AustLit

'An evening walk in the gardens, a cigarette rolled for a friend—I had never thought of these small intimacies as ceremonies until they were no longer possible.' 

'Recent Australian and international releases use memoir, poetry and reportage to look laterally at the trauma, grief and nuance of domestic abuse in marginalised communities.'

'Growing up as a fatherless girl, I always had Dad Crushes. These were not sexual crushes on older men, but a different kind of fantasy of love and security. ‘Good dad vibe’ is an embodiment that’s hard to describe, but I know it when I feel it.' (Introduction)

'Thirteen years after the disappearance of Shelby Dallow, Corey Hallowell is still treated like a pariah by his local community in a small town in the bushlands of the Flinders Ranges. Accused of the abduction, he’s become the local bogeyman. The Rayson family are the worst, calling him a pervert and a murderer. So when a little boy goes missing out in the national park, no-one’s more surprised than Hallowell when the Raysons arrive on his doorstep to ask for his help. The events that follow will force Hallowell and the townsfolk to confront the frightening ghosts of the past.' (Introduction)

'When twelve-year-old Agnes disappears  on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As the police begin their investigation, Agnes’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find her and bring her home. When schoolfriend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Agnes with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Agnes?' (Introduction)

'In the early hours of one morning, a teenage boy named Nish is found dead on the rocks at Crest Cove in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and the police suspect foul play. Indira is a university drop-out with a drinking problem, who has alienated her friends and family after the death of another teenage boy, five years prior—her own brother. Once, Indira played a piano accordion with rainbow keys that could raise the dead. Now, her childhood friend Mo needs Indira’s accordion to find out how her brother drowned at Bronte. But Indira gave the accordion away long ago. Can she, along with her ex-boyfriend Will, track down the instrument and solve the mystery of what happened to Nish?' (Introduction)

'Ezra and Yonatan were both students at Yahel Academy, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school, when allegations of sexual abuse arose against a teacher, Rabbi Hirsh. After Hirsch fled to Israel, Ezra’s parents pulled him out of the school, while Yonatan remained. Now in their thirties, the lives of the two men have taken very different paths: Ezra identifies as secular and atheist, while Yonatan has been ordained as a rabbi and even teaches at the Yahel Academy. At a rally in support of the extradition of Rabbi Hirsch from Israel the men are reunited, and the events of their past and present collide with devastating consequences.' (Introduction)