AustLit

'1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen.

'Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.

'Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Monsters are culturally meaningful across the world. Starting from this key premise, this book tackles monsters in the context of social change. Writing in a time of violent upheaval, when technological innovation brings forth new monsters while others perish as part of the widespread extinctions that signify the Anthropocene, contributors argue that putting monsters at the center of social analysis opens up new perspectives on change and social transformation. Through a series of ethnographically grounded analyses they capture monsters that herald, drive, experience, enjoy, and suffer the transformations of the worlds they beleaguer.

'Topics examined include the evil skulking new roads in Ancient Greece, terror in post-socialist Laos's territorial cults, a horrific flying head that augurs catastrophe in the rain forest of Borneo, benign spirits that accompany people through the mist in Iceland, flesh-eating giants marching through neo-colonial central Australia, and ghosts lingering in Pacific villages in the aftermath of environmental disasters.

'By taking the proposition that monsters and the humans they haunt are intricately and intimately entangled seriously, this book offers unique, cross-cultural perspectives on how people perceive the world and their place within it. It also shows how these experiences of belonging are mediated by our relationships with the other-than-human.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An irresistible call lured Australian artists abroad between 1890 and 1914, a transitional period immediately pre- and post-federation. Travelling enabled an extension of artistic frontiers, and Paris – the centre of art – and London – the heart of the Empire – promised wondrous opportunities. These expatriate artists formed communities based on their common bond to Australia, enacting their Australian-ness in private and public settings.

'Yet, they also interacted with the broader creative community, fashioning a network of social and professional relationships. They joined ateliers in Paris such as the Académie Julian, clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club in London and visited artist colonies including St Ives in England and Étaples in France. Australian artists persistently sought a sense of belonging, negotiating their identity through activities such as plays, balls, tableaux, parties, dressing-up and, of course, the creation of art. While individual biographies are integral to this study, it is through exploring the connections between them that it offers new insights.

'Through utilising extensive archival material, much of which has limited or no publication history, this book fills a gap in existing scholarship. It offers a vital exploration re-consideration of the fluidity of identity, place and belonging in the lives and work of Australian artists in this juncture in British-Australian history.' (Publication summary)

'Maud Berridge (1845-1907) was the wife of a Master Mariner, and she travelled with him on at least five occasions (1869, 1880, 1882, 1883, 1886), sailing to Melbourne with emigrants and cargo. The first occasion was 1869 just after they were married, when Henry was Captain of the Walmer Castle, and they returned via New Zealand instead of travelling east and around Cape Horn. 
'However, most of Henry and Maud's voyages were undertaken in the three-masted clipper Superb, sailing from Gravesend at the start of summer and leaving Melbourne for home at the end of the year (the southern summer, best for heading east with the trade winds and rounding Cape Horn). Record times taken from London to Melbourne under Captain Henry were 79 days (1878), 76 days (1881) and a final time of 74 days (1886).
'In 1880, Maud and Henry took their two sons (aged six and eight) with them. In 1883, they sailed on from Melbourne to Newcastle in New South Wales to take on a load of coal, then on through the Windward Isles to San Francisco (51 days). Here they stayed for two months exploring SF and surrounds, unloaded the coal and took on a load of wheat (in large bags) at Port Costa. They then sailed down the west coast of the Americas, around Cape Horn and on to Queenstown in County Cork (134 days). The whole voyage took 14 months. There are also some photographs of Henry, Maud and the crew taken in San Francisco, and a photo from the State Library of Victoria showing the Superb at dock in Melbourne.
'Maud wrote diaries of these voyages of which one in particular, that of the 1883 voyage, comprise some 50 000 words. The book  tells Maud's story through her own words and through a number of relevant contemporary documents and paints a picture of the life of a captain's wife in the Victorian era as well as aspects of society in Britain, the US and Australia at the time. Her enthusiasm for new experiences shines through her writing.' (Publication Summary)

'Passions and intrigues abound in this epic historical novel. Kagami follows three families in 19th Century Japan, the Yamamotos and the Okuras, traditionalists dedicated to the old feudal Samurai ways, and the commercial Fukudas, eager to seize trading opportunities opened up by the arrival of Commodore Perry's force in 1853.

'The Kagami, or sacred mirror, is said to reflect the secret self of anyone who looks into it; what will it reveal of Lady Masa, the gentle aristocrat; her son, Renzo, a student at one of the mysterious Seignorial schools, once Japan's only point of contact with the outside world; the swaggering Samurai, Kenichi, and his sharp witted friend, Fukuda; free-thinking Aiko, with her quick tongue, and Osen, the beguiling courtesan?'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2017 ed.).

'Molly Blake is a woman with a gruesome secret from which she cannot escape. A secret which lies buried beneath her husband's camellias – and the fear of its discovery will drive her to madness.

'John and Molly Blake are a quiet suburban couple leading a quiet suburban life. It comes as a shock to John when their happy relationship suddenly begins to break down. Why has a certain waspishness crept into Molly's voice? Why is she withdrawing from him?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Orphaned by the holocaust that consumed Germany during World War II, Hans Herman Baum has no clue to his identity other than a battered name tag. He cannot remember either his parents or his home - his only memories are of many other faceless, homeless children who never smiled or laughed. Brought to live in New York with his great-aunt Trudy, the frightened, bewildered child that was Hans becomes Harm, the warm friendly boy who gradually grows in self-confidence within the close community of the street. But when the tragedy of his past comes back to haunt him, he must try to understand what it truly means to be a child of the holocaust.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2017 ed.)

'Frank does not know how to feel when Nick Underbridge rescues her from bullies one afternoon. No one likes Nick. He is big, he is weird and he smells - or so everyone in Frank's class thinks. And yet, there is something nice about Nick's house. There is strange music playing there, and it feels light and good and makes Frank feel happy for the first time in forever. But there is more to Nick and to his house, than meets the eye, and soon Frank realises she is not the only one keeping secrets. Or the only one who needs help. A poignant, darkly comic and deeply moving story about the power of the extraordinary, and finding friendship where you least expect it.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

'Since the controversy and acclaim that surrounded the publication of Disgrace (1999), the awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature and the publication of Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (both in 2003), J. M. Coetzee's status has begun to steadily rise to the point where he has now outgrown the specialized domain of South African literature. Today he is recognized more simply as one of the most important writers in the English language from the late 20th and early 21st century. Coetzee's productivity and invention has not slowed with old age. The Childhood of Jesus, published in 2013, like Elizabeth Costello, was met with a puzzled reception, as critics struggled to come to terms with its odd setting and structure, its seemingly flat tone, and the strange affectless interactions of its characters. Most puzzling was the central character, David, linked by the title to an idea of Jesus. J.M. Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus: The Ethics of Ideas and Things is at the forefront of an exciting process of critical engagement with this novel, which has begun to uncover its rich dialogue with philosophy, theology, mathematics, politics, and questions of meaning.' (Publication summary)

'Pummel is a farm boy who has arrived in the city of Neuhalt seeking work. But things are different in the city—if you see ghosts or believe in magic, you are guilty of the crime of disloyalty. The devious Lord Rump and his granddaughter, Duckling, need a disposable boy, and Pummel fits the bill perfectly. Lord Rump's machinations take both children into the enchanted castle of Neuhalt and before long they are entwined in a plot to kill the heir to the Faithful Throne, the Young Margrave. If they want to protect the Young Margrave, and save themselves from an awful death, Duckling and Pummel must learn to use the magic that no one else believes in.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When Jerry Grayson left the Royal Navy's Search and Rescue helicopter fleet aged 25, he was the most decorated peacetime naval pilot in history. In terms of excitement, however, civilian life lacked spice – especially when the only real demand for helicopter pilots was as glorified chauffeurs for the very wealthy.

'Jerry had a passion for the movies and carved his way into a new career. Setting out to develop radically different ways of capturing dramatic aerial footage, Jerry pushed his helicopter to guarantee the most exciting, innovative and sometimes impossible shots that top film directors demanded.

'Over the past 35 years Jerry has become the go-to man for aerial filmmaking, shooting everything from music videos, car commercials and nature documentaries to the Athens Olympic Games and the landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. But it is in Hollywood that Jerry has really made his mark. He was barely out of his 20s when he worked on the airborne finale to the James Bond film A View to a Kill, and that helped cement his reputation for the decades since.

'Film Pilot is full of entertaining behind-the-scenes stories (some that almost ended in disaster for Jerry and an A-list actor or two…) and revelatory insights into just how this invisible sector of the film business operates. We all take aerial footage for granted, without appreciating the lengths gone, and danger endured, to shoot it. This is perhaps never more apparent than when Jerry's skills are called upon to gather more important footage – the burning oilfields of Kuwait following the first Gulf War, and flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. ' (Publication summary)

'A darkly whimsical and wickedly funny tale about a twelve-year-old maid who finds herself at the very heart of a conspiracy involving mischief, ghosts, and intrigue. Just right for fans of Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman, Anyone but Ivy Pocket is the first book in a four-book series and is illustrated throughout.

'Ivy Pocket is a walking disaster, at every turn enraging and appalling the fancy aristocrats she works for. But our protagonist doesn't see herself that way at all. In fact, she's convinced she's rather wonderful, perfectly charming, and extremely talented. When Ivy finds herself abandoned and penniless in Paris, she has no idea how she will get back to England. Fate intervenes when Ivy is called to the sickbed of a dying duchess and is charged with delivering a spectacular (and possibly cursed) diamond necklace to Matilda Butterfield on her twelfth birthday. From that moment on, Ivy Pocket is propelled towards her remarkable destiny in a surprising adventure full of villains, mayhem, and misunderstandings.' (Publication summary)

'It has been six months since Tess Müller stopped speaking. Her silence is baffling to her parents, her teachers and her younger sister Meg, but the more urgent mystery for both girls is where their mother, Evangeline, goes each day, pushing an empty pram and returning home wet, muddy and dishevelled.

'Their father, Stefan, struggling with his own losses, tends to his apiary and tries to understand why his bees are disappearing. But after he discovers a car wreck and human remains on their farm, old secrets emerge to threaten the fragile family.

'One day Tess's teacher Jim encounters Evangeline by the wild Repentance River. Jim is in flight from his own troubles in Sydney, and Evangeline, raised in a mountain commune and bearing the scars of the fire that destroyed it, is a puzzle he longs to solve.

'As the rainforest trees are felled and the lakes fill with run-off from the expanding mines, Tess watches the landscape of her family undergo shifts of its own. A storm is coming and the Müllers are in its path.

'Sometimes we must confront what has been lost so that we can know the solace of being found.

'The World Without Us is a beautifully told story of secrets and survival, family and community, loss and renewal.' (Publication summary)

'Though literature and censorship have been conceived as long-time adversaries, this collection seeks to understand the degree to which they have been dialectical terms, each producing the other, coeval and mutually constitutive.

On the one hand, literary censorship has been posited as not only inescapable but definitive, even foundational to speech itself. One the other, especially after the opening of the USSR's spekstrahn, those enormous collections of literature forbidden under the Soviets, the push to redefine censorship expansively has encountered cogent criticism. Scholars describing the centralised control of East German print publication, for example, have wanted to insist on the difference of pre-publication state censorship from more mundane forms of speech regulation in democracies. Work on South African apartheid censorship and book banning in colonial countries also demonstrates censorship's formative role in the institutional structures of literature beyond the metropole. Censorship and the Limits of the Literary examines these and other developments across twelve countries, from the Enlightenment to the present day, offering case studies from the French revolution to Internet China. Is literature ever without censorship? Does censorship need the literary? In a globalizing era for culture, does censorship represent the final, failed version of national control?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Ebony and Nathaneal were in love before they were even born.… Torn apart and kept in different worlds, will they finally reunite in this exquisite conclusion to Hidden and Broken?

'Ebony was kept hidden on Earth for sixteen years, unaware that she was an angel. Unaware that her true soulmate, Nathaneal, was searching for her. Now ready to claim her rightful place with him, in a cruel twist of fate Ebony is captured and imprisoned in a version of hell.

'Knowing that Nathaneal will come for her, Ebony is determined to fight against the evil that holds her prisoner. As long as she has Nathaneal’s love, Ebony has nothing to fear. Can Nathaneal break through the gates of hell? Will these long-lost lovers finally reunite and fulfil their destiny?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.