Award-winning Adelaide independent publisher
To order, please click on BUY NOW beside the title you require.
All prices are in Australian dollars and include Australian Goods & Services Tax (GST). GST is deducted from overseas orders.
Postage & handling will be added to your order:
Australian orders, 1 book $5.50, 2 or more $10.50
Overseas orders, 1 book $13, 2 books $20, 3 books or more $25.
In Adelaide, Ginninderra Press books are available at East Avenue Books, 53 East Avenue, Clarence Park 5034.
Ahmed Adam
Fish from the Sky
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 333 8, 57pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Ian Alexander
Second Son
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 74017 455 5, 70pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Christian Ayling
Harvesting Hope
Yasemin Sandulli's life spirals out of control after her brother is accused of murder. Following a torrent of events, her father must fight for his life, while her brother fights for his freedom. As Yasemin begins to question her identity and faith, she finds her answer in the most unlikely place.
'The twists and turns in this thought-provoking young-adult fiction will keep the reader enthralled to the end.' - Kathleen Stewart, Authors' Ally
978 1 74027 457 9, 68pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Sandy Bigna
Secrets
Secrets are the stories that are often told in whispers. Secrets are the stories that sneak into our subconscious and follow us. Secrets is an innovative and exciting collection of stories by a talented emerging writer - well worth discovering.
Mockingbird 1 74027 253 6, 72pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Jane Bradhurst
A Dangerous Beauty
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 BUY NOW
S.M. Braint
A Transparent Death
‘...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 174027 668 9, 48pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Tessa Bremner
An Affair With Mr Renoir
Sometimes dramatic, sometimes delicate, always to the point, Tessa Bremner’s collection of short stories presents a very poignant view of the lives of her characters and their struggle to have their voices heard above the noise of cultural sensibilities. In her storytelling, Bremner draws on a lifetime in theatre to make her characters three-dimensional and all too real.
1 74027 236 6, 64pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Glenys Brokenshire
Yum, Yum, Pig’s Bum & other tales
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 BUY NOW
John Burless & Suzanne Nehl
Plains of Fortune
This fine novel is so soundly based on the archives of colonial Queensland and Federal Australia that it is difficult to separate the fictional family from the real characters who share the pages with them. The story follows the adventures of the Macgregor family, who go to make their fortune on the plains of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The rumbustious pioneer life in the gold fields of Croydon, and at Normanton and Burketown, is vigorously drawn. The family's letters and journals also tell of the daily life of women coping with primitive conditions - births, deaths, fires, accidents, whatever came their way. The family lives through the disaster of the 1890s depression when most banks went broke, the excitements of Federation, the terrible Federation drought, the tragedy of the Boer War and the gigantic loss of men in World War I - these were events that shaped us as the nation we became for much of the twentieth century.
978 1 74027 518 7, 508pp, $35.00 BUY NOW
David Campbell
Morning Light
'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 BUY NOW
Rees Campbell
The Legacy
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.
978 1 74027 550 7, 82pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Avril Caney
Mind the Gap
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 BUY NOW
Kim Chapman
For All Our Sakes
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 BUY NOW
Lucy Chesser
Cut Loose
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
The Journey of Hamlin Baylis Wells
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
Always in Denial
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
Smithy’s Cupboard
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
Shaken & Stirred
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 BUY NOW
Stanley Robert Cole
The Boy from Sweetwater Creek
Eighty-four-year-old Charlie Baker visits Sweetwater Creek for only the second time in his life. This time it is to lay flowers on the memorial which also will bear the name of Larry Foley, who died saving Charlie's life during the war. When the old digger talks to Sweetwater Creek residents about the lack of a satisfactory World War II memorial, he realises he has one more battle to fight. His only wish is that he will not have to tell how Larry Foley died. He is absolutely certain he cannot tell that story again.
978 1 74027 494 4, 54pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Craig Cormick
A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet
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
Winner, Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award 2006
Mockingbird 1 74027 337 0, 64pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Craig Cormick
Futures Trading
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.
Runner-up, Fiction, ACT Writing & Publishing Awards 2010
Mockingbird 978 1 74027 560 6, 68pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
P.S. Cottier
A Quiet Day
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
Highly commended, Society of Women Writers NSW Biennial Book Awards 2011
978 1 74027 576 7, 68pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Robert Cox
Alibis, Lies, Goodbyes
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 BUY NOW
Robert Cox
The Clarity of Tears
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 BUY NOW
Robert Cox
Agony & Variations
‘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 BUY NOW
Jen Craig
Since the Accident
In a suburban Sydney pub, a woman tells her younger sister the story of how her life has changed since a serious car accident. She speaks of the blossoming of romance, the rediscovery of her long-dormant creativity: her ability to draw. And yet an exhibition comes to nothing, a lover is abandoned. She leaves everything behind. In the driving monologue of her own narrative, the younger sister attempts to make sense of her life and the events and thoughts that have obsessed the elder since the accident.
‘...Craig is a writer of great skill.’ - Sydney Morning Herald
‘...well-written...promising debut.’ - The Compulsive Reader
978 1 74027 563 7, 196pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Victor Crittenden
The Haunting House
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 BUY NOW
Geoffrey Dean
Mysteries, Myths & Miracles
‘Dean writes better than many more celebrated writers. He has his own voice: measured, assured, never obtrusive or overbearing or flashy or self-consciously literary.’ - Robert Cox, Hobart Mercury
‘A writer's writer and his vision of the author resembles that of Proust’s Bergotte: a character capable of artistic heroism only by virtue of his abject human failings. In spite of that (or perhaps because of it) Dean has won many awards and plaudits from nearly every quarter. He deserves the praise; his short fiction is amongst the best in the country.’ -Cameron Woodhead, The Age Review
‘Delicate stories, thought-provoking and rich in ideas. At times they are profoundly disturbing...sweet on the tongue but worthy of lengthy digestion.’ - Juliette Wandsbrough, The West Australian
‘With their sparseness and intense interest in the human condition these stories remind me of the great American short story writer Raymond Carver, only these stories are less bleak and sometimes very funny.’ - Peter Mares, ABC Book Show
978 1 74027 645 0, 102pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
Brenda Eldridge (editor)
The Heart of Port Adelaide
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 BUY NOW
emichii
My Best Friend’s Secret
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 BUY NOW
Peter Farrar
The Nine Flaws of Affection
‘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 BUY NOW
Nigel Featherstone
Joy
'...pretty damn good. In fact, pretty bloody excellent.' - Christos Tsiolkas
1 74027 039 8, 179pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Neville Fletcher
Brief Candles
'...enchanting...an eclectic selection of themes ranging from science fiction to a kind of inoffensive quasi-religion, something deep-thinking readers can relate to... A joy to browse and read at one’s leisure.' - Colin Keay, Australian Physics
978 1 74027 467 8, $20.00 BUY NOW
Solveig Foss
Night Watch & other stories
Solveig Foss follows a long tradition of doctor-writers whose medical work has inspired their fiction. Her stories range over time and place from the Eastern Front in 1941, through 1950s England to contemporary Australia and Ukraine. An unqualified nurse finds solace in Madame Bovary while she tries to manage demented patients and a drug-addicted assistant. A busy doctor juggles his obligations to his patients with his love and care for his dying wife. A Ukrainian engineer-turned social worker struggles to get funding for an HIV/AIDS program. A week after graduation a doctor finds herself thrown into war. An investment banker can only find time for counselling while travelling to work. Solveig Foss brings alive the joys and challenges which can face doctors, nurses and patients, and celebrates the courage of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
‘…closely observed and full of wisdom…effortless ability to render pathos and joy…’ - The Weekend Australian
978 1 74027 679 5, 128pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Lesley Fowler
Washing My Mother's Hair
'...assured, challenging and often captivating.' - Canberra Times
Mockingbird 1 74027 111 4, 100pp, $16.50 BUY NOW
Beryl Gamble
Family Secrets
Beginning with one soldier's return from Gallipoli in 1916, and continuing through the years with the joys and trials of his family until 1925, Family Secrets is the story of a Melbourne family, all touched in some way by World War I, be it directly or indirectly.
978 1 74027 416 4, $26.00 BUY NOW
Beryl Gamble
And Then: More Family Secrets
The continuing story of the four McArthur sisters from 1926 to 1945, giving a picture of life as it was then in suburban Melbourne. Although fiction, many of the events are based on true incidents.
978 1 74027 534 7, $30.00 BUY NOW
Angus Gaunt
Prime Cuts
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 BUY NOW
Molly Guy
Reading Between the Lines
'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 BUY NOW
Julia Haisley
The Good Samaritan
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 BUY NOW
Leonie Hall
Two Shillings & other stories
Leonie Hall has always lived in central Victoria. She began writing when the last of her children left home and to date has had three novels published plus short stories in magazines and anthologies. She is married and has six children, numerous grandchildren and one great grandchild. As well as her first love, writing, her interests vary from volunteer work to handcrafts, reading, singing and walking, and she has also travelled widely.
978 1 74027 535 4, 48pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Steve Holden
The Bird in the Egg and other stories
'Steve Holden is a master of the brief narrative and telling episode. His stories eddy with myriad significances even as they present recognisable places and people. They successfully conjure the restlessness and idiosyncrasy of humanity and persuasively explore the mysteriousness of human motivation and circumstance. These haunting stories speak about domestic intimacies, individual aspirations and the ways people choose to live together and apart. They are consistently probing, luminous and insightful.' - Paul Hetherington
Shortlisted, Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award 2009
978 1 74027 491 3, 90pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Robert Horne
Undergrowth
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 BUY NOW
Ann Howard
Bonsai Ballerina
'Undoubtedly you write well...your work reminds me of Di Morrissey...your best writing reminds me of Delia Falconer (The Service of Clouds) at her best...' - Kate Llewellyn
1 74027 379 6, 76pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Brian Hungerford
Different Waters
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 BUY NOW
Sue Hurley
Love at the Railway Hotel
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 BUY NOW
Also available as ebook in epub format
978 1 74027 616 0, 218pp, $15.00 BUY NOW
Madeleine Huxtable
The Flight of the Scorpion
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 BUY NOW
Angela Johnson
No Stories, No Songs
'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 BUY NOW
Tiggy Johnson
Svetlana or Otherwise
'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 BUY NOW
Adèle Ogiér Jones
Desert Diya
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 BUY NOW
Sharon Kernot
In the Shadows of the Garden
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 BUY NOW
Myra King
City Paddock
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 BUY NOW
Chris Leckonby
Once Bitten
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 BUY NOW
Chris Leckonby
Out of the Frypan & other stories
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 BUY NOW
Michelle Lopert
Happy Families & Other Delusions
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 BUY NOW
Annabelle McEntyre
Death at The Downs
Murder at Mella Downs. Several suspects, but who is the killer, and will he strike again? This is Annabelle McEntyre's second book. Several of her short stories have been published; some have won awards. Annabelle writes to entertain readers and hopes this book will do just that. She is working on a third novel and there are more in the pipeline.
978 1 74027 597 2, 42pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Andrea McMahon
Skin Hunger
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 BUY NOW
Murray McNair
Captain Kreel's Contraband
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 BUY NOW
Murray McNair
The Dreams of Eddie Skinner
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 BUY NOW
Helen Rose Mitchell
Siege of Contraries
During a two-day respite in World War I in France, destiny entangles the lives of three young men: Patrick, who is Anglo-Irish, and Harry, an Australian, accidentally meet Karl, an enemy soldier. Karl is seriously injured and the two allies are forced to measure their humanity against their military training. Should they comfort the German? Should they let him die alone? As the story unfolds, it reveals details about the differences in the civilian lives of the three young men. Decisions are made and, for a little while, the war is only about three young men. Siege of Contraries contains painful memories about survivor guilt and judgements about the importance of nationalities.
Winner, People’s Choice Award, SA Writers Festival 2011
978 1 74027 602 3, 100pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
John Morley
The Good Intent
Sleeping with a co-worker, parties with friends, buying cereal, writing poetry or catching the bus - what could possibly go wrong? The Good Intent is a collection of stories about the everyday and the exceptional day. If you’re lucky, you just might finish up in front.
1 74027 364 8, 72pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Anthony Noack
Eaglemont
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 BUY NOW
Ryan O'Neill
Six Tenses
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 BUY NOW
Ryan O'Neill
A Famine in Newcastle
An exhilarating new collection of stories from the Newcastle-based author of Six Tenses.
Shortlisted, Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award 2007
Mockingbird 1 74027 360 5, 62pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Louise Pakeman
Time Away
Much of Louise Pakeman's short fiction has appeared in magazines in Australia and England and in anthologies but she is better known for her full-length novels. Louise was born in England but has lived in Australia since 1968. The stories in this collection reflect her belief that we are all, people and animals, part of the Divine.
978 1 74027 529 3, 60pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Ian Rae
Rough End of the Stick
‘These are the stories of ordinary Australians. If there is such a thing as “the Australian experience”, they reveal just how elusive its delineation is. They depict lives whose singularity not only gives them a richness, and a sense of being special, but also a feeling of individuality and isolation.’ - Georgina Laidlaw, former editor, Australian Reader
‘Love and loss - these are the twin emotional poles around which Ian Rae’s characters revolve and dance in these artful stories. Expect to be engaged, diverted and seduced.’ - John Clanchy, short story writer and novelist
‘Each story is a pleasure to read in itself. Each, like the individual facets of a dragonfly’s eye, captures with perfect lucidity a facet of life. Only as one reads on through the book does one grasp what a complex vision Ian Rae’s compound eye commands.’ - Mark O’Connor, author and Australian Olympic poet
Ian Rae is an internationally published Australian writer. Before he became a full-time writer he was an academic in the field of history, and a qualified psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist. He is also a professional singer and musician and a sculptor. Ian has long been a writer of short stories - formerly under the nom de plume of Jack Irvine - and has had numerous stories published in Australia and the USA, plus two books, Where’s the Fair Go? and In Praise of Younger Women. His first novel, The Wizard from the Isles, was published in Scotland in 2009. It is the first volume of a trilogy. The second volume, Tribulation, is complete, and will be released in 2010. The third, Dark Renaissance, will soon be finished.
In Rough End of the Stick the author presents Australians both on their own turf and rambling through overseas meadows. He depicts them at their best, their worst and their most idiosyncratic.
Highly commended, Fiction, ACT Writing & Publishing Awards 2011
978 1 74027 610 8, 158pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Gordon Reid
Across the Plains
Stories giving a picture of life in the small towns, on the lonely farms and vast sheep stations of the Riverina district of New South Wales.
'...a varied and strong collection...a lively portrait of country Australia...' - Australian Book Review
1 876259 54 X, 280pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
Gordon Reid
Hornet Bank
Just before dawn late in 1857, Aborigines crept up on a sleeping homestead in the Dawson River valley, central Queensland, and slaughtered eight members of the Fraser family and three employees. In the retribution by the Native Mounted Police and white vigilantes, at least three hundred Aborigines died. In this historical novel, the story of Hornet Bank is told thirty-five years later by Thomas Scott, son of the founder. He has good reason for meditating on the meaning of the Fraser massacre. His wife has been raped recently by an Aborigine at the station and now she is pregnant. Day after day they wait to see whether the child will be his or the rapist's. And, as each day passes, the strain on husband and wife creeps closer to breaking point.
Winner, Fiction, ACT Writing & Publishing Awards 2010
978 1 74027 573 6, 308pp, $30.00 BUY NOW
Mal Sanderson
Old Wood New Fires
Janus, the Roman god of doors, of beginnings and endings, symbolises change and transition, past into future, one vision into another. Old Wood New Fires explores such journeys. As the enigmatic woman in 'Silent Communion' puts it, 'Some must travel from mind to heart. Others will travel from the heart to mind. It all comes to the same thing in the end, I suppose. If one is to understand.'
978 1 74027 517 0, 98pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Duncan N. Sargeant
Ship of Fools
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 BUY NOW
Vicky Sentana
Buried Alive
There’s a little bit of Sarah in all of us… Sarah is in a psychiatric hospital. They watch her twenty-four hours a day. She lives in a haze of drugs and no one will tell her why she's there. Worst of all, they're planning to let her out.
978 1 74027 465 4, $17.50 BUY NOW
Alice Shore
Circles in Sand
Five engaging tales about feminine strength and integrity.
1 74027 235 8, 62pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Sandy Sutherland
While Others Dream
Some dream sweetly in their beds at night. For others, one small mistake, a chance encounter, brings nightmares.
'...short sharp writing that hooks with the first line and twists a knife in the guts in the last.' - Yass Tribune
Mockingbird 1 74027 287 0, 72pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Sandy Sutherland
Cry of the Curlew
The kookaburra laughs, the robin sings, But the stone-curlew wails mournfully in the dark of night. So too it is with man. More stories by the author of While Others Dream.
1 74027 363 X, 76pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Sandy Sutherland
Heroes
Everyone’s a hero and everyone’s a coward, some time. New stories from the author of Cry of the Curlew.
978 1 74027 551 4, 74pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Leigh Swinbourne
The Shark & other stories
A rich cripple commissions a portraitist 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.
‘…a rare confidence with language that makes for compelling reading.’ - The Weekend Australian
978 1 74027 674 0, 154pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Esther Theiler
Jutei & Basho: A seashell game
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 BUY NOW
Vicki Thornton
Last Days of Summer
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 BUY NOW
John Tognolini
The Mountain City Murders
Underbelly meets pub trivia along with generous amounts of Shakespeare, Latin, satire and extreme violence involving murder and football training. The Mountain City Murders is a roller-coaster ride of a story involving not just murder in a World Heritage Area but corruption, drugs, misuse of police power, political protest, dissent and how not to run a pub in the small tourist/commuter town of Mountain City. The Mountain City Murders is set amidst untouched bush and national parks: two-hundred-metre-high cliffs, subtemperate rainforests, mountain valleys, swamp-necked wallabies, copperhead snakes and owls.
978 1 74027 628 3, 112pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
Dreaming Australia
Blood flows on the war-torn streets of Masar e-Sharif. To try to cope with that, and barbarous Taliban rule, Soraya illegally reads and attends a secret girls' school. But when her mother is killed in a missile attack, all Soraya’s girlish dreams and aspirations appear to be crushed forever.
'...moving and exciting. Tolbert's narrative moves along at a satisfying pace.' - Viewpoint
174027 288 9, 162pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
Surfing for Wayan
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 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
Packing Smack, Talking Wombats
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 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
O’Leary, JI Terrorist Hunter
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 BUY NOW
Tuggeranong WORD Group
Postcard from Canberra
A diverse collection of poems and stories by Peter Burbrook, Helen Cunningham, June Foster and Daphne Hargreaves.
1 74027 270 6, 128pp, $22.50 BUY NOW
Sue Varteg
Infinity Is a Big Place
A number of Sue Varteg's short stories have been published in various magazines, but this is the first time any of her stories have been published as a collection.
978 1 74027 595 8, 74pp, $18.50 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
A Conversation with Emily
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 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Mavis
This novella projects the forest-dark world of ancient folklore into modern middle-class domesticity.
1 74027 066 5, 56pp, $15.00 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Children at the Gate
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 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Tiger! Tiger!
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 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Light On Dark Water
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.
978 1 74027 681 8, 76pp, $18.50 BUY NOW
Ken Vincent
Butterfly Girl
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 BUY NOW
Ken Vincent
Chains of Fear
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 BUY NOW
Ken Vincent
The Day I Didn’t Die
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 BUY NOW
Margaret Visciglio
The Blue Roses of Orroroo
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 BUY NOW
Sonya Voumard
Political Animals
Political Animals explores the inner workings of Canberra life: the mutually exploitative relationship between politics and the media; the factional infighting; the sexual tension; the political deal-making; the fragility of ethics when ambition and career advancement take priority.compulsively readable. It is very much a novel of our times.
'Political Animals grabs you immediately. A convincing story of political intrigue in Australia, it keeps you hooked until the end. The book will capture the imagination of anyone with a sliver of interest in contemporary Australian realpolitik. Part of what I loved about this book was the voice of the narrator, a sassy, independent though always vulnerable thirty-something Canberra journo whose creator never allows her to fall into the stereotypical traps awaiting her... I want to describe it as chick lit grows up but know that description clouds the serious moral vision the author brings to her writing. Voumard is a new writer with a new voice and a new vision.' - Ian Syson
'...political junkies will find much that is fascinating, such as the back-stabbing by staffers and the conflicts of interest between the main players. Voumard's extensive experience allows her to capture the nuances of working in the media and the blurring of the lines between reporting and campaigning... Overall, however, she has done a very good job of putting the reader in the middle of some tense action.' - Canberra Times
'Credible characters and a storyline that explores important issues without sanctimony or contrivance make for a powerful debut from one who knows the circus well.' - Qantas Magazine
'...bears the unmistakable stamp of authenticity...a well-written novel...' - Sydney Morning Herald
'...a sharp, dark and credibly drawn descent into the benthic relationship between Australian politicians and the media. With so many cookie-cutter political thrillers around, it’s refreshing to read one that’s so savage and true to life.' - The Age
'This ambitious novel tackles a heady mix of moral issues juxtaposed against personal and political histories in a contemporary setting.' - Australian Book Review
978 1 74027 502 6, 218pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Lisa Wardle
Reflections
‘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, 76 pages, $18.00 BUY NOW
Peter Weir
A Garden of Delights
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 BUY NOW
Maurice Whelan
Boat People
'In this refreshing novel, Maurice Whelan addresses with bravery and skill the eternal reality of Australia, that we are a nation of refugees.' - Tom Keneally
'This compelling novel is woven from archetypal stories which make up the tapestry of white settlement in Australia. Economic refugees from Ireland during the potato famine; political refugees fleeing persecution in the middle east. Their stories are powerfully similar, but also different in significant ways. The latest to arrive seem destined to try hardest, but to be singled out for hard treatment.' - Julian Burnside
'Everyone from 18 to 80 should read this book.' - Clare Calvet (ABC Radio)
'This book raised the hair on the back of my neck, which is one definition of a really good novel. Written with great energy and urgency, which are rare and precious qualities.' - Bob White, Professor of English, UWA
978 1 74027 474 8, 242pp, $22.50 BUY NOW
Ian Wilkinson
Storms
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 BUY NOW
Ian Kennedy Williams
Fugitive Places: Stories from a suite of hotels
'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 BUY NOW
Jane Williams
Other Lives
'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 BUY NOW
Jacqueline Winn
Once More With Feeling
These award-winning short stories will take you on a journey of the imagination that celebrates the wonderful diversity of human life and cannot help but leave you looking at the world through different eyes.
1 74027 370 2, 154pp, $24.00 BUY NOW
Jacqueline Winn
Salt & Pepper
Another rich assortment of short stories guaranteed to amuse one moment and touch your heart the next. All of these stories have won literary awards in Australia, New Zealand, Britain or Ireland. This is a collection that is sure to leave a lasting impression.
978 1 74027 569 9, 152pp, $24.00 BUY NOW
Jena Woodhouse
Farming Ghosts
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
978 1 74027 556 9, 200pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Stephen Matthews Ginninderra Press PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015
stephen@ginninderrapress.com.au
www.ginninderrapress.com.au
ABN 42 447 290 724
All prices are in Australian dollars and include Australian Goods & Services Tax (GST). GST is deducted from overseas orders.
Postage & handling will be added to your order:
Australian orders, 1 book $5.50, 2 or more $10.50
Overseas orders, 1 book $13, 2 books $20, 3 books or more $25.
In Adelaide, Ginninderra Press books are available at East Avenue Books, 53 East Avenue, Clarence Park 5034.
Ahmed Adam
Fish from the Sky
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 333 8, 57pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Ian Alexander
Second Son
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 74017 455 5, 70pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Christian Ayling
Harvesting Hope
Yasemin Sandulli's life spirals out of control after her brother is accused of murder. Following a torrent of events, her father must fight for his life, while her brother fights for his freedom. As Yasemin begins to question her identity and faith, she finds her answer in the most unlikely place.
'The twists and turns in this thought-provoking young-adult fiction will keep the reader enthralled to the end.' - Kathleen Stewart, Authors' Ally
978 1 74027 457 9, 68pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Sandy Bigna
Secrets
Secrets are the stories that are often told in whispers. Secrets are the stories that sneak into our subconscious and follow us. Secrets is an innovative and exciting collection of stories by a talented emerging writer - well worth discovering.
Mockingbird 1 74027 253 6, 72pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Jane Bradhurst
A Dangerous Beauty
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 BUY NOW
S.M. Braint
A Transparent Death
‘...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 174027 668 9, 48pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Tessa Bremner
An Affair With Mr Renoir
Sometimes dramatic, sometimes delicate, always to the point, Tessa Bremner’s collection of short stories presents a very poignant view of the lives of her characters and their struggle to have their voices heard above the noise of cultural sensibilities. In her storytelling, Bremner draws on a lifetime in theatre to make her characters three-dimensional and all too real.
1 74027 236 6, 64pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Glenys Brokenshire
Yum, Yum, Pig’s Bum & other tales
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 BUY NOW
John Burless & Suzanne Nehl
Plains of Fortune
This fine novel is so soundly based on the archives of colonial Queensland and Federal Australia that it is difficult to separate the fictional family from the real characters who share the pages with them. The story follows the adventures of the Macgregor family, who go to make their fortune on the plains of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The rumbustious pioneer life in the gold fields of Croydon, and at Normanton and Burketown, is vigorously drawn. The family's letters and journals also tell of the daily life of women coping with primitive conditions - births, deaths, fires, accidents, whatever came their way. The family lives through the disaster of the 1890s depression when most banks went broke, the excitements of Federation, the terrible Federation drought, the tragedy of the Boer War and the gigantic loss of men in World War I - these were events that shaped us as the nation we became for much of the twentieth century.
978 1 74027 518 7, 508pp, $35.00 BUY NOW
David Campbell
Morning Light
'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 BUY NOW
Rees Campbell
The Legacy
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.
978 1 74027 550 7, 82pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Avril Caney
Mind the Gap
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 BUY NOW
Kim Chapman
For All Our Sakes
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 BUY NOW
Lucy Chesser
Cut Loose
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
The Journey of Hamlin Baylis Wells
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
Always in Denial
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
Smithy’s Cupboard
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 BUY NOW
Ray Clift
Shaken & Stirred
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 BUY NOW
Stanley Robert Cole
The Boy from Sweetwater Creek
Eighty-four-year-old Charlie Baker visits Sweetwater Creek for only the second time in his life. This time it is to lay flowers on the memorial which also will bear the name of Larry Foley, who died saving Charlie's life during the war. When the old digger talks to Sweetwater Creek residents about the lack of a satisfactory World War II memorial, he realises he has one more battle to fight. His only wish is that he will not have to tell how Larry Foley died. He is absolutely certain he cannot tell that story again.
978 1 74027 494 4, 54pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Craig Cormick
A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet
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
Winner, Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award 2006
Mockingbird 1 74027 337 0, 64pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Craig Cormick
Futures Trading
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.
Runner-up, Fiction, ACT Writing & Publishing Awards 2010
Mockingbird 978 1 74027 560 6, 68pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
P.S. Cottier
A Quiet Day
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
Highly commended, Society of Women Writers NSW Biennial Book Awards 2011
978 1 74027 576 7, 68pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Robert Cox
Alibis, Lies, Goodbyes
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 BUY NOW
Robert Cox
The Clarity of Tears
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 BUY NOW
Robert Cox
Agony & Variations
‘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 BUY NOW
Jen Craig
Since the Accident
In a suburban Sydney pub, a woman tells her younger sister the story of how her life has changed since a serious car accident. She speaks of the blossoming of romance, the rediscovery of her long-dormant creativity: her ability to draw. And yet an exhibition comes to nothing, a lover is abandoned. She leaves everything behind. In the driving monologue of her own narrative, the younger sister attempts to make sense of her life and the events and thoughts that have obsessed the elder since the accident.
‘...Craig is a writer of great skill.’ - Sydney Morning Herald
‘...well-written...promising debut.’ - The Compulsive Reader
978 1 74027 563 7, 196pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Victor Crittenden
The Haunting House
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 BUY NOW
Geoffrey Dean
Mysteries, Myths & Miracles
‘Dean writes better than many more celebrated writers. He has his own voice: measured, assured, never obtrusive or overbearing or flashy or self-consciously literary.’ - Robert Cox, Hobart Mercury
‘A writer's writer and his vision of the author resembles that of Proust’s Bergotte: a character capable of artistic heroism only by virtue of his abject human failings. In spite of that (or perhaps because of it) Dean has won many awards and plaudits from nearly every quarter. He deserves the praise; his short fiction is amongst the best in the country.’ -Cameron Woodhead, The Age Review
‘Delicate stories, thought-provoking and rich in ideas. At times they are profoundly disturbing...sweet on the tongue but worthy of lengthy digestion.’ - Juliette Wandsbrough, The West Australian
‘With their sparseness and intense interest in the human condition these stories remind me of the great American short story writer Raymond Carver, only these stories are less bleak and sometimes very funny.’ - Peter Mares, ABC Book Show
978 1 74027 645 0, 102pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
Brenda Eldridge (editor)
The Heart of Port Adelaide
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 BUY NOW
emichii
My Best Friend’s Secret
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 BUY NOW
Peter Farrar
The Nine Flaws of Affection
‘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 BUY NOW
Nigel Featherstone
Joy
'...pretty damn good. In fact, pretty bloody excellent.' - Christos Tsiolkas
1 74027 039 8, 179pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Neville Fletcher
Brief Candles
'...enchanting...an eclectic selection of themes ranging from science fiction to a kind of inoffensive quasi-religion, something deep-thinking readers can relate to... A joy to browse and read at one’s leisure.' - Colin Keay, Australian Physics
978 1 74027 467 8, $20.00 BUY NOW
Solveig Foss
Night Watch & other stories
Solveig Foss follows a long tradition of doctor-writers whose medical work has inspired their fiction. Her stories range over time and place from the Eastern Front in 1941, through 1950s England to contemporary Australia and Ukraine. An unqualified nurse finds solace in Madame Bovary while she tries to manage demented patients and a drug-addicted assistant. A busy doctor juggles his obligations to his patients with his love and care for his dying wife. A Ukrainian engineer-turned social worker struggles to get funding for an HIV/AIDS program. A week after graduation a doctor finds herself thrown into war. An investment banker can only find time for counselling while travelling to work. Solveig Foss brings alive the joys and challenges which can face doctors, nurses and patients, and celebrates the courage of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
‘…closely observed and full of wisdom…effortless ability to render pathos and joy…’ - The Weekend Australian
978 1 74027 679 5, 128pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Lesley Fowler
Washing My Mother's Hair
'...assured, challenging and often captivating.' - Canberra Times
Mockingbird 1 74027 111 4, 100pp, $16.50 BUY NOW
Beryl Gamble
Family Secrets
Beginning with one soldier's return from Gallipoli in 1916, and continuing through the years with the joys and trials of his family until 1925, Family Secrets is the story of a Melbourne family, all touched in some way by World War I, be it directly or indirectly.
978 1 74027 416 4, $26.00 BUY NOW
Beryl Gamble
And Then: More Family Secrets
The continuing story of the four McArthur sisters from 1926 to 1945, giving a picture of life as it was then in suburban Melbourne. Although fiction, many of the events are based on true incidents.
978 1 74027 534 7, $30.00 BUY NOW
Angus Gaunt
Prime Cuts
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 BUY NOW
Molly Guy
Reading Between the Lines
'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 BUY NOW
Julia Haisley
The Good Samaritan
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 BUY NOW
Leonie Hall
Two Shillings & other stories
Leonie Hall has always lived in central Victoria. She began writing when the last of her children left home and to date has had three novels published plus short stories in magazines and anthologies. She is married and has six children, numerous grandchildren and one great grandchild. As well as her first love, writing, her interests vary from volunteer work to handcrafts, reading, singing and walking, and she has also travelled widely.
978 1 74027 535 4, 48pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Steve Holden
The Bird in the Egg and other stories
'Steve Holden is a master of the brief narrative and telling episode. His stories eddy with myriad significances even as they present recognisable places and people. They successfully conjure the restlessness and idiosyncrasy of humanity and persuasively explore the mysteriousness of human motivation and circumstance. These haunting stories speak about domestic intimacies, individual aspirations and the ways people choose to live together and apart. They are consistently probing, luminous and insightful.' - Paul Hetherington
Shortlisted, Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award 2009
978 1 74027 491 3, 90pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Robert Horne
Undergrowth
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 BUY NOW
Ann Howard
Bonsai Ballerina
'Undoubtedly you write well...your work reminds me of Di Morrissey...your best writing reminds me of Delia Falconer (The Service of Clouds) at her best...' - Kate Llewellyn
1 74027 379 6, 76pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Brian Hungerford
Different Waters
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 BUY NOW
Sue Hurley
Love at the Railway Hotel
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 BUY NOW
Also available as ebook in epub format
978 1 74027 616 0, 218pp, $15.00 BUY NOW
Madeleine Huxtable
The Flight of the Scorpion
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 BUY NOW
Angela Johnson
No Stories, No Songs
'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 BUY NOW
Tiggy Johnson
Svetlana or Otherwise
'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 BUY NOW
Adèle Ogiér Jones
Desert Diya
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 BUY NOW
Sharon Kernot
In the Shadows of the Garden
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 BUY NOW
Myra King
City Paddock
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 BUY NOW
Chris Leckonby
Once Bitten
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 BUY NOW
Chris Leckonby
Out of the Frypan & other stories
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 BUY NOW
Michelle Lopert
Happy Families & Other Delusions
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 BUY NOW
Annabelle McEntyre
Death at The Downs
Murder at Mella Downs. Several suspects, but who is the killer, and will he strike again? This is Annabelle McEntyre's second book. Several of her short stories have been published; some have won awards. Annabelle writes to entertain readers and hopes this book will do just that. She is working on a third novel and there are more in the pipeline.
978 1 74027 597 2, 42pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Andrea McMahon
Skin Hunger
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 BUY NOW
Murray McNair
Captain Kreel's Contraband
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 BUY NOW
Murray McNair
The Dreams of Eddie Skinner
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 BUY NOW
Helen Rose Mitchell
Siege of Contraries
During a two-day respite in World War I in France, destiny entangles the lives of three young men: Patrick, who is Anglo-Irish, and Harry, an Australian, accidentally meet Karl, an enemy soldier. Karl is seriously injured and the two allies are forced to measure their humanity against their military training. Should they comfort the German? Should they let him die alone? As the story unfolds, it reveals details about the differences in the civilian lives of the three young men. Decisions are made and, for a little while, the war is only about three young men. Siege of Contraries contains painful memories about survivor guilt and judgements about the importance of nationalities.
Winner, People’s Choice Award, SA Writers Festival 2011
978 1 74027 602 3, 100pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
John Morley
The Good Intent
Sleeping with a co-worker, parties with friends, buying cereal, writing poetry or catching the bus - what could possibly go wrong? The Good Intent is a collection of stories about the everyday and the exceptional day. If you’re lucky, you just might finish up in front.
1 74027 364 8, 72pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Anthony Noack
Eaglemont
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 BUY NOW
Ryan O'Neill
Six Tenses
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 BUY NOW
Ryan O'Neill
A Famine in Newcastle
An exhilarating new collection of stories from the Newcastle-based author of Six Tenses.
Shortlisted, Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award 2007
Mockingbird 1 74027 360 5, 62pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Louise Pakeman
Time Away
Much of Louise Pakeman's short fiction has appeared in magazines in Australia and England and in anthologies but she is better known for her full-length novels. Louise was born in England but has lived in Australia since 1968. The stories in this collection reflect her belief that we are all, people and animals, part of the Divine.
978 1 74027 529 3, 60pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Ian Rae
Rough End of the Stick
‘These are the stories of ordinary Australians. If there is such a thing as “the Australian experience”, they reveal just how elusive its delineation is. They depict lives whose singularity not only gives them a richness, and a sense of being special, but also a feeling of individuality and isolation.’ - Georgina Laidlaw, former editor, Australian Reader
‘Love and loss - these are the twin emotional poles around which Ian Rae’s characters revolve and dance in these artful stories. Expect to be engaged, diverted and seduced.’ - John Clanchy, short story writer and novelist
‘Each story is a pleasure to read in itself. Each, like the individual facets of a dragonfly’s eye, captures with perfect lucidity a facet of life. Only as one reads on through the book does one grasp what a complex vision Ian Rae’s compound eye commands.’ - Mark O’Connor, author and Australian Olympic poet
Ian Rae is an internationally published Australian writer. Before he became a full-time writer he was an academic in the field of history, and a qualified psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist. He is also a professional singer and musician and a sculptor. Ian has long been a writer of short stories - formerly under the nom de plume of Jack Irvine - and has had numerous stories published in Australia and the USA, plus two books, Where’s the Fair Go? and In Praise of Younger Women. His first novel, The Wizard from the Isles, was published in Scotland in 2009. It is the first volume of a trilogy. The second volume, Tribulation, is complete, and will be released in 2010. The third, Dark Renaissance, will soon be finished.
In Rough End of the Stick the author presents Australians both on their own turf and rambling through overseas meadows. He depicts them at their best, their worst and their most idiosyncratic.
Highly commended, Fiction, ACT Writing & Publishing Awards 2011
978 1 74027 610 8, 158pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Gordon Reid
Across the Plains
Stories giving a picture of life in the small towns, on the lonely farms and vast sheep stations of the Riverina district of New South Wales.
'...a varied and strong collection...a lively portrait of country Australia...' - Australian Book Review
1 876259 54 X, 280pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
Gordon Reid
Hornet Bank
Just before dawn late in 1857, Aborigines crept up on a sleeping homestead in the Dawson River valley, central Queensland, and slaughtered eight members of the Fraser family and three employees. In the retribution by the Native Mounted Police and white vigilantes, at least three hundred Aborigines died. In this historical novel, the story of Hornet Bank is told thirty-five years later by Thomas Scott, son of the founder. He has good reason for meditating on the meaning of the Fraser massacre. His wife has been raped recently by an Aborigine at the station and now she is pregnant. Day after day they wait to see whether the child will be his or the rapist's. And, as each day passes, the strain on husband and wife creeps closer to breaking point.
Winner, Fiction, ACT Writing & Publishing Awards 2010
978 1 74027 573 6, 308pp, $30.00 BUY NOW
Mal Sanderson
Old Wood New Fires
Janus, the Roman god of doors, of beginnings and endings, symbolises change and transition, past into future, one vision into another. Old Wood New Fires explores such journeys. As the enigmatic woman in 'Silent Communion' puts it, 'Some must travel from mind to heart. Others will travel from the heart to mind. It all comes to the same thing in the end, I suppose. If one is to understand.'
978 1 74027 517 0, 98pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Duncan N. Sargeant
Ship of Fools
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 BUY NOW
Vicky Sentana
Buried Alive
There’s a little bit of Sarah in all of us… Sarah is in a psychiatric hospital. They watch her twenty-four hours a day. She lives in a haze of drugs and no one will tell her why she's there. Worst of all, they're planning to let her out.
978 1 74027 465 4, $17.50 BUY NOW
Alice Shore
Circles in Sand
Five engaging tales about feminine strength and integrity.
1 74027 235 8, 62pp, $17.50 BUY NOW
Sandy Sutherland
While Others Dream
Some dream sweetly in their beds at night. For others, one small mistake, a chance encounter, brings nightmares.
'...short sharp writing that hooks with the first line and twists a knife in the guts in the last.' - Yass Tribune
Mockingbird 1 74027 287 0, 72pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Sandy Sutherland
Cry of the Curlew
The kookaburra laughs, the robin sings, But the stone-curlew wails mournfully in the dark of night. So too it is with man. More stories by the author of While Others Dream.
1 74027 363 X, 76pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Sandy Sutherland
Heroes
Everyone’s a hero and everyone’s a coward, some time. New stories from the author of Cry of the Curlew.
978 1 74027 551 4, 74pp, $18.00 BUY NOW
Leigh Swinbourne
The Shark & other stories
A rich cripple commissions a portraitist 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.
‘…a rare confidence with language that makes for compelling reading.’ - The Weekend Australian
978 1 74027 674 0, 154pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Esther Theiler
Jutei & Basho: A seashell game
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 BUY NOW
Vicki Thornton
Last Days of Summer
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 BUY NOW
John Tognolini
The Mountain City Murders
Underbelly meets pub trivia along with generous amounts of Shakespeare, Latin, satire and extreme violence involving murder and football training. The Mountain City Murders is a roller-coaster ride of a story involving not just murder in a World Heritage Area but corruption, drugs, misuse of police power, political protest, dissent and how not to run a pub in the small tourist/commuter town of Mountain City. The Mountain City Murders is set amidst untouched bush and national parks: two-hundred-metre-high cliffs, subtemperate rainforests, mountain valleys, swamp-necked wallabies, copperhead snakes and owls.
978 1 74027 628 3, 112pp, $22.00 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
Dreaming Australia
Blood flows on the war-torn streets of Masar e-Sharif. To try to cope with that, and barbarous Taliban rule, Soraya illegally reads and attends a secret girls' school. But when her mother is killed in a missile attack, all Soraya’s girlish dreams and aspirations appear to be crushed forever.
'...moving and exciting. Tolbert's narrative moves along at a satisfying pace.' - Viewpoint
174027 288 9, 162pp, $20.00 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
Surfing for Wayan
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 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
Packing Smack, Talking Wombats
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 BUY NOW
Steve Tolbert
O’Leary, JI Terrorist Hunter
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 BUY NOW
Tuggeranong WORD Group
Postcard from Canberra
A diverse collection of poems and stories by Peter Burbrook, Helen Cunningham, June Foster and Daphne Hargreaves.
1 74027 270 6, 128pp, $22.50 BUY NOW
Sue Varteg
Infinity Is a Big Place
A number of Sue Varteg's short stories have been published in various magazines, but this is the first time any of her stories have been published as a collection.
978 1 74027 595 8, 74pp, $18.50 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
A Conversation with Emily
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 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Mavis
This novella projects the forest-dark world of ancient folklore into modern middle-class domesticity.
1 74027 066 5, 56pp, $15.00 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Children at the Gate
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 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Tiger! Tiger!
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 BUY NOW
Zenda Vecchio
Light On Dark Water
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.
978 1 74027 681 8, 76pp, $18.50 BUY NOW
Ken Vincent
Butterfly Girl
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 BUY NOW
Ken Vincent
Chains of Fear
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 BUY NOW
Ken Vincent
The Day I Didn’t Die
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 BUY NOW
Margaret Visciglio
The Blue Roses of Orroroo
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 BUY NOW
Sonya Voumard
Political Animals
Political Animals explores the inner workings of Canberra life: the mutually exploitative relationship between politics and the media; the factional infighting; the sexual tension; the political deal-making; the fragility of ethics when ambition and career advancement take priority.compulsively readable. It is very much a novel of our times.
'Political Animals grabs you immediately. A convincing story of political intrigue in Australia, it keeps you hooked until the end. The book will capture the imagination of anyone with a sliver of interest in contemporary Australian realpolitik. Part of what I loved about this book was the voice of the narrator, a sassy, independent though always vulnerable thirty-something Canberra journo whose creator never allows her to fall into the stereotypical traps awaiting her... I want to describe it as chick lit grows up but know that description clouds the serious moral vision the author brings to her writing. Voumard is a new writer with a new voice and a new vision.' - Ian Syson
'...political junkies will find much that is fascinating, such as the back-stabbing by staffers and the conflicts of interest between the main players. Voumard's extensive experience allows her to capture the nuances of working in the media and the blurring of the lines between reporting and campaigning... Overall, however, she has done a very good job of putting the reader in the middle of some tense action.' - Canberra Times
'Credible characters and a storyline that explores important issues without sanctimony or contrivance make for a powerful debut from one who knows the circus well.' - Qantas Magazine
'...bears the unmistakable stamp of authenticity...a well-written novel...' - Sydney Morning Herald
'...a sharp, dark and credibly drawn descent into the benthic relationship between Australian politicians and the media. With so many cookie-cutter political thrillers around, it’s refreshing to read one that’s so savage and true to life.' - The Age
'This ambitious novel tackles a heady mix of moral issues juxtaposed against personal and political histories in a contemporary setting.' - Australian Book Review
978 1 74027 502 6, 218pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Lisa Wardle
Reflections
‘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, 76 pages, $18.00 BUY NOW
Peter Weir
A Garden of Delights
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 BUY NOW
Maurice Whelan
Boat People
'In this refreshing novel, Maurice Whelan addresses with bravery and skill the eternal reality of Australia, that we are a nation of refugees.' - Tom Keneally
'This compelling novel is woven from archetypal stories which make up the tapestry of white settlement in Australia. Economic refugees from Ireland during the potato famine; political refugees fleeing persecution in the middle east. Their stories are powerfully similar, but also different in significant ways. The latest to arrive seem destined to try hardest, but to be singled out for hard treatment.' - Julian Burnside
'Everyone from 18 to 80 should read this book.' - Clare Calvet (ABC Radio)
'This book raised the hair on the back of my neck, which is one definition of a really good novel. Written with great energy and urgency, which are rare and precious qualities.' - Bob White, Professor of English, UWA
978 1 74027 474 8, 242pp, $22.50 BUY NOW
Ian Wilkinson
Storms
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 BUY NOW
Ian Kennedy Williams
Fugitive Places: Stories from a suite of hotels
'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 BUY NOW
Jane Williams
Other Lives
'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 BUY NOW
Jacqueline Winn
Once More With Feeling
These award-winning short stories will take you on a journey of the imagination that celebrates the wonderful diversity of human life and cannot help but leave you looking at the world through different eyes.
1 74027 370 2, 154pp, $24.00 BUY NOW
Jacqueline Winn
Salt & Pepper
Another rich assortment of short stories guaranteed to amuse one moment and touch your heart the next. All of these stories have won literary awards in Australia, New Zealand, Britain or Ireland. This is a collection that is sure to leave a lasting impression.
978 1 74027 569 9, 152pp, $24.00 BUY NOW
Jena Woodhouse
Farming Ghosts
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
978 1 74027 556 9, 200pp, $25.00 BUY NOW
Stephen Matthews Ginninderra Press PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015
stephen@ginninderrapress.com.au
www.ginninderrapress.com.au
ABN 42 447 290 724