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Brandl and Schlesinger Brandl and Schlesinger i(A36992 works by) (Organisation) assertion
Born: Established: 1994 Blackheath, Blue Mountains, Sydney, New South Wales, ;
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1 y separately published work icon Time Flies Al Clark , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2021 21144468 2021 single work autobiography

'Time Flies is an idiosyncratic memoir with a distinctive voice and a sense of the absurd: a wistful, reflective, sometimes comic view of a childhood in a remote mining village in Southern Spain, the dislocating shock of a Scottish boarding school education, and a remarkable introduction to working life in London at Time Out then at Virgin, both at the peak of their maverick self-confidence. A tireless spokesman for the company, and an improbable mouthpiece for the Sex Pistols at the time of their greatest fame and vilification, he later went on to produce numerous notable films, several classics among them.'

Source : publisher's blurbl

1 y separately published work icon Love, Death, Chariot of Fire Winton Higgins , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2020 19984066 2020 single work novel historical fiction

'Reg Mitchell is a modest, decent man with a gift for designing fast aeroplanes. Two horrors seek him out – terminal illness, and Nazi Germany’s predicted invasion of his country. His response will change the course of world history.

'“Here is a splendid love story of maker for machine: an inventor’s single-minded devotion to his imperilled country, and to the fighter plane that he hopes will save it. Winton Higgins handles the origin story of the Spitfire with the surefootedness of the historian, and eloquence of the poet. His drama of creation is made all the more poignant by its backdrop of destruction: the collective destruction of war, and the personal destruction of the cancer that Mitchell attempts to outpace just long enough to get the job done.” Sarah Knox, author of the Orphan Gunner.

'“If you love aeroplanes – and even if you don’t – this book is a must. There is a saying among pilots ‘if it looks good it will fly well’ and there can be no better example than the Supermarine Spitfire, the graceful and deadly British superhero of World War II. The Spitfire evolved into a fighter plane that could out-climb, out-run, out-turn and out-fight anything in the sky. Pilots didn’t like the Spitfire, they loved it. Winton Higgins has written a fluent and brilliantly researched story of the Spitfire’s designer Reg Mitchell, and the creation of a unique classic aircraft. Spellbinding!” Peter Grose, author of A Good Place to Hide.'

1 1 y separately published work icon Mother Tongue Joyce Kornblatt , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2020 19983994 2020 single work novel

'Joyce Kornblatt’s novel, Mother Tongue, begins with a shocking discovery.  In a powerful fiction that reads like a true story, the details of the crime and its aftermath unfold. 

'In mid-life, Australian fiction-writer Nella Pine learns that she was kidnapped as an infant from a hospital in the United States, taken to Australia and raised there by the woman she knew as her mother, but who was actually her abductor.  “When I was three days old, a nurse named Ruth Miller stole me from the obstetrics ward in Mercy Hospital and raised me as her own. This was May 7, 1968, in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania.”

'In four compelling voices, the mystery of Nella’s kidnapping—why was she taken?  how was the secret kept for so long?  who is the family from which she was stolen?—emerges.  

'Mother Tongue invites the reader to participate with these memorable characters as they unfold the impact on them of a terrible crime.  We learn how they have been scarred and strengthened. And we see how history—the Holocaust, Australian adoption policy, the flight of refugees to safety– continues to reverberate through the generations.'

Source: publisher's blurb

1 1 y separately published work icon The Glebe Point Road Blues : Prose and Verse Vrasidas Karalis , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2020 18434913 2020 selected work poetry short story

'The collection of stories is the imaginative recreation of the experience of living on Glebe Point Road, in Sydney for over thirty years. Through the encounters of the unidentified writer with actual individuals, the author evokes unsuspected episodes and quirky moments from the lives of countless ordinary or sometimes extraordinary people.

'The book is structured around such fleeting snapshots depicting moments of compassion, despair, love, as well as death, evil and despair.

'The narrative is in both prose and poetry as ‘the two zones of being’ are fused: the everyday and the common leads to the transcendental and the outlandish.

'The book transforms Glebe Point Road into a universal landscape of fall, transfiguration and redemption, in which a respectable professor from Sydney University, a larrikin book-seller, a Belgian coffee maker, a British back-packer, a Greek expatriate, an eminent religious leader, a Vietnam veteran, a suicidal poet, a religious trans-sexual, an Iraqi-Jewish doctor, a failed politician, a child of the stolen generation, a visionary museum-curator, a window-cleaner, a renegade scholar, a self-indulgent young poet, a ferocious old Nazi, a lonely British woman, an unrepented Catholic mother, a New Zealand bushido fighter, an artist, his wife, a transgender assassin, a dying poet, a Chinese dry-cleaner and many more wrestle simultaneously with their angels and demons and are all defeated. Out of the actualities of their life, the writer wants to extract the myths that all these characters unconsciously embody. The Road itself takes active part in their existence. Finally, they all ‘get the blues’ a cosmic melancholy which the poems in the book, a hybrid genre of psalms and odes, desire to articulate.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 2 y separately published work icon A Lasting Conversation : Stories on Ageing Susan Ogle (editor), Melanie Joosten (editor), Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2020 18434853 2020 anthology short story prose

'A Lasting Conversation: Stories on Ageing explores many aspects of ageing including resilience and defeat, satisfaction and regret, excitement and fear, love, loss and laughter. These stories are written from various perspectives, including older women and men, their daughters and sons, grandchildren and observers. They present a fascinating picture of what it is to grow old as an Australian. Each story is infused with acute observations and wry humour.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 4 y separately published work icon The Grass Library David Brooks , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2019 14800223 2019 single work autobiography

'The Grass Library is a philosophical and poetic journey that recounts the author’s relationship with his four sheep and other animals in his home in the Blue Mountains. It is both a memoir and an elegy for animal rights.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon The Budapest Job Alice Spigelman , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2018 14800567 2018 single work novel thriller

'The Budapest Job by Alice Spigelman is a fast-paced thriller that builds to a dramatic revelation. A young architect arrives in Budapest in 1989 on a project, the year Communism is collapsing. He becomes embroiled in a secret police operation amidst the political turmoil of the times as he tries to track down the person who murdered his father in 1953 during the Stalinist years.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Skywriting : Making Radio Waves Robyn Ravlich , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2018 14800435 2018 single work autobiography

'Skywriting – making radio waves is at once the captivating story of contemporary Australian cultural life and a personal biography of an acclaimed ‘radio poet’,whose signature radio features and documentaries on ABC RN have creatively conveyed ideas, personalities, and places.Timely and revelatory, it draws on the experiential riches of life in radio times from the youthful foment that rocked ABC airwaves in the 1970s until the advent of podcasting. Skywriting ventures beyond the institution and invisible theatre of radio to enchant the mind’s ear of readers with evocative portrayals and luminous portraits: chalking ‘Eternity’ on the midnight streets with artist Martin Sharp; examining the afterlife of poet Vicki Viidikas and photographer Carol Jerrems, artistic bright sparks of the author’s generation; to name just a few. It’s a love letter to the radio feature, a unique form of storytelling that has explored and contributed to shaping our culture, and whose story has not been told until now. Links are provided to downloadable companion audio.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Selected Poems : Julian Tuwim Julian Tuwim , Marcel Weyland (translator), Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2018 12290334 2018 selected work poetry

'Marcel Weyland's new translations in this anthology of Tuwim's poetry are a triumph of a kindred spirit who shares with the Poet his sense of semantic experiment and emotional adventure rarely seen in the world of poetry. Mr Weyland managed yet again. Through his exceptional gift of poetic empathy and intuition, he managed to put another Polish poet into global circulation, claiming for Julian Tuwim his rightful place in the Pantheon of world literature.' (Publication Summary)

1 14 y separately published work icon Yarn Spinners : A Story in Letters : Dymphna Cusack, Florence James, Miles Franklin Dymphna Cusack , Miles Franklin , Florence James , Marilla North (editor), Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2017 Z899867 2001 anthology correspondence biography From the correspondence between Cusack, James and Franklin across the years 1928 to the death of Franklin in 1954, Yarn Spinners: A Story in Letters has been shaped by a process of selection, editing, weaving and providing narrative links in order to develop a continuous narrative of the friendship, collaborations and inter-related lives of these three Australian women writers. The Prologue gives a biographical overview of each of their lives. Each of the five narrative Parts is briefly prefaced with its socio-historical context.

Part I:1928-1935 sets up the Cusack-James relationship as they write to each other as young women graduates: Cusack is teaching in remote rural NSW schools whilst James does the Grand Tour of Europe, finally settling down in London where she marries in 1933.

Part II :1938-39 establishes the friendship of Cusack and Franklin which develops during their collaboration on the scandalous sesqui-centennial satire Pioneers on Parade. In Part III:1945-47, Cusack and James, both burnt out at the end of WWII, set up a writing retreat in the Blue Mountains and collaborate on their prizewinning bestseller expose of wartime Sydney, Come In Spinner.

In Part IV: 1947-49, James returns to London and Cusack follows through the revisions demanded by the Daily Telegraph before they will award the thousand pounds prize money. Cusack is also researching her "tuberculosis novel" Say No To Death. All That Swagger is published by Angus & Robertson whilst Franklin endures her nephew's war neurosis and makes her final Will, providing for an annual [Miles] Franklin Award. In mid-1949 Cusack leaves for Europe.

In Part V:1950-55 the Cusack-Franklin-James friendships are now essentially carried through their correspondence; Come In Spinner is published to press acclaim in London, with Cusack's Say No To Death, Southern Steel and Caddie following in quick succession. Angus & Robertson finally began publishing the "Brent of Bin Bin" series. James, now divorced, rearing two daughters, begins work with London publisher Constable & Co as a reader and talent scout for Australian writers. Franklin and Cusack's friendship provides the emotional fulcrum for this final Part.

The Chronology (1879-2001) provides the facts of the lives and works; the Biographical Notes provide an inventory of most of the cast of characters who appear in the letters.

1 1 y separately published work icon The Baker's Alchemy John Stephenson , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2017 9910943 2017 single work novel historical fiction fantasy

'It’s Spring, 1870. The kindly Polish baker and widower, Ignacy Wadowski, cannot get his new young wife Jadwiga to make love with him. Ignacy asks a friendly Jewish healer who lives in the forest, for something to make him more attractive, but unexpectedly gets a potion that, while its effect lasts, makes him young again. Now courting Jadwiga as the youthful stranger Adalbert, Ignacy wins her love. The key moral dilemma is, while Ignacy is now enjoying his lawful wife, she’s enjoying a man she thinks isn’t her husband. Can one of them sin and the other not? The scheme begins to unravel when village gossip arises with sympathy for Ignacy - who’s being cuckolded by himself. The novel becomes an allegory, not just of all marriage and its difficulties, but of the expansion of consciousness available to a humble man, taking him into unsuspected realms of history, literature, national destiny and moral confrontation.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Come in Dymphna : The Life and Loves of Dymphna Cusack Marilla North , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2017 9834058 2017 single work biography
1 4 y separately published work icon Loving Words : Letters of Nettie and Vance Palmer, 1909 - 1914 Nettie Palmer , Vance Palmer , Deborah Jordan (editor), Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2017 9831814 2017 single work correspondence

"These letters provide a remarkable, bird's eye view of the friendship, courtship and love of two `colonial intellectuals' played out in Melbourne, London and Brisbane. Their deep interest in knowledge, ideas and culture shapes their growing commitment to each other - their letters bring a relationship to life and capture a time. The tentative and increasingly passionate youthful correspondence sets the scene and tone for a life-time of collaboration and activism. Reading these moving and tender letters is a timely reminder of the enduring nature of love, the value of partnership, and the importance of engaging with the world." Professor Julianne Schultz, editor of Griffith Review

"The great originality of Deborah Jordan's collection of Vance and Nettie Palmer's love letters is that it shows us not just the private life-the desire, the love, the searching for self-behind the public life of two of Australia's most significant literary figures but the private in the public life and the public in the private life, revealing how their private and public selves were intimately entangled." David Carter, Professor of Australian Literature and Cultural History, University of Queensland

"The Palmers were prolific letter writers and their observations on the people around them, their social and cultural circumstances and the natural world make for rich reading. We are privy to the emotional, intellectual, political and spiritual development of one of the most significant partner - ships in Australian literary history, that of Janet (Nettie) Higgins and Vance Palmer." Elaine Lindsay, author of Rewriting God: Spirituality in Contemporary Australian Women's Fiction

1 y separately published work icon Palindrome Nikos Athanasou , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2016 9911188 2016 single work novel crime thriller

'Anna Taylor is found with her throat cut at a high-stakes research laboratory where results are driven by ambition and greed. Adam Gabriel, an Oxford pathology professor, uses his diagnostic and forensic skills to determine how the murder was committed and at the same time reveals the none too virtuous world of modern Oxford "town and gown" where murder is not just possible but almost inevitable. Palindrome is a cerebral detective novel which focuses on a forensic crime.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Rule of Law Winton Higgins , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2016 9911094 2016 single work novel historical fiction

'This novel follows four participants with contrasting backgrounds through the nerve-racking first Nuremberg trial (1945-6) and the turbulence of the war-damaged, polyglot ‘trial community’ thrown together and dumped into a small, bombed-out city.

'One participant is a defendant and former Nazi top propagandist fighting for his life. The other three – a Jewish German-American prosecution interpreter, a British judge, and a German woman (one of the tribunal’s pioneering simultaneous interpreters) – play active roles in the trial and come to identify with its breathtaking ambition to set a judicial precedent that will deprive perpetrators everywhere of their impunity, in aid of a new world where human rights hold sway. Katerina, the simultaneous interpreter, is newly married to an Australian member of the British prosecution, but is also struggling to restore the decency and honour of her own nation after its profound corruption during the Nazi era. All four work in the daily glare of global press and radio attention. Their encounter discloses the trial’s long-term legacy in the development of an international rule of law.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon The Boy on the Tricycle Marcel Weyland , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2016 9621058 2016 single work autobiography

'The Boy on the Tricycle - Marcel Weyland's extraordinary story, describes the three shapers of his life: a beautiful woman, their witch's castle home and a national epic poem; his life in three continents and his three professions - architecture, law and his multi-award winning English translations of Polish poetry. He describes how he survived World War Two as one of the refugees saved by the Japanese Diplomat, Chiune Sugihara. The memoir is also the tale of a long-lasting love affair which transcended differences of nationality and religion. The culture and history against which this story is played out are dominant themes of the memoir, including vignettes of prewar eastern Europe, pre-war Japan and wartime China, and the post-war innocence of Sydney. Generously illustrated.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Derrida's Breakfast : Poetry, Philosophy, the Animal David Brooks , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2016 9263253 2016 selected work essay criticism

'Four essays, three on the philosopher Jacques Derrida, whose writings have so influenced our time (one on his breakfast, one on his cat, one on his relationship with a snake, and one (on the killing of doves) on the great early twentieth century poet Rilke – each of them examining key failures and challenges in the relationship of poetry, philosophy and ‘the animal’, and each entertaining, absorbing, and thought-provoking well beyond its given subject. A book that crosses with apparent ease the boundaries of philosophy, literary criticism (there are passages on Coleridge, on D.H. Lawrence, on Henry Lawson) and human-animal relations, by a writer recently described as ‘one of the most skillful, unusual and versatile of Australian writers’ (Sydney Morning Herald, January 2016).' (Publication summary)

1 5 y separately published work icon Idle Talk : Letters 1960-1964 Gwen Harwood , Alison Hoddinott (editor), Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2015 9078116 2015 single work correspondence

'Idle Talk - Gwen Harwood Letters 1960-1964. This volume edited and with invaluable notes by Alison Hoddinott, comprises Gwen Harwood's fascinating, unexpurgated letters to Alison and Bill Hoddinott, during four crucial years from 1960-1964, a period which can be described as Harwood's creative floreat. They are also years in which her life-long relationships with A.D. Hope, James McAuley and Vincent Buckley begin, her friendships with Vivian and Sybille Smith and others consolidate, and in which Harwood was briefly notorious for her scandalous Bulletin acrostics and her confounding publication under several male pseudonyms.

'Approximately 10% of these letters have appeared already, in A Steady Storm of Correspondence (2001), but here we not only have the unedited versions, revealing even more than that volume, the complex and not always kind and tactful personality of Harwood (who more than once urges the Hoddinotts to 'burn these letters'), but numerous others which it might have been felt unwise to publish earlier, and from which not everyone - even Harwood herself - emerges unscathed. The collection is rich in insights not only into Harwood's mind, working methods, and circle, but also into the literary politics of one of the key periods in modern Australian poetry.' (Publication summary)

1 3 y separately published work icon Falling and Flying : Poems on Ageing Judith Beveridge (editor), Susan Ogle (editor), Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2015 8829655 2015 anthology poetry

'Falling and Flying: Poems of Ageing is the first collection of its kind to be published in Australia. The editors have selected a broad range of Australian poems which explore the universal experience and effects of ageing. Whether the poets are witnessing themselves or their parents and friends succumb to the years, they speak with great precision and insight into illness, frailty, death, loss, grief, and retirement as well as the joys and the wisdom that late maturity can bring. There is humour as well as sadness in this fine and important collection, which includes the work of some of Australia’s best loved poets, a volume to be cherished by readers of any age.' (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon The Aunt's Mirrors : Family Experience and Meaningfulness : A Memoir Damien Freeman , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2014 7969026 2014 single work autobiography

'On the top shelf in his aunt's dressing room, Damien Freeman discovered a collection of family memorabilia that told a story he had always assumed to be perfectly unexceptional. The Aunt's Mirrors reveals an unexpected story of how an immigrant family from Poland made a new life - whilst continuing an old one - in 19th century Beechworth, Grafton, Rylstone and Sydney through the shared sense of meaningfulness that permeated the lives of seven generations of this Australian Jewish family. ' (Publication summary)

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