AustLit

'From Australia's most exciting and original crime writer comes another electrifying thriller, set in Los Angeles, introducing a new – and decidedly unconventional – team of 'detectives'.

'A convicted killer. A gifted thief. A vicious crime boss. A disillusioned cop.
Together they’re a missing girl's only hope.

'Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected surgeon in Los Angeles, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean to win back custody of her son.

'But when her former cellmate, Sneak Lawlor, begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Joined by LA’s most feared underworld figure, Ada Maverick, the crew of criminals bring outlaw tactics to the search for Dayly.

'Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a $7 million mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one.

'It’s been ten years since Jessica arrested Blair for the cold-blooded murder of her neighbour. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor and her friends early one morning she expects abuse, maybe even violence.

'What comes instead is a plea for help.' (Publication summary)

'Andy and Terry's amazing treehouse has 13 new levels including a chocolate waterfall, a non-erupting active volcano, an opera house, a baby-dinosaur petting zoo, Andy and Terry's Believe it or Else! museum, a not-very-merry merry-go-round, a boxing elephant called the Trunkinator, an X-Ray room, a disco with light-up dance floor, the world's scariest roller-coaster and a top secret 39th level that hasn't even been finished yet! Well, what are you waiting for? Come on up!' (Publisher's blurb)

'Step inside. Don’t look back. Forward is the only way. His Dark Materials meets Mad Max in this unforgettable blockbuster adventure about the world between worlds.

'When a fierce quake strikes the remote island of Bluehaven, and her father disappears, Jane Doe is thrown headfirst into an epic quest to bring him home. 

'But this ain’t no ordinary rescue mission. Her father is lost in a place between worlds; a dangerous labyrinth of shifting rooms, infernal booby traps and secret gateways. And Jane has to find him fast, because someone else is searching for him, too. A man who knows her father’s secrets. A man who has an army. 

'With a pyromaniac named Violet and a trickster named Hickory by her side, Jane is about to discover that this adventure is even bigger on the inside than it looks...'  

Source: Publication summary.

'What does it take to become a hero?

'Albert has escaped from the Adelaide Zoo to go in search of the "old Australia", somewhere in the desert, north of Adelaide, a "Promised Land" that he's heard so much about from other animals. Unusually, Albert is a duck-billed platypus.

'Four days north of Alice Springs and carrying nothing other than an old, almost empty soft-drink bottle, Albert has no idea where he's going. One thing he does know, though, if he doesn't find water fast, he's going to be in all sorts of trouble. But when all seems lost, he comes across a wombat by a campfire who offers him a cup of tea.

'And so begins Albert's adventures, during which he meets two drunk, wise-cracking bandicoots (Roger and Alvin), a wrestling Tasmanian Devil (called Muldoon), escapes from a burning hotel (set alight by his good friend the pyromaniac wombat Jack) after a very lucky streak at two-up, and runs for his life from the dingoes.

'Charming, funny and entrancing, Albert of Adelaide is a novel of mateship, adventure and honour.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Stephen Villani is the acting head of the Victoria Police homicide squad. But his first months on the job have not gone well: two Aboriginal teenagers shot dead in a botched operation he authorised in the provincial city of Cromarty; and, no progress on the killing of a man in front of his daughter outside a private girls' school.

Now five men are found dead in horrifying circumstances on the outskirts of the city. Villani's superiors and the media are baying for arrests. To add to his woes, some of the country's richest people are alarmed by the baffling killing of a young woman in the high-security tower where they live.

Villani, a man who has built his life around his work, begins to find the certainties of both crumbling. As the pressure mounts, he finds that he must contemplate things formerly unthinkable. Truth is a novel about murder, corruption, family, friends, honour, honesty, deceit, love, betrayal and truth.' (from Quercus website)

'In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Here, Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks imagines that Caleb was befriended by Bethia Mayfield, whose minister father wants to convert the neighboring Wampanoag and makes educating Caleb one of his goals. Bethia, herself desperate for book learning, ends up as an indentured servant in Cambridge, watching Caleb bridge two cultures.'

Source: Readings website, www.readings.com.au
Sighted: 10/01/2011

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)