AustLit

'It could almost have been their own country: these sections with the gums briefly framed like a traditional oil painting by the slowly passing window. The colours were as brown and parched; that chaff-coloured grass, Ah, this dun-coloured realism. Any minute now the cry of the crow or a cockatoo; but no.

'Thirteen men and women travel the world on a package tour but wherever they go nothing is as it seems.

'Challenged by the unexpected, by differences and subtleties, Bail’s tourists are in turn repelled and attracted—and all are altered.' (Publication summary)

'As a young and outspoken priest, Luca Rossini was brutally tortured in an Argentine military prison, and then nursed back to health by the beautiful Isabel.

'Exiled to Rome to avoid scandal, Rossini becomes a cardinal and the pope's confidante. He is admired and feared by his colleagues, for he understands the Church, speak frankly and knows how to present his ancient faith to the media. When the pope becomes gravely ill and a successor must be chosen, Rossini takes a central role.

'In the midst of the political intrigue that surrounds the selection of a new pope, Isabel arrives in Rome—along with Rossini's daughter. Suddenly, Rossini must confront painful memories of Argentina and the scandalous passion of his long-suspended love affair.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'High in the Rockies a mysterious disease breaks out threatening the world's forests.

'Matthew Dilke and his miniaturized agents - including the delectable Hyacinth - are sent to investigate. And in the branches of a soaring pine they find their enemy - and face the awesome power of the warrior ants he controls.'

Source: Goodreads.

'This is a tale of corruption stretching from street corner SP bookmaking to the most influential men in the land - and the terrible personal cost of the power such corruption brings. John West rose from a Melbourne slum to dominate Australian politics with bribery, brutality and fear. His attractive wife and their children turned away from him in horror. Friends dropped away. At the peak of his power, surrounded by bootlickers, West faced a hate-filled nation - and the terrible loneliness of his life. Was John West a real figure? For months during the post-war years, an Australian court heard evidence in a sensational libel action brought by businessman John Wren's wife. After a national uproar which rocked the very foundations of the Commonwealth, Frank Hardy was acquitted. This is the novel which provoked such intense uproar and debate across the nation. The questions it poses remain unanswered…' (Publication summary)

'The garden was seven miles long. A puddle was a lake... a shower of rain a flood. Flowers were giant trees. Ants, centipedes, wasps were deadly predators.

'Matthew Dilke and his platoon were less than a quarter of an inch high, pioneers in a daring experiment to solve the problem that could destroy humanity.

'Then came the summons - and Dilke was sent on a mission... to the heart of Eastern Europe.'

Source: Goodreads.

'Bates devoted more than 35 years of her life to studying Aboriginal life, history, culture, rites, beliefs and customs. Living in a tent in small settlements from Western Australia to the edges of the Nullarbor Plain. She researched and wrote millions of words on the subject.'

'She also worked tirelessly for Aboriginal welfare, setting up camps to feed, clothe and nurse the transient population, drawing on her own income and inheritance to meet the needs of the aged. In spite of her fascination with their way of life, Bates was convinced that the Australian Aborigines were a dying race and that her mission was to record as much as she could about them before they disappeared...' (Source: GoodReads website)

'A CHAOTICALLY disassembled Sunbeam Talbot on a garage floor; a movie that is a great idea but has no cast, script or backers; and a design that nobody has ever thought of but will make a million.

'These, together with a belief that he is destined to be a millionaire as soon as some thing turns up, a hatred of his home country Australia, a beautiful wife, and weird friends are the public and private parts of Charlie Hope's mind. They are chronicled by his compatriot and friend, Nathan Fine, who is a starving novelist without a novel, a refugee from a brothel in Tangiers and the man who watches as Charlie's hopes are slowly but cruelly wrenched from his pudgy fingers as a disbelieving bettor watches his horse turn a graceful but final somersault on the last hurdle and him leading by the price of happiness. Charlie, who is going to lick the system hollow, who is going to walk out of the jungle and by George, be rich, who is the distant Australian cousin of Willy Loman, who escapes to the colony like Micawber before the shaking edifice of his fantasies descends on his uncomprehending head with the wrath of slumbering dogs, whose ego pirouettes in the vacuum of his happiness, is a failure.'

Source:

McPherson, Bruce. 'The London Jungle', Canberra Times, 11 January 1969, p.10.