she fell head over heels for in Paris when she was 19, she can't help but wonder, what if? One carefully worded, very belated email apology, it's clear that sometimes love does give you a second chance. Jetting off to France to reconnect with a man you knew for just one day is crazy - but it's the kind of crazy Samantha's been waiting for her whole life. Truth may be stranger than fiction but sometimes it's better than your wildest dreams.By Delia C Falconer. 2008
Australia is a nation of drivers. We spend more time behind the wheel than almost anyone else, on fast highways,…
lonely bush tracks, jammed city lanes and suburban streets. The road is the place where the great dramas of our lives unfold, the route to our greatest pleasures as well as our worst nightmares. It is sexy, dangerous and unnerving. In this landmark collection, acclaimed novelist and essayist Delia Falconer brings together some of our very best writing on every aspect of the road. Lovers, lost children, bushrangers, killers. From the classic to the modern, from the outback to the beach, The Penguin Book of the Road is a ride into the heart of Australia.By Delia C Falconer. 2008
In The Best Australian Stories 2008, Delia Falconer brings together the year's most exciting short fiction.' As a reader,' Delia…
Falconer writes, 'I crave what the short story is most suited to deliver: a glimpse into the unpredictability of life, a quick burst of tone and voice, a bittersweet balance of surprising layers.' By turns global and domestic, subversively funny and wrenchingly sad, this year's Best Australian Stories delivers this, and more. Contributors include Nam Le, Robert Drewe, Emily Ballou, Nicholas Shakespeare, Bernard Cohen, Deborah Robertson, Frank Moorhouse, Tony Birch, Marion Halligan, Will Elliott and more.By John Galsworthy. 2001
This volume carries on with the tale of Soames' daughter Fleur. Married to Michael Mont, in line for a Barony,…
the story focuses on Michael's start in Parliament and Fleur's inherent dissatisfaction with her marriage, not unlike her father's own experience only in this case it is Fleur who loves another. The American Frances Wilmont enters the scene bringing news that Fleur's real love, Jon, forbidden to her as the son of her father's ex-wife, has married Wilmont's sister. Fleur struggles to be happy and fulfilled, just as her father Soames did.By Frank Moorhouse. 2004
Acclaimed author Frank Moorhouse has collected Australia's finest short fiction from the last twelve months. Inventive, adventurous, seductive and entertaining,…
the stories range in setting from war-torn Sarajevo to the streets of Che Guevara's Havana; from the electronic buzz of Tokyo to the waterways of ancient Rome. The contributors to this collection display the best fiction writers at the top of their form. This anthology of new work demonstrates once again the enduring quality of contemporary Australian fiction and showcases the art of the well-crafted story. Contributors to this year's collection include: J.M. Coetzee, Graeme Kinross-Smith, Delia Falconer, Nathan Besser, Tiffany Barton, Rae Luckie, Creed O'Hanlon, Carla Sari and Jena Woodhouse as well as many more.By H. E Bates. 1991
A wonderful collection of five stories featuring the Larkin family, with genial, generous Pop, devoted to his family - Ma…
and their six children, with a seventh on the way. In "The Darling buds of May" Pop meets a daggy inspector who is to become his future son-in-law. Contents: The Darling buds of May -- A Breath of French air -- When the green woods laugh -- Oh!To be in England -- A little of what you fancy.By Michel Faber. 2006
This collection of short stories revisits the world and characters of the novel The Crimson Petal and the White. Canny…
prostitute Sugar feels her deliberately hard heart crumble a little when confronted with childish misery... Clara, a former lady's maid now plying her trade on the streets, is surprised by her reaction to a particularly odd customer, 'The Rat Man'... William Rackham finds his endless regrets cold company indeed, as he self-administers his own medicinal cures...And find out what became of young Sophie, in what is perhaps the most intriguing story of all...By Henry Handel Richardson. 1992
The second volume of the story of Richard Mahony, a medical graduate of Edinburgh University who emigrates to Ballarat during…
the gold rush. The three parts of this novel trace his turbulent life in Australia including his marriage to Mary, the making of his fortune, its subsequent loss and his final decline into madness. An epic work filled with pathos.Stories, journalism and criticism by: Kate Grenville, Barbara Hanrahan, Beverley Farmer, Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Jessica Anderson, Olga Masters and…
Helen Garner - eight voices representing a decade in Australian literature dominated by women.By Damian Marrett. 2007
At the age of 23, Damian Marrett was recruited to work as an undercover operative for the Victorian police force.…
For over six years, he brushed shoulders and knocked heads with the lowest of Australia's low. In Wired, his third volume of undercover memoirs, Marrett befriends and betrays a volatile cocaine dealer, out-cons a conman with an extortion plan, and has his cover blown after tangling with a well-connected Melbourne underworld identity. On a stage where one careless word can cost a life, Marrett comes out the other end with his humour and dignity intact. And only a little bit wired...By Michelle De Kretser. 2020
When Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne, he was married with a young son. Now that the couple…
has moved to subtropical Sydney, a lusher and more chaotic city, Frances has an unshakable sense that the world has tipped on its axis. Everything seems alien, and exotic—and Frances is haunted by the unknowability of Charlie's previous life. A young art historian studying the objects in paintings--the material world--Frances takes mind-clearing walks around her neighborhood with her dog. Behind the fence of one garden, she thinks she sees a woman in an old-fashioned gown, but something is not right. ..By Kerri Turner. 2020
1945: After the thrill and danger of volunteering in an all-female searchlight regiment protecting Londoners from German bombers overhead, Evelyn…
Bell is secretly dismayed to be sent back her rigid domestic life when the war is over. But then she comes across a secret night-time show, hidden from the law on a boat in the middle of the Thames. Entranced by the risque and lively performance, she grabs the opportunity to join the misfit crew and escape her dreary future. At first the Victory travels from port to port to raucous applause, but as the shows get bigger and bigger, so too does the risks the performers are driven to take, as well as the growing emotional complications among the crew. Until one desperate night ...1963: Lucy, an unloved and unwanted little girl, is rescued by a mysterious stranger who says he knows her mother. On the Isle of Wight, Lucy is welcomed into an eclectic family of ex-performers. She is showered with kindness and love, but gradually it becomes clear that there are secrets they refuse to share. Who is Evelyn Bell?By Bruce Venables. 2017
London 1852: Following a disastrous duel, John Farrington has lost everything – his army commission, his reputation, and the love…
of his life. When he becomes the target of a powerful, vengeful family he is forced to run, boarding a ship bound for Australia. Hong Kong 1853: Master Feng, operatic impresario accused of treason, flees with his star performer, 'The Emperor’s Nightingale'. Fate places them aboard a Yankee clipper ship to the great continent in the south. Melbourne 1853: From humble beginnings, Cate Shearley is determined to make a prosperous life for herself and her son Jack, and has built up an enviable business as proprietor of the Golden Sheaf Hotel and Shearley’s Variety Theatre. When her shows have the crowds flocking in, Cate realises there is even more money to be made entertaining the gold-rich miners of Ballarat. But as Shearley’s Travelling Variety Show sets off for the goldfields, two in the troupe have ruthless enemies in pursuit. And their world will explode at the Eureka diggings, where the fuse of revolution has already been lit...By Barry Heard. 2019
Sophisticated computer hacking told the syndicate everything about Wally. Everything but why it would be a big mistake to kidnap…
him. Retired farmer Wally Flannagan is on a pilgrimage to Indonesia to witness the once-in-a-lifetime blooming of a rare flower. His holiday soon goes awry when he finds himself the target of kidnapping with the goal of extortion. Yet these plans, as alarming as they are for Wally, are little more than a diverting pastime for this criminal syndicate. They are organised, powerful, and ruthless. Yet there's one thing they don't know about Wally. He's a Pig. What's a Pig? Read on.By Anne Brinsden. 2019
Discover the world of a small homestead perched on the sunburnt farmland of northern Victoria. Meet Elise, whose urbane 1950s…
glamour is rudely transplanted to the pragmatic red soil of the Mallee when her husband returns to work the family farm. But you cannot uproot a plant and expect it to thrive. And so it is with Elise. Her meringues don't impress the shearers, the locals scoff at her Paris fashions, her husband works all day in the back paddock, and the drought kills everything but the geraniums she despises.As their mother withdraws more and more into herself, her spirited, tearaway daughters, Marjorie and Ruby, wild as weeds, are left to raise themselves as best they can. Until tragedy strikes, and Marjorie flees to the city determined to leave her family behind. And there she stays, leading a very different life, until the boy she loves draws her back to the land she can't forget...By Andrew McGahan. 2019
Billionaire Walter Richman has built himself his dream home - the Observatory, a mansion like no other mansion - at…
the foot of the world's highest mountain in the cold Antarctic waters south of Tasmania. Living a far humbler life is Rita Gausse, estranged daughter of the architect who designed the Observatory. Rita is surprised, upon her father's death, to be invited to the Observatory to meet the famous Richman in person. From the beginning, something doesn't feel right. Why is Richman so insistent that she come? What does he, and the additional guests he has invited, expect of her? When cataclysmic circumstances intervene to trap Rita and the others in the Observatory, cut off from the outside world, she slowly begins to learn the unsettling - and ultimately horrifying - answers.By Annie Seaton. 2019
When entomologist Emlyn Rees arrives at Hidden Valley she wants nothing more than to escape her marriage breakdown by burying…
herself in the research team's hunt for new species of insects in the depts of the dramataic Undara lava tubes. However, little does she suspect she will be the key to solving a mystery that's more than one hundred years old. Travis Carlyle is initially resistant to letting some city folks tramp over his cattle station, but soon the researcher's findings and a growing friendship with Emlyn bring opportunities to turn around his struggling farm. With a broken marriage behind him and children to care for, Travis needs to plan for the future and this could be his family's best chance. But when things start going wrong for the farm and around the dig site, Emlyn and Travis are at a loss to understand why. Are they cursed with bad luck, or is there a more sinister force at play? Are the tall tales of enigmatic stockman Bluey turning true? As the unseen saboteur grows bolder, Emlyn and Travis are caught in a race against time to save the station... and their lives.By Kate Forsyth. 2019
Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at her family's chateau, for her father, the Marquis de Valaine, lives at…
the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the chateau's orchards, gardens and fields, an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan new gardens. However, the love that blossoms between them is doomed: Viviane is betrothed to a duke, and David is forced to leave the property. In the aftermath, Viviane enters an unhappy marriage and moves to Versailles, while David embarks upon a mission to China to procure the secrets of tea-growing. There, he is inspired by the story of the Blue Rose, a fable of impossible love. Can he and Viviane - a world apart - ever hope to rekindle what they had together?