Follows Lara Jaq, a young Sudanese woman, as she travels through the gates of a refugee camp into a surreal world where fish fall to the earth and nothing seems to go right - until she gives up on waiting for things to happen...
1 74027 350 8, 57pp, $17.50

He is just one of many in the refugee camp: an old man, his wife dead, compelled to revisit the past. Unfortunately, what he finds is what he had known all along.
It is the only story there is, ever since God looked with favour on Abel and not on Cain: Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated; Ishmael is sent out into the desert, while Isaac becomes the heir; Solomon's older brother must die before he can be born to rule. The first-born dies, the second inherits: he should not have been surprised. Inherits what? I never thought to ask.
It was never going to be easy being Jesus's younger brother, especially when the woman you love only has eyes for him. Just ask Judas, the Second Son.
978 1 74027 455 5, 70pp, $18.00

‘A powerful and poignant collection of stories that explore the subtleties of human relations, reaching beyond cultural and gender divisions to touch on the universal.’ - Rosie Dub, author of Gathering Storm and Flight
‘The stories in Towards Forgiveness: Sino-Tasmanian Stories from Two Islands take place on two wildly different islands: Tasmania and Hong Kong. Although they are separated by geography and culture, John Biggs impressively links these two diverse locations together to show us their shared history and the traits that make us human. At times violent and emotionally wrenching, this collection ultimately celebrates our capacity for forgiveness and love. Each story is a gem in itself and as soon as you finish the collection you’ll want to read it again.’ - Tammy Ho, founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
‘…a pocket rocket that will have wide appeal.’ - Sunday Tasmanian
‘A nice collection of short stories with a distinctive “island” flavour…’ - Examiner
978 1 74027 721 1, 170pp, $25.00

Infused with gentle optimism, eight uncompromising stories portray themes of betrayal, grief, hope and love in distinctly Australian settings. Mum and Nan struggle to contrive a sense of normal family life in the emotionally-charged environment of a women’s shelter. A visual artist faces the return of her wayward daughter, who brings home her new boyfriend, the lumbering behemoth, Zol. A bereaved woman lies restless and alone in bed, her thoughts troubled by the plaintive cries of the dog locked in next door’s laundry. At once dark, poignant and witty, Isobel Blackthorn’s first collection depicts intimately and honestly the travails and heroic responses of women and men confronting the pith of their lives.
978 1 74017 751 8, 76pp, $18.50

Isobel Blackthorn

An intriguing story of love, jealousy and an unsolved mystery on a university campus in the 1950s, played out against the everlasting perils of sea and shore.
1 74027 354 0, 106pp, $20.00

‘...there are no endings. The bond between reader and the written word cannot be broken...the final black dot an illusion...we are a never-ending story...’ - So begins the reconstruction of the life of Paul Jenkins, presented through the recollections of those who knew him. Teacher, colleague, son, lover, brother, social maverick, intellectual subversive. While he is all of these, he defies categorisation. At the end of his story he remains, in his own word, unknowable, but his enigmatic figure will persist in the reader’s imagination.
978 1 74027 668 9, 48pp, $18.00

S.M. Braint

This collection of short stories is an intriguing mixture of humour, pathos and life experiences. What is it about a knock knock joke that could impact on the weddings of generations of brides? Why would a nun speak disparagingly to a street beggar? Who is Axe Man, and does he pose a threat? And who came clean, and about what? You’ll find the answers to these questions in the pages of this book. But don’t judge anything from first impressions. Look below the surface and you may find things are not as they first appear.
978 1 74027 707 5, 76pp, $18.50

'David Campbell has a deep understanding of the extra-ordinary moments to be found in the dreams, lives, loves and losses of ordinary people. In these skilfully understated and distinctly Australian stories he explores the relationships between people, place and circumstance with a clarity, intensity and sensitivity that is reminiscent of such writers as Henry Lawson, Geoffrey Dean and Tim Winton. Through finely observed detail, wonderful insights and original, memorable voices, the reader is drawn into worlds that are tender, humorous, violent, disturbing and deeply moving. An outstanding first collection from an important and exciting new writer of contemporary Australian fiction.' - Michael de Valle
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 451 7, 74pp, $18.50

David Campbell

This evocative story tells of a young girl growing up within an affluent middle-class Australian family. But it is also a story shared by so many who need to overcome the violence and power wielded within the home. The Legacy uncovers the way the patchwork pieces of memory and perception gathered from childhood, through mothering and onto reflection, shape our own distinct quilts.
‘…a richly textured narrative...fine, short novel…’ - Sagacity
978 1 74027 550 7, 82pp, $20.00

Rees Campbell

Join the unwary travellers in this collection of stories who hear or don't hear the warning to 'mind the gap', who stumble and fall, or leap and rise above the treacherous gaps they encounter.
'The narrative skill is clear and the story telling well paced.' - Sunday Tasmanian
978 1 74027 514 9, 76pp, $18.00

Caitlyn has concerns. And so she should. Men, women and children are being hurt - physically and emotionally. They are lonely and misunderstood. Domestic violence affects all of us and something needs to be done about it. For all our sakes.This is a novel - but it is also true. It is thought provoking and honest, challenging but caring. Can there be light at the end of the tunnel? Kim Chapman has thrown down the gauntlet.
‘This is an important book. The subject of domestic violence - particularly men’s violence against women - is a serious blight on our society, yet it is not well understood. Who are these men, these perpetrators? As Kim Chapman shows in this novel based on her academic research into the subject, they are, more often than not, ordinary blokes. Not monsters. And that’s the scary thing. Both men and women should read this very readable work Then they should think about it. Hard.’ - Dr Chris McLeod
978 1 74027 630 6, 404pp, $30.00

Sumatra, land of jungles and tigers and volcanoes. And heart-stopping traffic and cheap beer and clove cigarettes. Ethan is 14 and running wild. His brother Jon, 19, knows he has to do something.
978 1 74027 509 5, 192pp, $24.00

Lucy Chesser

Hamlin Baylis Wells, 30 years an undercover detective, has a major decision to make. His immaculate career and religious convictions are at odds with an impulsive decision not to declare a large sum of money found during a police operation. In the resulting journey of self-discovery, he finds a way to atone for his decision.
978 1 74027 547 7, 36pp, $16.00

Denial, justification and revenge dance through this novella, a page-turning story, topical yet as old as mankind, about the shame of sexual abuse. Lies follow John Taylor all of his life and create a pattern which he had not foreseen. A sinful person is believed to be virtuous; a wronged person gets revenge.
The author, a former South Australian police officer and court sheriff officer, has drawn on the stories of people he has encountered on both sides of the law. The reader must decide how much of it is fiction.
978 1 74917 614 6, 58pp, $18.00

Smithy’s cupboard has always been his refuge despite its different locations and uses. It serves him well in his childhood days on the Wimmera area broad-acre farm in Victoria where he was born and grew up. He plays with his toy soldiers inside the secret place. As he grows to observe wild life and later hunt game, he makes hides. His career in the army leads him to join the SAS as one of Australia’s top snipers. His clever use of hides and secret areas makes him well known and respected, and he is drawn deeply into CIA operations. A family tragedy changes his outlook and leads him into a crime of vengeance. He uses various means to assist him in his own personal therapy and he frequently seeks the confessional, yet perdition ticks away inside his mind like a noisy metronome.
978 1 74027 682 5, 68pp, $18.50

Mavis Allen has led an uneventful life as a caring housewife. She accepts her stable and long-lasting but uninspiring marriage until she starts to question her life. Her marriage breaks down, bringing dramas over which she has no control. She embarks on a new and challenging journey which brings a spirit possession and murder. She finds happiness at last and vows never to return to being a down-trodden housewife. Yet her journey is not over. She is still shaken and stirred.
978 1 74027 701 3, 74pp, $18.50

1943. Before the five-year-old boy sat freezing on the steps of the old mansion known as the Kent Town Salvation Army Boys’ Home, before he watched his alcoholic mother die, there was only Uncle Harry Solomon, who cared for him and taught him to play a harmonica and taught him to dance. The admission staff at the mansion welcomed Samuel into the warmth of the home. When the child played and danced, Allan Parsons spotted his genius within seconds and became his mentor and protector. In time, the boy discovered some of the secrets in his life and later the Solomons of Melbourne and New York took Samuel under their wing and his journey began. But that was later. He had within him a survival instinct which embraced his new life and showed him the way forward through a gamut of emotions, a way to win a scholarship, a way to find his destiny. The way forward was foreshadowed by two simple words written on a scrap of paper and found in his clothes in 1943: Shalom, Samuel.
978 1 74027 747 1, 76pp, $18.50

Short stories that poke a sharp satirical stick into the eye of the age of terror and refuse to conform to the political rhetoric and media sensationalism of our times.
'...short fiction that grabs the war on terror in a satirical tackle and wrestles it to the ground.' - The Age
Mockingbird
1 74027 337 0, 64pp, $17.50

Craig Cormick's latest collection of stories follows the paths of the unwinding global financial crisis, using satire and speculation to take us on journeys into near futures that could easily be our tomorrows.
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 560 6, 68pp, $18.00

Stories ranging from the bizarre to the familiarly suburban, and often showing the strangeness of ordinary lives.
‘Cottier is a thoughtful and intelligent short story writer… The book may be a slim collection, but it has rich offerings for the reader.’ - Suzanne Gervay
978 1 74027 576 7, 68pp, $20.00

P.S. Cottier

Six stories about love - unrequited, abortive, dying, and dead. In this collection Robert Cox focuses a sometimes wry, sometimes melancholy gaze on love and loneliness and the intersection where the two meet - and all too often go their own ways.
'...the work of not only a fine writer, but of a sensitive observer of human relations.' - 40º South
'...impresses for its sharp focus on the frailty and passions of life.' - Sunday Tasmanian
1 74027 376 1, 76pp, $18.00

Self-revelations can bring tears - and self-revelation can be brought by tears. In his latest collection of stories Robert Cox focuses sharply on both kinds of personal, painful epiphany.
'...celebrates the enduring importance of the short story form.' - Sunday Tasmanian
978 1 74027 474 1, 76pp, $18.00

‘His themes range widely, from the fear of dying alone, guilt and restitution, past revelations, and social ineptness that sometimes borders on the farcical. His stories evolve without hurry, but interest is not lost because underlying the accessible plotting of the story there is always a trailing undercurrent of threat, or at the least an underlying sense of expectation that keeps one reading on. This trend is exemplified in his excellent story “Shadows”, where a man on probation tries hard to do the right thing in caring for a stray dog - too hard, as it turns out when his somewhat clumsy actions and anxieties bring down their own tragic denouement.’ - Geoffrey Dean, author of The Literary Lunch
‘Cox clearly demonstrates that he has a keen appreciation of the foibles and failings that dog us poor human beings... The structure of the stories cannot be faulted. And the writer has a real talent for finding authentic voices for his characters, regardless of their background.’ - Paul Donohoe, 40º South
‘Memorable, droll and sharply observed, the tales in Agony & Variations are a pleasure to read and confirm Robert Cox as a master storyteller.’ - Tasmanian Town & Country
978 1 74027 637 5, 70pp, $18.50

A story about a young man sent to a small country town as a school teacher. His time is taken up learning to cope with his new teaching job. He has been haunted since childhood by a dream of a beautiful house. Escaping into the country from work, he discovers his dream house in ruins. He sets out to discover the history of the house and the reason why it haunts him in his dreams. He continues to visit the house and tries to do some repair work on the house itself and its wild neglected garden. He is interrupted in this work by an old man, a retired sheep shearer, who is employed to keep an eye on the house. They become friends and the young man then becomes involved with some of the townspeople in his search for the history of the haunting house...
978 1 74027 667 2, 76pp, $22.00

Twenty-eight writers reflect in fiction, non-fiction and poetry on the past, present and future of Port Adelaide.
‘Port Adelaide is not so different from many country towns whose fortunes have come and gone. For all the hype about making it into something new and glitzy, I suspect the ghosts have other ideas. It is the home of people who recognise there is more to life than material ownership and still enjoy buying their vegetables from a greengrocer and stamps from cheerful ladies in the post office.’ - Brenda Eldridge
978 1 74027 705 1, 122pp, $20.00

Kari and Rhys have been best friends for as long as they can remember. Kari is a bright, cheerful, carefree girl and Rhys is a sullen, defensive boy with a lot to hide. What Kari doesn’t know, Rhys can’t tell her. But when Kari literally stumbles over Rhys’s secret, she finds out just what kind of dark and terrible past Rhys has been hiding.
‘...there is a perfect concord between the language, the style, and the characterisations and plot of My Best Friend's Secret.’ - Australian Reader
978 1 74027 619 1, 70pp, $18.50

‘If the physical state could be said to symbolically reflect the psychic one in short fiction, Peter Farrar’s collection The Nine Flaws of Affection shows us men damaged in every way. They awake mute and frozen from comas, lie with limbs missing, home from war, or walk around with an absent, dead father ghosting along beside them. Yet in these finely-tuned pieces, each of them barely over two thousand words, it’s the “internal injuries” these characters sustain that ring with hollow truth. Farrar’s male narrators suffer all the fall-out of ground-down marriages, dead-end jobs and wrong turns, all described in detail so laconic that it is often heart wrenching. The sentences are clipped, often short on personal pronouns, so that the “I” disappears into a blur of never-named identities, and in these lopped and foreshortened sentences Farrar creates a rhythm and repetition that almost becomes hypnotic before the story turns sharply on a beautifully observed detail. These are the voices of bruised, inarticulate men, full of self-recrimination and unwelcome news, lusting after their mates’ girlfriends and wishing they didn’t, stuttering painfully through difficult conversations with fathers and grandfathers, baffled by the numbed withdrawal of their wives, struggling just to hold things together. This is a sobering collection in many ways, observed with a kind of fierce pared-down compassion which makes these baffled, not-quite beaten voices all the more compelling.’ - Cate Kennedy
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 599 6, 74pp, $18.50

A young Welsh-speaking servant girl is tried by an English court and transported to Van Diemen’s Land; a studious Indigenous schoolgirl, far from her Top End home, considers future options; a power-hungry woman looks back at a career in espionage - in all her varied stories Solveig Foss takes us into the hearts of her characters. Using often a first-person narrator, she is equally at ease portraying a woman suffering from mental illness in ‘Can of Worms’, or the cool academic narrator-observer describing the romance of his nerdy friend in ‘The Peach’. With vivid descriptions and diverse characters who come vividly to life on the page, she gives us deep and thoughtful stories of desire and of love, of exile and of loss. These are stories to be relished, and many will remain with the reader long after the book has been closed.
978 1 74027 783 9, 186pp, $27.50

Themes of deception, betrayal and unexpected delight are woven through Angus Gaunt's first collection of stories. A maiden aunt prepares herself to be evicted from her home, and finds something wonderful happens. A father is taken in by a prodigal son's promise of worldly gains. And why does the small town so dislike the new café owners? These stories cut across time and place but all focus on the eternal frailty of the human condition.
'His stories...all bear the mark of a writer with an instinct for narrative; they are the right shape.' - Australian Book Review
'...meaty and satisfying...' - Overland
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 459 3, $18.00

'Papier mâché babies, nuns reaching down throats with endoscopic tongues, cut jugulars bleeding diamonds... Molly Guy's quirky micro tales are sometimes hilarious, sometimes brutal, but, most often, both.  Her characters can be inanimate props, and her props can just as easily become endearing characters. Molly Guy ruthlessly paints the world as she perceives it – weird, and oddly innocent, and, almost certainly, brimming with a compelling and banal savagery. I cried until I laughed!' - Philomena van Rijswijk
978 1 74027 581 1, 74pp, $18.00

'Molly Guy's writing is unique. She is an acrid commentator on the human condition and a left-field philosopher. Her characters are at once ghastly and endearing and her descriptive powers quite frightening.' - Geoffrey Dean
'Molly Guy is a true original. She is always alive to the possibilities of the quirky and the eccentric. The world of her poetry is one of offbeat grotesqueries of thought and observation, delightfully comic, but always pricking beneath the oddities of the surface to the universal truths that lie beneath. To read her work is to breathe fresh air with a faint whiff of something exotic and unexpected.' - Tim Thorne
'Molly Guy is a poet and wit who brings disparate words and images into explosive conjunctions.' - Margaret Scott
978 1 74027 801 0, 110pp, $22.50

When a boat carrying asylum seekers is wrecked south of Adelaide, local teenager Josh hides one of the escapees in his shed. The struggle to keep Habib hidden leads Josh to face formerly unknown challenges to his cosy, comfortable world. The tension builds as Josh combats different threats to Habib's safety, culminating in an exciting climax on the day of his sister's wedding.
‘...an interesting slant on the story of the Good Samaritan...a worthwhile read...’ - Evangelicals Now
978 1 74027 520 0, 120pp, $22.00

‘What happens when the head of a worker meets the heart of a dreamer? You get a man in a kitchen humming easy-listening love songs, making impractical romantic shapes slowly with a knife dipped in water. You get a woman with her sleeves rolled up waiting impatiently in the doorway for his help to dig the garden beds, to plant the fruit trees, to turn the soil over, to plant the seeds, to grow the vegetables...it’s exhausting.’
‘Scenes of extraordinary human tenacity within ordinary domestic conflict pepper these tales of fractured suburban dreams. From the window of her triple-fronted, cream brick veneer, Liz Hassall presents her precisely tilted view of the characters who occupy this world.’ - Kylie Seeberg
‘I have always admired Elizabeth’s way of looking at the world. She sees first the details that other people overlook, sees the way a writer should see. I admire, too, the skill she has of sketching years, or a lifetime of intense feeling in a few paragraphs. Elizabeth really does observe the world, refusing to write what anyone could write. Reading her prose I feel I’m being made to look at things properly too.’ - Gerald Murnane
978 1 74027 596 5, 92pp, $22.50

Robert Horne's fascinating range of characters haunt the bars, porches and offices of Adelaide looking for answers to questions about themselves. They are often angry, frustrated and confused, but always seeking an opportunity for change. This book of stories is at once challenging and life-affirming.
1 74027 276 5, 68pp, $18.00

The characters in this collection are often dislocated, outsiders looking for something more from their experience - some finding it, some learning from it, some losing it. The stories are blackly humorous, twisting the reader towards an offbeat kind of compassion that lives in the heart for days.
‘I now see why I like your stories so much: they do a Brechtian thing - that is, they resist sentimentality and faux romanticism by stripping away much of the artifice we construct to create stories about ourselves and others. They are unsettling and “defamiliarising” as was Brecht’s way, so as to expose the power relationships without the flab.’ - Phillip Edmonds, Wet Ink Magazine
978 1 74027 798 3, 74pp, $18.50

Different Waters unravels the misinformation put about by the three major protagonists of Spain, England and Ireland concerning the disaster that was the Spanish Armada of 1588. Later dubbed ‘The Invincible Armada’ by snide English politicians, the Armada saga is seen through the eyes of three boys, one girl - and a dolphin. The boys live through each of the naval battles, storms, starvation, bureaucratic stuff-ups, kidnap, shipwrecks, a pagan love story and wedding, music lessons, laughter, sword fights, Irish sorcery, mysticism and dolphin-navigated time travel. It will put the reader right about what happened and how Australia, Ireland, India, Scotland and Wales, along with the United States and much of Africa came under the thrall of the imperial English language.
‘…beautifully told in prose that is deceptively elegant…a thoroughly enjoyable read for all ages.’ - Canberra Times
978 1 74027 689 4, 232pp, $27.50

Lisa Macleod grows up in a small country town dreaming of the day she can move to somewhere bigger and more exciting where, she believes, her ‘real’ life will start. But when Lisa’s mother takes off first in scandalous circumstances, Lisa is left behind at the Railway Hotel to work out for herself that finding your place in the world is more than a matter of geography.
‘...a nice take on the coming-of-age novel...an intimate portrait of a small country town in 1970s Australia...’ - The Age
978 1 74027 616 0, 218pp, $25.00

Lisa Macleod grows up in a small country town dreaming of the day she can move to somewhere bigger and more exciting where, she believes, her ‘real’ life will start. But when Lisa’s mother takes off first in scandalous circumstances, Lisa is left behind at the Railway Hotel to work out for herself that finding your place in the world is more than a matter of geography.
‘...a nice take on the coming-of-age novel...an intimate portrait of a small country town in 1970s Australia...’ - The Age
978 1 74027 616 0, $15.00

On Saturday 7 March 1942, 12 RAF and RAAF personnel set sail from Tjilatjap, Java, in a 30-foot wooden lifeboat. Their mission: to reach Roebourne on the northern coast of West Australia and bring rescue to the remaining airmen trapped on the island who were in danger of being captured by the enemy. Written in memory of the author's father, RAAF Flight Sergeant William Nicholas Pax Cosgrove (1918-1943) of Richmond, Victoria, who was a member of that crew. The names, dates and some events are true. The rest is fiction.
1 74027 294 3, 72pp, $18.00

'Concealed between the covers of Angela Johnson's collection of short stories is a delightful smorgasbord of autobiographical and imagined writing. Beginning with an insight into poverty and relationships through a child's eyes, it then moves to a more adult, at times disturbing but no less insightful, view of the world. A frisson of terror adds to the pleasure. In short, an enjoyable and at times thought-provoking collection of things that make you go hmmm...' - Mark d'Arbon
978 1 74027 564 4, 66pp, $18.00

'Tiggy's is a new voice with a refreshingly domestic bent. From controlled crying and the quiet relief of a cup of tea, to pregnancy tests gone wrong; from neighbourly suspicion, to the suspicion that can tear relationships apart, Tiggy is writing about the everyday, the things we know, and, most importantly, the things we know we should know better. It is energising to read a writer who understands the importance of life’s details, and who celebrates the small moments of decision and indecision that take us from day’s beginning to day's end.' - Louise Swinn, Sleepers Publishing
'Her tight, clean sentences are a pleasure to read and keep our attention.' - The Age
'Johnson has a fine grasp of the form in both a commercial and an artistic sense.' - Literary Minded
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 461 6, 70pp, $18.00

Hana’s life in a tropical village is predictable and simple until she answers an advertisement. A journey with new friends, to new places, and training for work which she dreams will bring a better life for her family start the story. Work placements which seem so suitable to start with, step by step lead to a murder, judgement and ‘diya’ - the law of the desert based on the will of those injured, an ‘eye for an eye’, or reconciliation.
‘Adèle Ogiér Jones has written a poignant and deeply moving story. Desert Diya is also an important work in that it explores the culture that drives women to the depths of unendurable misery. The story of Hana is told with simplicity and weaves its path with a fine intelligence. The journey uncoils with foreboding as Hana finds herself trapped in a country where she is considered merely cheap labour and subject to any employer’s demand. Her struggle with the justice system is harrowing and the outcome something I still reflect upon after closing the book.’ - Lin Van Hek, author of Katherine Mansfield’s Black Paper Fan
978 1 74027 605 4, 164pp, $24.00

This collection of stories shows Carole Jones’s versatility as a writer. Humour, pathos, delight, surprise - it’s all there. We go through a whole gamut of emotions as we read them. Truly, there is something here for everyone.
978 1 74027 795 2, 72pp, $18.50

Both a heart-rending and a heart-warming story of a Scottish woman whose child was taken from her and shipped to Australia as a child migrant. It is a look at the psychological consequences of her loss - and the maturing of a young Australian girl who decides to help Rosie find her lost child.
‘Through the eyes of Annie, a young Australian woman, we meet a Scottish immigrant whose life experience is very different from Annie’s own. Their ensuing relationship changes both of their lives in an amazing way. They in turn affect others that they meet, culminating in a dramatic outcome. A remarkable and memorable first novel by Margaret Jones.’ - Bessie Jennings, Australian Bush Laureate winner, Children’s Poem of the Year 2012
978 1 74027 758 7, 76pp, $18.50

Sharon Kernot presents an assortment of short stories that reside and crackle in the tense spaces of suburban Australia. She writes about poverty, addiction and difficult relationships. Her stories revolve around suburban streets; they dip into the local shopping mall, the welfare office, community centre and the neighbour’s house. There is much darkness in these pages but there is also light, laughter and hope.
‘These stories, concisely but movingly, take the small moments of life, the small losses, and from them whole lives are given to us. We are grateful for the truth in these stories, which fill us with their larger overtones.’ - Tom Shapcott
978 1 74027 584 2, 76pp, $18.00

Sharon Kernot

An eclectic collection of short stories tackling subjects as varied as psychological mind games, the effects of war on those left behind, the vagaries of heterosexual and lesbian love, self-abortion, and murder, told through characters as diverse as a retired Light Horseman, a lighthouse keeper’s wife, and an old Aboriginal man, and set in periods from the nineteenth century to the late 2020s.
978 1 74027 629 0, 72pp, $18.50

In the summer of youth, all is perfect. Three teenage friends, two guys and a girl, relish their time. Nothing can go wrong, until it does and sets in motion the next twenty years. Regret runs deep but never sits idle.
978 1 74027 737 2, 60pp, $20.00

Anthony J. Langford

In the summer of youth, all is perfect. Three teenage friends, two guys and a girl, relish their time. Nothing can go wrong, until it does and sets in motion the next twenty years. Regret runs deep but never sits idle.
978 1 74027 745 7, $10.00

Anthony J. Langford

Chris Leckonby grew up in post-war rural Yorkshire, married a farmer and spent ten years on the family farm, where she enjoyed brief success writing freelance articles for Farmers Weekly. In 1972 with their four children, the couple emigrated and settled in the suburbs of Adelaide. The family moved to the Adelaide hills, and Chris trained as a teacher. Retirement brought the chance to write again, and this is Chris's first book of short stories.
978 1 74027 593 4, 70pp, $18.00

Jarrod Bailey, recalcitrant teenager, has hidden talents and the support of two wise women to help him grow up fast and become the young rock on whom his family depends, to mend their Fractured Fortunes…
Melanie Blackstone gets an unfair share of hell in the world of street kids when she runs away to find her birth-mother at age fifteen, and survives to discover she is loved...
Scott and Brad, wiser now they are dads themselves, relive a scenario of their high school days involving drugs, arson and personal tragedy…
A farmer’s wife stumbles upon a murdered neighbour and, after twenty-four traumatic hours, helps apprehend the culprit...
‘Tally-ho Talisman’ is a tragi-comedy which shows up those pillars of English village society, a retired Major, the church organist and members of the Hunt, for the frail humans they really are.
‘No Accounting for Taste’ exposes the complications of romantic and social life in a city hospital; but which lady gets which man?
‘The Manager’, after a lifetime of being a paragon financial adviser, citizen and family man, falls from grace, victim of a brief aberration and the back-biting cruelty of those around him.
‘Out of the Frypan’ presents the dilemma of new migrants faced with bereavement and poverty as soon as they arrive in their new country. Will they battle on, or return to what they chose to leave behind? Either decision will take courage.
978 1 74927 678 8, 74pp, $18.50

The stories in Chris Leckonby's third book all relate to family struggles. Asylum seekers try to make good in Australia, as do British migrants in very different circumstances. A farmer is stranded by floods when his wife is in labour; another is coping with the fall-out from a bushfire. A pregnant teenager readjusts her goals to accommodate her baby; a gifted but socially inept young man deals with his problems with the help of teachers and his cousin. A young couple learn the hard way about building and running a motel; a city girl is converted to the bush when she meets the man of her dreams. A war widow struggles with her new status, a fatherless child and two new men. 'Port Pourri' documents the decisions of a seafarer, his new wife and, when his son rebels against the family business, the rift that only the next generation can heal.
978 1 74027 806 5, 76pp, $18.50

Tamaso Lonsdale has been writing most of her life. She was first published at the age of nine in the Sunbeams children’s section of the Sydney Sun and also read her stories on 2GB and 2SM radio children’s programs. She is the author of nine novelettes for teenage reluctant readers, four books on Australian birds, several published short stories and poems and has self-published one book, Skye’s the Limit, a story about a young girl’s fight to save a rainforest. She has recently finished a novel in trilogy form. The first book, Brothers? Uncles! Sister? Aunt!, was published in 2002; the second, The Missus, in 2010; and the third, Beyond Darkness, in 2012. Tamaso has lived in Nimbin northern NSW for twenty years, during which time she has been a volunteer worker at Nimbin News Magazine and presented a writers’ program on NIM FM Community Radio. She now edits the literary magazine Beyond the Rainbow.
978 1 74027 756 3, 76pp, $18.00

In this collection of award-winning stories, Michelle Lopert delves into the darker side of human nature. With humour and sharpness, she explores the disturbing aspects of unhappy relationships. Greed, jealousy and thwarted desires merge with tales of paranoia and revenge. The voices are distinct, the emotions honest, and the endings are often surprising. These spare, punchy stories will intrigue the reader long after the final page is read.
978 1 74027 499 9, 76pp, $18.00

Skin Hunger explores the emotional and physical craving for touch, for human contact, in all its varied guises. Andrea McMahon's stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. She lives in Hobart, Tasmania, with her three children and for most of the past twenty years has had the good fortune to work as a cataloguer with the State Library of Tasmania.
'...impressive for...their range and...their restrained tone.' - Sunday Tasmanian
'Few emerging writers exhibit such an understanding of the form's true nature, the epiphanic potential of the ordinary... A welcome addition to Tasmanian letters...' Hobart Mercury
978 1 74027 513 2, 108pp, $20.00 Andrea McMahon

Shattered by his internment with the rest of the Vienna Mozart Boys Choir in September 1939, Joseph Geinler is sent to live out the world war in a tiny Western Australian wheatbelt town. A personal dream and the help of some unlikely friends leads him to set out on a remarkable journey in an attempt to reach his homeland and end the Second World War.
978 1 74027 420 3, 88pp, $20.00

Eddie Skinner has escaped his miserable fishing home town of Hull, is in love with Charlotte Stephenson and plays polo on the sandy wastes of the new river-mouth town of Fremantle. But when the Governor of the Swan River Settlement sends his North East Fusiliers regiment to attack the Binjareb Nyungar people, Eddie’s world collapses. He loses his lover, his freedom and his dream of becoming a yeoman farmer. He spends years as a fugitive and a prisoner in colonial jails but survives it all to take up a lifestyle he could never have imagined as a twenty-three-year-old colonial trooper.
978 1 74027 684 9, 252pp, $30.00

A novel which explores how the unknown past can throw its shadows onto the present and onto the personal life of someone who has had no previous known connection to events in the past. Anna, a student in Adelaide, is coping with the recent death of her mother, Eleanor. Eleanor had always kept her past life, growing up in Scotland, a close secret. After her death, Anna begins to explore her mother’s relics and discovers, through the Internet, that she has relatives still living back there. She is offered the chance of a scholarship to London University and uses this as an opportunity to meet these unknown relatives, chief of whom are her grandparents.
978 1 74027 740 2, 206pp, $25.00

Rose Helen Mitchell

A young boy spends a day wandering through the Melbourne suburb of Eaglemont interacting in his imagination with the historical figures who shaped it. Through the original inhabitants of the area, the artists of the Heidelberg School and the architect of the estate, Walter Burley Griffin, he seeks to learn all he can about the land around him.
978 1 74027 528 6, 40pp, $17.50

A collection of stories emanating from the experience of growing up, living and working in Australia’s third metropolis. ‘Denying the Faith’ and ‘This Clown’ record the fearful impressions of a childhood spent in Irish Catholic suburbia, reflected upon later in life when the fear has subsided but the guilt remains. ‘Going to Kanga’s’ and ‘Suburban Odyssey’ recall the experiences of a taxi driver both fascinated and annoyed by the alcohol-fuelled passengers who helped him make a living in a job that was only meant to be temporary while his real career was being identified. And ‘Throwing Up in Toowoomba’ takes a brief exit from Brisbane, but only for a fraught weekend, to detail the inner turmoil of a young and insecure man learning the brutal lessons of the heart in a period not so long ago.
Since the early 1970s Errol O’Neill has worked as an actor, writer, director, dramaturg and producer, specialising in the creation of new work for the Australian theatre. He has published many short stories, written chapters and articles for books and journals on aspects of theatre and society, and guest-lectured in tertiary drama courses. He wrote half a dozen political satires for the Popular Theatre Troupe and has written many plays on aspects of Queensland and Australian history, which have been produced by La Boite, Queensland Theatre Company and other theatres in Brisbane and interstate.
978 1 74027 757 0, 70pp, $18.50

In these stories, a dying man thinks on the past. A foreign schoolgirl studying English learns only betrayal. A bookmark keeps a novel open for a father and a son. And it is found that a hundred words are not enough to tell a life.
'...written with such mastery that it is a joy to read... Ryan O'Neill is a name worth watching for.' - Newcastle Herald
‘...wonderful little book that...might be seen as a minor masterpiece of Australian short fiction.’ - Known Unknowns
Mockingbird
1 74027 299 4, 64pp, $17.50

An exhilarating new collection of stories from the Newcastle-based author of Six Tenses.
Mockingbird
1 74027 360 5, 62pp, $17.50

Margo Poirier began life in Victoria, popping out of the womb with a clutch of words in her hand. She has not stopped writing stories and poetry since. Her work has been published widely in journals, magazines and radio broadcasts. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and she has published two collections of her own - Sign of the Times and Moon Shards. She has received awards for her poetry. This is Margo's first collection of short stories and she is currently working on a treatment for a novel. She helps support her addiction to writing by working part time as a massage therapist and professional counsellor, and as a facilitator of writing workshops and a French conversation group. She also makes therapeutic wheat bags and her interests include (when there is time) walking, art movies, reading, good food, driving and communicating verbally - chatting, laughing and meeting fascinating people. Unzipped exposes areas of life that will resonate with the reader’s own life. The stories are as varied as a smorgasbord, some serious and dramatic, some humorous, some a little sad but always unzipping to reveal a truth.
978 1 74027 786 0, 232pp, $28.00

‘This delightful suite of stories reflects on the writing lives of women today. Here Virginia Woolf casts her shadow, and also sheds her light on the stresses and the joys of creating fiction. Piquant and pithy, these are explorations of how it is for the woman writer with or without a room of her own.’ - Carmel Bird
'…courageous and moving and funny and perceptive…' - Scribd.
978 1 74027 789 1, 58pp, $18.00

Hundreds of years ago there was a theory. Put a bunch of mentally ill men on a sailing ship on the high seas, sail them away and by the time they returned home they would be cured. It was a ludicrous idea, but that didn't stop the doctors from trying it.
978 1 74027 401 2, 56pp, $17.50

A man is summoned to a small village in the Spanish countryside to formally identify the body of his dead brother. In the short time he is there, he uncovers the horrifying truth behind his family’s ancestry, a truth that puts his life in mortal danger.
978 1 74027 741 9, 42pp, $17.50

Stories of love, kindness, desire and revenge.
Frank sets off on his bike to help people in his coastal village and stumbles upon a scene that changes his life. A journalist reflects on his betrayal of a colleague in Korea and resolves to make amends. Two former lovers reunite unexpectedly in Japan and visit the place that holds the secret of their past.
Sometimes quirky, often gently humorous, Jennifer Shapcott’s collection of stories captures the lives of Australians in our country towns, cities, and the wider world.
978 1 74027 764 8, 74pp, $18.50

Five engaging tales about feminine strength and integrity.
1 74027 235 8, 62pp, $17.50

‘Margot’s stories deal with the lives and situations of mostly ordinary, everyday people in a way that provides the reader with unexpected insights into her characters. Her gentle and fluid style carries one along, easily enabling us to identify with those people who populate her stories. Detailed character description and the complicated relationships which they undergo fill her work, making accessible their joys and sorrows and leaving the reader with the feeling “that could have been me”.’ - Colin Howie
978 1 74027 768 6, 120pp, $22.00

A rich cripple commissions a portrait to create for her an ideal mate. A successful doctor confronts his past life in a deserted cottage. A young idealistic teacher is caught in a web of power in a decaying country town. In these gripping gothic tales, individuals' fears and fantasies come startlingly to life to confront them. A disturbing and original new voice in Australian writing.
978 1 74027 674 0, 154pp, $25.00

Jutei was a woman who lived in Japan in the seventeenth century and had a relationship of some kind with the great haiku master, Matsuo Basho. This is an imaginative re-construction of the life of Jutei, intertwined with the historically known life of Basho and written in the spirit of haibun and haiku.
‘What is our true nourishment? Is it not this devotion to the truth of the other? The truth so clearly stated by Esther Theiler’s authorial persona: “This is the other story, the way I see it, coloured no doubt by my own obsessions. I am not a scholar. I only know what I know. This is not the whole truth. But it is true.” This truth wins me to itself, it slips beneath an acquiescent skin, it passes right through the gauze. The miracle is that words can do this…’ - John Allison
978 1 74027 705 1, 154pp, $24.00

Passionate, powerful and poetic, Vicki Thornton, a master of brevity, writes of relationships, of breaking free, with a lack of emotionalism, a sparseness that leaves the reader gasping for more. With a minimalist hand, she captures a sense of scene, mood, time then allows the reader in to feel the protagonist's brokenness, her emotional distance as a relationship dies. Visual, succinct and believable. - Joy Dettman
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 463 0, $17.50

In the title story, seventeen-year-old Jacob returns to Bali. Once terrified of surfboards, he’s there to surf wild for four people, including his brother killed in the 2002 Bali bombing.
'...reassuringly local while addressing universal themes and incorporating Asian references.' - Sunday Tasmanian
1 74027 353 2, 102 pages, $18.50

Steve Tolbert

A thrilling novel for young adults. Both of them fleeing the outside world, eighteen-year-old Jackson and reclusive Pete meet on the remote east coast of Flinders Island. Unfortunately, the place is not remote enough.
'Steve Tolbert has intertwined two contrasting worlds and produced a riveting and engrossing novel. It evokes powerfully both the violence and police corruption of the drug scene in the Melbourne underworld as well as it does the natural beauty of Flinders Island and the integrity of the people who live there. The writing is superb and has left me with a longing to visit Flinders Island while allowing me the illusion that I know so much about it already.' - Viewpoint
978 1 74027 407 4, 182pp, $22.50

Steve Tolbert

Michael O’Leary’s life as a ‘weird and wacky’ word-fixated student changes after his mother is killed and his father badly wounded in a Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terrorist attack. In the company of his alter ego, Bounty Hunter Clint, Michael travels to Bali and Central Java intent on confronting JI operatives. At each stage of his mission, the seventeen-year-old meets mysterious people. None occupy his mind - and quickly his dreams - more than Sugi, a Muslim girl who may or may not be working with the ‘enemy’.
978 1 74027 639 9, 180pp, $22.50

Steve Tolbert

Literary creation and motherhood are often likened to each other. In this collection, Zenda Vecchio shows that the similarity need not be a playful way of speaking so much as a bizarre reality.
'...a talented writer...' - Tamba
1 74027 076 2, 48pp, $15.00

Zenda Vecchio

This novella projects the forest-dark world of ancient folklore into modern middle-class domesticity.
1 74027 066 5, 56pp, $15.00

Zenda Vecchio

Childhood is another country: they do things differently there. Zenda Vecchio’s double gift is to be able to remember that strange land (which adults generally forget or unconsciously falsify) and to re-present it in elegant, economical prose. These - often dark - stories are compelling reminders of a world we all once lived in.
'Zenda Vecchio maintains her distinctive storytelling voice throughout this engaging foray into the journeys towards self-identity...' - Tamba
1 74027 317 6, 67pp, $18.00

Zenda Vecchio

We all hunt one another. Obsessed from childhood with William Blake's poem 'The Tiger', award-winning author Zenda Vecchio has used it in this collection of short stories to explore the relationship between predator and prey in the lives of her characters.
978 1 74027 489 0, 76pp, $18.00

Zenda Vecchio

These stories, written by an Adelaide Hills U3A group, cover a wide spectrum of styles and emotions. Poignant, heart-wrenching, humorous, they celebrate ordinary life. There is something here for everyone.
978 1 74027 613 9, 72pp, $18.50

Zenda Vecchio

In these stories, award-winning writer Zenda Vecchio explores again the relationship between what William Golding called ‘the darkness of man's heart’ and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
‘Once you enter these stories imaginatively, they stay with you for days.’ - Polestar
978 1 74027 681 8, 76pp, $18.50

Zenda Vecchio

If you love someone, you give them parts of yourself and that’s dangerous. If they go away, they take part of you with them.
One summer’s day, thirteen-year-old Kirsty-Lee comes home from school to find her father has left them. This novel explores the ways in which she comes to terms with this and the subsequent changes in her family.
Zenda Vecchio is an award-winning writer whose numerous short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals and magazines. Becoming Kirsty-Lee is her second novel for adolescents.
‘…a poignant novella… This book will touch all those who have experienced their own grief and many will find it hard not to shed a tear at this girl’s story.’ - ReadPlus
‘…an inspiring book.’ - Tamba
978 1 74027 735 8, 84pp, $22.00

Zenda Vecchio

Tracy would give anything to be popular instead of a figure of fun. Though she is intelligent beyond her years, neither her family nor those in her school can see past her obesity. Tracy finds herself rejected by her father, isolated from her siblings and living with an alcoholic mother. After experiencing horrors no young woman should have to endure, she is taken into care, where she experiences the strengths and weaknesses of the system.
978 1 74027 548 4, 58pp, $17.50

Ken Vincent

This thrilling novel follows the life of a young woman, Nancy Overton, as she flees from a brutal marriage. She is pursued by her ex-husband, who has always threatened to kill her if she left him. She hides away on a Queensland cattle station, where she meets Joe, the owner’s son, but even there her ex-husband finds her and makes several attempts on her life. Good friends help to keep her safe but over time she changes from the innocent victim into a strong resilient woman who is well able to care for herself, and she fights back. With this new-found confidence, she pursues a singing career and achieves international success. She is reluctant to commit to any new relationship but in the end she cannot deny her love for Joe.
‘...an absorbing plot with believable characters facing modern day situations with courage and resilience.’ - ARPA News
978 1 74027 574 3, 230pp, $26.00

Ken Vincent

Aged seventy-two, Richard Archer undergoes a routine surgical procedure to correct a hernia. Unfortunately, all does not go according to plan and he discovers the truth about the after life. Journey with Richard as he leaves the first level of existence, explores the second and third levels and eventually earns the right to enter the fourth and final level of existence.
978 1 74027 680 1, 54pp, $18.00

Ken Vincent

Do we love our friends? I believe we do, and in many cases it is a deeper love than the dutiful love we express for our family or the passionate love for our partners. Phillip Ward, Eric Hardwick and Robert McKenzie share such a love and in doing so share their life stories. Eric’s from that of a young child where he experienced the horrors of chronic neglect and abuse coupled with the unfathomable kindness of sometimes complete strangers. Phillip’s story is that of privilege and follows the Vietnam War where the three served together. It is a time when their friendship is confirmed and grows into love. Robert is the chronicler and he plays the pivotal role of bringing all three together.
978 1 74027 793 8, 298pp, $30.00

Ken Vincent

Have you read The Day I Didn’t Die? If you haven’t, you should do so. In that story you’ll meet Fluffy the Rabbit. Reincarnation tells of Fluffy’s journey to the afterlife and back again as he is first resurrected and then reincarnated. He chums up with Richard Archer, with whom he shares a love-hate relationship, and they collaborate with others to improve the lot of animals generally.
978 1 74027 794 5, 38pp, $17.50

Ken Vincent

In the summer of 1928, the body of Michael Walsh is brought home to Norwood from Mount Gambier, where he died on a train. That night his wife, Rose, attacks his coffin with an axe. Rose’s estranged daughter, Mary, returns for the funeral. Mother and daughter are reconciled but as Michael is buried, dark secrets are resurrected. The Blue Roses of Orroroo is a humorous account of rape, incest and Stolen Generations related by Rose Walsh, a not always reliable witness, as she strives to rescue her family from destitution and, fuelled by kerosene and roses, to restore her own self-esteem. Blue Roses won the Three Day Novel Writing Race conducted by the Salisbury Writers’ Festival in 2007. The novel was expanded and entered in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition in 2009, reaching the semi-finals. One reviewer (USA) wrote, ‘The historical setting is well researched and seamlessly presented. Although set in a small Australian town the themes are universal. Style-wise, this is above your average best-seller.’ Another reviewer (Canada) said, ‘Written with heart and humour. A book that dares to start with horse shit is going to be good.’
978 1 74017 673 3, 290pp, $27.50

‘There are no distortions in the mirror facing the world of Lisa Wardle’s Reflections. Predators lurk on beaches, in homes and under the characters’ own skin. Both strangers and family members are kept at more than an arm’s length. People are hurt, full of holes and walking alone. Uncertainty, fear, and mortality haunt these characters and narratives. The weight and smell of genetics and personal history come to play. Shifts occur and regrets surface from past to present. Sometimes bonds are formed - uncommon, even strange. At other times, the strains on trapped relationships are ultimately and joyously broken. Mainly, the negative behaviours - learned, inherited, or spawned through ill-treatment - live on, in Wardle’s accessible prose which captures each character’s distinct, colloquial voice and acts to shock, rattle and ultimately awaken the reader.’ - Angela Meyer (LiteraryMinded)
Mockingbird
978 1 74027 588 0, 76pp, $18.00

These stories by a Barossa Valley writer take you from the fires of Hell to the lonely world of a motherless boy, with many stops in between.
978 1 74027 387 9, 70pp, $18.00

Aunty Maive is an aunt you would rather not have and Christmas shopping in op shops in June is perhaps an experience to be avoided if at all possible. ‘The Bus Doesn’t Stop Here Any More’ takes a short look at a problem that is more prevalent than city people would know or like to acknowledge. Elizabet is a young girl whose lonely life is enriched by fantasy and an artistic vagabond. The other stories are just as varied. If you went to a private school in the forties, fifties or sixties, you may recognise ‘Sir’.
978 1 74027 782 2, 74pp, $18.50

Ian Wilkinson has a Bachelor of Architecture from Melbourne University and a Diploma of Arts (Professional Writing & Editing) from Peninsula TAFE, Frankston. He is a winner of the City of Brisbane Short Story Award and runner up in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Jim Hamilton Award for unpublished manuscripts. In these stories he charts a path through the stormy landscapes of personal relationships and in doing so takes the reader from the heart of Australian cities to its outer suburbs and coastal fringes, and from Oxford, UK, to Glasgow in Scotland. He takes you through bushfires, wild storms and into the souls of his characters. Join in the journey.
'With each of Ian Wilkinson’s short stories we see him flex his literary muscles. We watch how he weaves his way back and forward in time, how sharp his dialogue is and how skilfully he can take us to a particular place.' - The Age
978 1 74027 526 2, 74pp, $18.00

'Three ominous and troubling stories, three old hotels, places of refuge for hopes and dreams - all here is suffused with mystery and intrigue, touched and shadowed by the sorrows and sins of the past.' - Carmel Bird 
978 1 74027 589 7, 68pp, $18.00

'Jane Williams gets inside the intimate moment hovering there at the cusp between the real and the imagined. She tells this moment from the inside out, small worlds spring to vivid life, and the human condition shines in all its flawed dignity. These are stories to touch the trigger of the soul – I will read them over and over again.' - Pete Hay
978 1 74027 432 6, 37pp, $17.50

On a Queensland farm in the aftermath of World War II, Harry Vance’s dream becomes his daughter-in-law’s nightmare. Reminiscent of Chekhov’s landlocked characters, those whose lives are circumscribed by Harry and his farm, Rosewood, long for empowerment and freedom of choice. Volatile energies and unspoken desires simmer beneath the surface of the Vances’ world, which crumbles under irresistible pressures, bequeathing a legacy that enters the psyche as heartbreaking landscapes and haunting dreamscapes.
‘...written in a poet’s prose, dense with imagery and unexpected turns of language and thought…explores the implications of white settlement, the effect on an extended family of two world wars, changes in rural life and the gap between dreams and reality that can, if wide enough, wreck someone’s life.’ - Sydney Morning Herald
‘...a poetic work of fiction, rich in imagery and metaphor, composed of dramatic cameos that work together to create a whole.’ - Queensland Review
‘…you cannot photograph a garden of the mind. But if you can write as well as Jena Woodhouse, you can evoke it, and the landscape in which it is set and the lives lived there…’ - Idiom
‘Tolstoy famously wrote that happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It is one of Woodhouse’s many strengths that she writes so discerningly and sensitively about families, the different personalities inhabiting those families, and their own individual desires and dreams.’ - Australian Women’s Book Review
978 1 74027 556 9, 200pp, $25.00