AustLit

'I still hadn't fully absorbed the terrible possibility that I might actually be a werewolf. A werewolf. I kept stumbling over that word; it made no sense to me. How could I be a werewolf? Werewolves didn't exist.

'When Tobias Richard Vandevelde wakes up in hospital with no memory of the night before, his horrified mother tells him that he was found unconscious. At Featherdale Wildlife Park. In a dingo pen.

'He assumes that his two rambunctious best friends are somehow responsible, until he discovers that they're just as freaked out as he is. Then the mysterious Reuben turns up, claiming that Toby has a rare and dangerous "condition". Next thing he knows, Toby finds himself involved with a strange bunch of sickly insomniacs who seem convinced that he needs their help.

'It's not until he's kidnapped and imprisoned that he starts to believe them - and to understand what being a paranormal monster really means.' (From the publisher's website.)

'"If being a vampire were easy, there wouldn't have to be a Reformed Vampire Support Group."

'Nina became a vampire in 1973, when she was fifteen, and she hasn't aged a day since then. But she hasn't had any fun either, because her life is so sickly and boring.

'It becomes even worse when one of the other vampires in her therapy group is staked by a mysterious slayer. Threatened with extinction, she and her fellow vampires decide to hunt down the culprit. Trouble is, they soon find themselves up against some gun-toting werewolf traffickers who'll stop at nothing.

'Can a bunch of feeble couch potatoes win a fight like this? Or is there more to your average vampire than meets the eye?' (Publisher's blurb)

'It's a difficult thing to crave, land, especially when your body is small. And a dangerous thing, too, when you have no business being there, when it's not even where you're from.

'Alice, an unrooted child of diplomats in South America; Violet, a newlywed settling in the Australian scrub; George, a gardener fleeing the violent Clearances.

'Three generations wander a world scarred by colonialism and disturbing scientific revelations, from the unearthing of the first dinosaur bones to the discovery that the continents drift, in a hypnotic novel about our passionate, uneasy affair with nature, in which we restlessly search for home.' (Author's abstract)

'When a mysterious egg appears outside Hunwick's burrow, no one is quite certain what to think. And when it doesn't hatch right away, everyone is even more bewildered. Everyone except Hunwich, that is. Hunwick understands that the egg is his friend, and he is the only one who knows its secret.' (author's website)

'In this tantalizing tale of Victorian ghost stories and family secrets, timid, solitary librarian Gerard Freeman lives for just two things: his elusive pen pal Alice and a story he found hidden in his mother's drawer years ago. Written by his great-grandmother Viola, it hints at his mother's role in a sinister crime. As he discovers more of Viola's chilling tales, he realizes that they might hold the key to finding Alice and unveiling his family's mystery-or will they bring him the untimely death they seem to foretell?

'Harwood's astonishing, assured debut shows us just how dangerous family skeletons-and stories-can be.' (Publication summary)

'Isserley is a female driver who picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny, peering child-like over the steering wheel. Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, she hears passengers reveal who might miss them if they should disappear.' (Publication summary)