AustLit

'Marie King is a 59-year-old divorcée from Sydney's affluent north shore. Having devoted her rather conventional life to looking after her husband and three children - who have now all departed the family home - she is experiencing something of an identity crisis, especially as she must now sell the family home and thus lose her beloved garden. On a folly she gets a tattoo.

'Marie forges a friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys, who introduces her to an alternative side of Sydney. Through their burgeoning connection, Marie's two worlds collide causing great friction within Marie's family and with her circle of rich friends.' (From the publisher's website.)

'It is 1950, the League of Nations has collapsed and the newly formed United Nations has rejected all those who worked and fought for the League. Edith Campbell Berry, who joined the League in Geneva before the war, is out of a job, her vision shattered. With her sexually unconventional, husband, Ambrose, she comes back to Australia to live in Canberra.

'Edith now has ambitions to become Australia's first female ambassador, but while she waits for a Call from On High, she finds herself caught up in the planning of the national capital and the dream that it should be "a city like no other".

'When her communist brother, Frederick, turns up out of the blue after many years of absence, she becomes concerned that he may jeopardise her chances of becoming a diplomat. It is not a safe time to be a communist in Australia or to be related to one, but she refuses to be cowed by the anti-communist sentiment sweeping the country. It is also not a safe time or place to be "a wife with a lavender husband". After pursuing the Bloomsbury life for many years, Edith finds herself fearful of being exposed. Unexpectedly, in mid-life she also realises that she yearns for children. When she meets a man who could offer not only security but a ready-made family, she consults the Book of Crossroads and the answer changes the course of her life.

'Intelligent, poignant and absorbing, Cold Light is a remarkable stand-alone novel, which can also be read as a companion to the earlier Edith novels Grand Days and Dark Palace.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Kate, a lonely city woman and reluctant student, is asked by her teachers to travel to the middle of the Australian desert to record a dying Aboriginal woman singing an ancient song. She accepts because she believes that she might be able to reunite with a childhood love and solve the mystery of her past.

But once there, she′s confronted by an Aboriginal culture vastly different to her own, and also by the forceful personality of the man who is supposed to help her find the singer. Very soon she is questioning everything she has ever felt about her own country and about her childhood.

Sensitively portrayed, lyrical, and filled with powerful insights about different people′s sense of home and belonging and family, The Oldest Song in the World is a brave and controversial story about discovering the power of one′s own voice and taking care to pay attention to the voice of others.' Source: http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ (Sighted 09/07/2012)