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Showing 1 - 20 of 32 items
By John O'Brien. 1994
Written by a parish priest from outback New South Wales, these verses are a tribute to the spirit of the…
Irish settler in Australia - to their ideals, their surroundings, their home life and the ties of religion and family unity.By John Galsworthy. 1995
The concluding novel in the third and final trilogy of the Forsyte Chronicles. Clare Charwell, Dinny's sister, returns from Ceylon…
to stay with her parents, after her marriage to Jerry Corven ends. She finds a job as secretary to the local MP, Dornford, and is being courted by Tony Croom, but her husband is determined to have her back.By John Galsworthy. 1995
The final trilogy of the Forsyte Chronicles opens with its focus moving to the Charwells, who are related to the…
Forsyte family by marriage. Michael's cousin, Dinny Charwell undertakes the vindication of her brother, whose army career has been ruined by the unjust accusations of an American archaeological leader.By John Meade Falkner. 1975
A short novel of ghosts and the evil that can be invested in an object, in this case an extremely…
fine Stradivarius violin. After finding the violin of the title in a hidden compartment in his college rooms, the protagonist, a wealthy young heir, becomes increasingly secretive as well as obsessed by a particular piece of music, which seems to have the power to call up the ghost of its previous owner.By Marilynne Robinson. 2005
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account…
of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowa preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father - an ardent pacifist - and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.By Hilary Spurling, Compton-Burnett I. 1994
Miranda's search for a companion brings her family into contact with a very different household, raising questions about the difficulties…
of living with strangers. As secrets are revealed, family bonds are shaken and new proposals are made.By Elizabeth Bowen. 1951
By Henry Handel Richardson. 1998
The first volume of the story of Richard Mahony, a medical graduate of Edinburgh University who emigrates to Ballarat during…
the gold rush. Mahony, despite finding initial contentment with his wife, Mary, becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his ordered life. His restlessness is not understood by Mary, who has to endure the constant shattering of her security as Richard desperately attempts to free himself; his attempts finally plunge them into poverty. In the figure of Richard Mahony, Richardson captures the soul of the emigrant, ever restless, ever searching for some equilibrium, yet never really able to settle anywhere. Richard's search, though, is also the more universal one for a meaning that will validate and give purpose to his existence.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.By J. M Coetzee. 2019
David has grown to be a tall ten-year-old. He is a natural at soccer, and loves kicking a ball around…
with his friends. His father Simon and Bolivar the dog usually watch. His mother Ines works in a fashion boutique. David still asks lots of questions. In dancing class at the Academy of Music he dances as he chooses. He refuses to do sums and will not read any books except Don Quixote. One day Julio Fabricante, the director of a nearby orphanage, invites David and his friends to form a proper soccer team. David decides he will leave Simon and Ines to live with Julio. Before long he succumbs to a mysterious illness. In The Death of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee continues to explore the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.By Patrick White. 1992
Three nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor dance attendance on Elizabeth Hunter as her daughter and son convene at her…
deathbed. A monumental exploration of the love, hate, comedy, tragedy, impotence and longing that festers within family relationships. Contains some coarse language, some descriptions of sex and some violence.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 Elliot Perlman. 2019
Stephen Maserov has problems. A onetime teacher, married to fellow teacher Eleanor, he has retrained and is now a second-year…
lawyer working at mega-firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche. Despite toiling around the clock to make budget, he’s in imminent danger of being downsized. And to make things worse, Eleanor, sick of single-parenting their two young children thanks to Stephen’s relentless work schedule, has asked him to move out. To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of. But if he’s not careful, it might be the last job he ever has...By Lilian Jackson Braun. 1995
When the residents of Moose County board the old steam locomotive on its inaugural round trip, little do they realize…
that this first trip would be the last. The engine owner has gone, along with millions of dollars belonging to depositors.By Claire Garth. 2018
Grover is a brave dog, but right now he's scared. He's cold, wet and hungry and he doesn't know where…
the Animal Ranger is taking him. After escaping from his owner's yard in a thunderstorm, Grover arrives at a local animal shelter. The people there seem kind, but Grover isn't sure he'll be allowed to stay. His owner doesn't seem to want him and Grover is scared to go back to the yard where he was chained up. What will happen to Grover? Where will he go? The Amazing Adventures of Grover McBane, Rescue Dog brings together the five classic stories about this inspirational dog into one book for the first time, and proudly supports the work of the Sydney Dogs and Cats Home.By Margaret Sayers Peden, Arturo Perez-Reverte. 2007
A man lives alone in a watchtower by the sea. On the circular walls of the tower he is painting…
a grand mural - the timeless landscape of a battle. He is a former war photographer, and the painting is his attempt to capture the photo he was never able to take; to encapsulate, in an instant, the meaning of war. But one day a stranger knocks on his door and announces that he has come to kill him. The man is a shadow from his past, one of the myriad faces of war, and now the consequences of his actions are brought home to him. As the novel progresses, the story of both the soldier and the artist emerge, entwined with a doomed love affair, and the progress of a painting that is infused with the history of art.By Milan Kundera, Linda Asher. 2003
The story of two Czechs return to their homeland after 20 years in exile. Irena, who fled the country in…
1968 with her now-deceased husband Martin, returns to Prague only to find coldness and indifference on the part of her former friends. Josef, who emigrated after the Russian invasion, is back in Prague to fulfill a wish of his beloved late wife. Arriving at the airport, the two meet by chance, strangers who shared a single evening years ago in Prague. Irena remembers their initial meeting with detailed intensity and has always regretted its abrupt, chaste conclusion. Josef doesn't even recognize Irena, but does not admit the truth. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match." we always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion...By Steven Hall. 2007
A man wakes in terror, choking for air, in the unfamiliar bedroom of an empty house. He has no memories…
and no sense of his own identity. The licence in his wallet tells him his name is Eric Sanderson. Letters and parcels arrive in careful sequence, signed: the first Eric Sanderson. He accumulates a set of instructions for negotiating this unknown and obscurely dangerous life. He reads his own past...and there is Clio, who was loved - by him? - and who died. His dreams fill with the memory of loss. Then the attacks begin. And now, armed with his survival manual and accompanied by a cat called Ian, Eric will set off to find out what it is that's trying to hunt him down and destroy him.By J. M Coetzee. 2016
David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new…
country. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him. But he’ll be seven soon. He should be at school. And so David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance in Estrella. It’s here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it’s here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of.