AustLit

'Nina is a tour guide at a small museum in Sydney when she is unwittingly drawn into a major cultural brouhaha.

'At the intersections of art, politics, identity and representation, this darkly funny novella shows us a world that is weird, disturbing and all too familiar.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In eighteenth-century Venice, orphan Lucietta is raised by a fisherman’s family yet supported by a secret benefactor to study music. At 16, she takes up her position at the Derelitti Convent, one of the prestigious musical orphanages for girls, playing the violin in the ensemble and training the younger musicians.

'Confronted by her benefactor’s plans for her life, Lucietta uncovers the true legacy of these women and her role in bridging the past.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'George hasn’t heard from his ex, Paloma, since she returned to her family home on Songbird Island in the Whitsundays. Now she’s asking for his help to uncover the mystery of who is stealing the family’s wealth, but what they discover is much worse than a case of fraud.

'With luscious prose and a sumptuous setting, Lana Guineay’s debut novella is a brilliant reworking of the classic crime novel.' (Publication summary)

'5 things you need to know about this book

1. It is written in lists

2. Set in Western Sydney

3. Features a dysfunctional narrator

4. Who is fixated on stories of missing children

5. Though she's not entirely sure why

As her world falls apart, will she be able to put the pieces together?' (Publication summary)

'Sparked by the description of a 'Malay trollope' in W. Somerset Maugham's story, The Four Dutchmen, Mirandi Riwoe's novella, The Fish Girl tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide.

'Told with an exquisitely restrained voice and coloured with lush description, this moving book will stay with you long after the last page.' (Publication summary)

'In a tiny book-lined office backing onto a supermarket in a small town in northern New South Wales, a woman named Acker sits smoking a cigarette and listening to the music of Philip Glass. Others come to her with their stories of violence and pain and through her writing she attempts to salvage what they have lost. A Second Life immerses the reader in a world that is both familiar and forbidding. It unfolds with horror and beauty to reveal a complicated and unforgettable portrait of a woman who moves through this world carrying secret histories, different ways of seeing, and many stories. 

'With a narrative voice that is at once eerily beautiful and slightly wild, and a premise that is surreal and ambitious, A Second Life stood out to me immediately. It's an exploration of the self and life and death, all of which comprise the psychological fabric of the main character, who occupies many selves and sometimes none at all.' (Publication summary)

'The birch is a quiet tree. It listens.

'Eight-year-old James and his family live in a beautiful house perched on the edge of a forest, within the curve of a giant glass dome. They circle each other like fish in a fishbowl. Aquila - James's philandering father and renowned artist - prepares to unveil his latest and most shocking work to the world. Suzanne, James's mother, medicates herself against a rising tide of loneliness and memory. James seeks refuge from the adult world in his drawings and dreams.

'But when James's sister, Charity, returns home, she brings with her a visitor who will shake their fragile order to its foundations.

'Atmospheric and poetic, The Bonobo's Dream is speculative fiction at its finest, probing the limits of what it means to be human in a world spun from myths and castles in the air.' (Publication summary)

'Populate and Perish is the story of Nick, a young man in Melbourne, and his sister Amira who travel to Lebanon after the death of their mother looking for their estranged father – neither is prepared for what they find.'

Source: Seizure (http://seizureonline.com/and-the-winners-are/). (Sighted: 03/03/2016)