AustLit

The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.

These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.

'Somebody out there is determined to bring Marni down, or drive her insane. There has already been one brutal death, close enough to make her feel the net tightening. Marni is driven by desire to protect her son. Can Jake Murphy, ex-seminarian, now cop in charge of the case, remove the terror?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Broome is a small, sun-drenched town on the barren northwest coast of Australia. It's small enough that everyone knows everyone else's business. How, then, did someone murder two widows in similar fashion and not leave any clues? It's a case for Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, who arrives on the scene incognito. He's barely begun his investigation when a third woman is killed. Bony realises that he is dealing with a madman, and that time is running out to stop a forth murder.'(Publication summary)

'An Inspector Bonaparte Mystery featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective. Why had Luke Marks driven specially out to Windee? Had he been murdered or had he,as the local police believed, wandered away from his car and been overwhelmed in a dust-storm? When Bony noticed something odd in the background of a police photograph, he begins to piece together the secrets of the sands of Windee. Here is the original background to the infamous Snowy Rowles murder trial.'

'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 naked body of a man is discovered entombed in the wall of the Split Point Lighthouse on Australia's southeast coast; the murder is two months old, and the identity of the victim is unknown. Of Split Point's suspicious inhabitants, only Ed Penwarden, the coffin-maker, befriends Bony upon his arrival. As he delves into the case, Bony is curious to know why a coffin is moved in the night, who was the girl seen struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff top--and why the Bully Buccaneers came to deal in death.' (Publication summary)

'On a vast sheep station in the outback, Raymond Gillen goes swimming in the lake one night and is never seen again. After the failure of local police to solve the mystery, bony arrives disguised as a horse-breaker, and uncovers a story of sexual tension and murder. The lake is evaporating in the intense drought - only when it dies will the mystery be solved. Apart from its strengths as a crime novel, this is probably the best book ever written about drought in Australia.' (Publication summary) 

'Merino is an isolated town in New South Wales. Posing as a laborer, Bony goes there to investigate the murder of a vagrant and soon discovers a murderous tangle of motives and suspects. There are some very engaging characters and some excellent trakcing scenes leading to a suspenseful finish.'(Publication summary)

Tells the simple story of a wombat's attempt to escape an approaching bushfire.

'I’m only telling you this to let you know what a silly thing it is to live like I do. What it was, I got sacked from my seventeenth job for fighting or gambling—I don’t know which—and because I was hardly ever there. I was gambling all right, but someone called me a cheat and swung at me, I moved my head and swung back and this kid went in to one of the bosses with blood coming out of his mouth saying I was a standover man.

'The Chantic Bird is the confession of a teenage anarchist, who combines a contempt for contemporary society with a great tenderness and warmth for his younger siblings and for Bee, the girl who looks after them.

'The first of David Ireland’s masterful novels, The Chantic Bird contains the same characteristic indictment of the bovine mindlessness of collective humanity, and the home-owning wage slaves.

‘It has been my aim to take apart, then build up piece by piece, this mosaic of one kind of human life…to remind my present age of its industrial adolescence.’ David Ireland

'This edition of The Chantic Bird comes with a new introduction by Geordie Williamson.' (Text Classic summary)