AustLit

'By the firelight, a mysterious storyteller weaves a captivating tale of sea journeys, vampire women, and Aboriginal Dreaming. Around the campfire the gold diggers listen and journey with George as he plunges underground to rescue his ship's captain from the horrific and mesmerising vampire woman.

Jangamuttuk, the Master of the Ghost Dreaming, sends his son, George, to rescue Wadawaka from the ghost vampire woman who has taken him as her Dark Lord and imprisoned him in her underground kingdom. Will George, in either his human form or as his Dreaming animal-self Dingo, be able to withstand Amelia's powers; will he survive the underground caverns; can he tear Wadawaka and himself from the violent but seductive power of the vampire woman? And who is the strange but familiar ghost woman accompanying the new colonial governor?' (www.qbd.com.au).

'A daring and thrilling journey into a fantastic world of shamans, vampires and werebears, where Aboriginal Dreaming and Gothic horror are woven together to create a powerful and seamless narrative' (www.goodreads.com), a schooner of Aborigines fleeing colonial Tasmania encounter a vampire who haunts their flight, and infects several of their number (Jason Nahrung, 'Vampires in the Sunburnt Country,' 2007, p.56).

'To observe a ridge of sandhills was to wonder what lay beyond them ... Perhaps it was the sense of freedom, both physically and spiritually, the knowledge that should I want to look beyond the sandhills and peer beyond the mirage, there was nothing but my two legs and a water bag to prevent me ...
As thousands did before me, and as men are still doing in these days, I asked for my check instead of orders one bright morning in May, and a week later an eager young man pushed a loaded bicycle out of Wilcannia.

'Arthur Upfield's autobiography was written in 1937 but put aside during the intervening years of the Second World War. Now available for the first time, here is Upfield's own story of tramping Australia and developing his great crime novels featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective, alongside real desert characters like One-Spur Dick, Mr Pluto, Dead March Harry and the evil Snowy Rowles . Illustrated with photographs from Upfield's archive.' (Publication summary)

'Jack Anderson was a big man with a foul temper, a sadist and a drunk. Five months after his horse appeared riderless, no trace of the man has surfaced and no one seems to care. But Bony is determined to follow the cold trail and smoke out some answers.' (Publication summary)

'The young Wooreddy recognised the omen immediately, accidentally stepping on it while bounding along the beach: something slimy, something eerily cold and not from the earth. Since it had come from the sea, it was an evil omen.

Soon after, many people died mysteriously, others disappeared without a trace, and once-friendly families became bitter enemies. The islanders muttered, 'It's the times', but Wooreddy alone knew more: the world was coming to an end.

In Mudrooroo's unforgettable novel, considered by many to be his masterpiece, the author evokes with fullest irony the bewilderment and frailty of the last native Tasmanians, as they come face to face with the clumsy but inexorable power of their white destroyers. ...' (Source: Goodreads website)

'James Moody of the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion found an Egyptian dog in 1940, who became Horrie, the Battalions mascot. He wrote it first as a simple tale, augmented by his own photographs of Horrie and his mates in action in Greece, Crete and Palestine. This was sent to Ion Idriess, who developed the book with a series of questions, to finally develop the classic tale of man's best friend: Horrie the Wog Dog (ETT Imprint 2017). Published here for the first time is Moodys original tale, and extended response to Idriess' questions, which gives a much stronger picture of members of the Battalion itself, the Rebels, written and lived in than Australian larrikin manner. Introduced by Tom Thompson, it also includes many pictures of Horrie in action, never before published.' (Publication summary)

'Martin Flanagan, journalist at the Age, has often written of the great Wonders of Australian Sport, his love of the AFL, of the importance of Aboriginal players in the highest echelons of Australian sport. A few years ago he threw himself at the mysterious and distressed figure of Tom Wills - our early Colonial cricket celebrity, who put together the Aboriginal Cricket Team set for Great Britain in 1868 - and helped write the original Code for Australian Rules. A hero for several original clubs - Melbourne, Collingwood and Richmond for example. Yet things fall apart, as things have often done for our sporting stars...

'So Flanagan went deeper: "I dared myself to actually picture Tom Wills in the various situations I knew him to have been in during his life and backed my fancy. It was like entering a creative delirium. Pictures appeared before me which I wrote down in scenes. If I do the same thing in ten years' time, I may come up with a different story but I doubt that will happen. I doubt the energy that accompanied the writing of this treatment will ever return."

'And so we have his TOM WILLS PICTURE SHOW, shedding light on a most complex character... ' (Publication summary)

'In 1940, a seventeen year old girl Carys Harding Browne comes of age in Adelaide, Australia. At this time young clever men meet together at St Mark's University College to share their love of poetry. By December 1940, St Mark's is leased to the Royal Australian Airforce as an embarkation depot. The Second World War is in earnest. This story is about young people growing up and falling in love against the backdrop of war where dances, friendship and the arts become a consolation in a fragile and uncertain time. It is, above all, the diary of a young girl finding herself amidst the impact of war.' (Publication summary)
 

'In Egypt, in Gallipoli and in France, they are many who sleep beneath a small wooden cross and each cross will testify to people over there that we from downunder knew how to fight for a noble idea.

'In this WW1 novel, published in English for the first time, Jim and Dick are two lively boys from the bush, along with 20,000 other Australians and New Zealanders, who embarked on what seemed to be a great adventure when they enlisted in the 1st AIF - to fight for 'King and Empire'. Their experience is cut short when both are seriously wounded on the Gallipoli peninsula. They find themselves in beds next to each other on a hospital ship headed for England. As they slowly recover, they discover the 'old country' of their ancestors. Unfortunately, they fall for the same young English nurse and a love triangle emerges to trouble their futures.

'French/Australian author Paul Wenz based his novel and short stories on personal experience as an immigrant grazier in central NSW and working for the Red Cross in France and London during World War I. The writing is simple, at times poetic and humorous, instinctively seductive, devoid of convention and banality.' (Publication summary)

'Brien Cole has the rare ability in a prose writer of handling flamboyant metaphors with credible panache, and rhythm avoiding the ponderous... We experience the casual interchange between fantasy and reality that distinguishes the best of Peter Carey's work - the insinuating reasonableness of the fable rather than simply gawking at the bizarre. Brien Cole's characters are impossible to place socially - blue collar fringe dwellers, bourgeois drop-outs... They communicate only haphazardly with their fellows, yet feel betrayed by nature. A fascinating collection both of characters and of stories.' (Publication summary)