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.

'A moving and heartfelt meditation on life and death, from a celebrated Australian author.

'Cory Taylor's debut novel, Me and Mr Booker, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and her second, My Beautiful Enemy, was shortlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Award. Her latest and final work is in response to her being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

'Controversy and debate surrounding assisted dying continues to escalate, and at the most difficult time in her life Cory has chosen to her add her voice.

'Dying: A Memoir, while beautifully written, doesn't pull any punches when it comes to examining our personal rights in death. Cory begins the book by explaining that she has bought life-ending drugs online from China—she doesn't blanch from the issues around assisted dying.

'Cory's extraordinary and provocative book details her intense love for her family, her joys and regrets, her rage at a life cut short and her personal views on how to have a 'good death'.

'Throughout the book, Cory's wit, compassion and sparkling intelligence shine through, making this one of the great reading experiences of the year.' (Publication summary)

'Blueberry is a heart-warming debut novel about starting over, as a little blueberry orchard in the hills offers one woman the chance to change her life forever . . .

'Greer O’Reilly needs to start over. Her professional success belies private sadness and domestic overload. She’s torn between her career and motherhood. Her partner of twelve years has left her. And up ahead is her new home - a beautiful though neglected blueberry orchard in the hills of north-east Victoria.

'But when she and her six-year-old daughter Sophie arrive at the property to take possession, there’s an unforeseen complication - the former owner, 81-year-old artist and jazz lover Charlie Chandler, refuses to move out. Charlie is dying and desperate to spend his last days in his old home.

'With Greer at the beginning of her new life, and Charlie at the end of his, the unlikely pair soon form a close bond. One that will offer the strength and inspiration Greer needs – because the next twelve months will either make or break her . . . ' (Publication summary)

'This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. In his earlier, award-winning novels, Dominic Smith demonstrated a gift for coaxing the past to life. Now, in The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, he deftly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth.

'In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain–a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present.' (Publication summary)

'A heart-warming debut about finding out what love and life is all about.

'At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn't to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too.

'Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers. Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street.

'Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different.

'Three lost people needing to be found. But they don't know it yet. Millie, Agatha and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about.' (Publication summary)

'"Let me burst your city bubble for you. This is the Pilbara. And it's the Pilbara that makes the rules . . ."

'Lena Todd is a city girl who thrives on cocktails and cappuccinos. So when her boss announces he's sending her to the outback to join a construction team, her world is turned upside down.

'Lena's new accommodation will be an aluminium box called a dongar.

'Her new social network: 350 men.

'Her daily foot attire: steel-capped boots.

'Unfortunately, Lena can't refuse. Mistakes of the past are choking her confidence. She needs to do something to right those wrongs and prove herself. Going into a remote community might just be the place to do that, if only tall, dark and obnoxious Dan didn't seem so determined to stand in her way ...' (From the publisher's website.)

'What does it take to become a hero?

'Albert has escaped from the Adelaide Zoo to go in search of the "old Australia", somewhere in the desert, north of Adelaide, a "Promised Land" that he's heard so much about from other animals. Unusually, Albert is a duck-billed platypus.

'Four days north of Alice Springs and carrying nothing other than an old, almost empty soft-drink bottle, Albert has no idea where he's going. One thing he does know, though, if he doesn't find water fast, he's going to be in all sorts of trouble. But when all seems lost, he comes across a wombat by a campfire who offers him a cup of tea.

'And so begins Albert's adventures, during which he meets two drunk, wise-cracking bandicoots (Roger and Alvin), a wrestling Tasmanian Devil (called Muldoon), escapes from a burning hotel (set alight by his good friend the pyromaniac wombat Jack) after a very lucky streak at two-up, and runs for his life from the dingoes.

'Charming, funny and entrancing, Albert of Adelaide is a novel of mateship, adventure and honour.' (From the publisher's website.)

'It is America's most secret base, hidden deep in the Utah desert, an Air Force installation known only as Area 7. And today it has a visitor: the President of the United States. He has come to inspect Area 7, to examine its secrets for himself.

'But he's going to get more than he bargained for on this trip. Because hostile forces are waiting inside...

'Among the President's helicopter crew, however, is a young Marine. He is quiet, enigmatic, and he hides his eyes behind a pair of silver sunglasses. His name is Schofield. Call-sign: Scarecrow. Rumour has it, he's a good man in a storm. Judging by what the President has just walked into, he'd better be...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'To the disgrace of his family, an illustrious London shipping merchant has taken his own life. But his niece Rhia Mahoney believes her uncle has been murdered to conceal the secrets of his trading partners. And as she begins to investigate his death, her fears are realized when she is arrested for a crime she didn't commit.

'Convict Michael Kelly's sentence is almost ended, but his plans are interrupted when a woman he has known since childhood, Rhia Mahoney, arrives in Sydney harbour aboard a prison hulk. And Michael cannot allow the men who falsely imprisoned him to condemn this young woman to the same fate...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Peace comes at the price of bloodshed-five battles will buy you peace, four to win and one to lose. At the temple of Terayama, the words of the blind sage's prophecy continue to haunt Takeo as he readies his armies for battle. Determined to avenge Shigeru's death and claim his rightful inheritance, Takeo and Kaede, together with Takeo's forces; fight their way to the domain of Maruyama. But then they must separate. Takeo makes plans for a battle by the sea, and Kaede returns to her family's home at Shirakawa. Will they see each other again? (Publication summary)

'The pseudonymous Hearn's second thrilling installment of her Tales of the Otori trilogy (after 2002's Across the Nightingale Floor) is once again set in a magic-haunted version of medieval Japan where no one wields unchallenged authority and no one is safe. The swirl of treacherous, shifting clan alliances threatens to overwhelm young lovers and aristocrats Takeo and Kaede. Separated throughout most of the action, the two must develop their talents while trying to maintain their integrity. Takeo possesses superhuman gifts such as the ability to become invisible, project a double image of himself and hear distant conversations; however, he must discipline his skills and control his impetuous temper. He also must work out his relationship with the Tribe, a treacherous secret organization of spies and assassins that saved his life but that may have murdered his father. Kaede, meanwhile, has to escape the powerless role of a woman if she is to protect herself and her family domain from predatory neighbors'.

Source: bookseller's website.

'The thrilling international bestseller from Australia's favourite novelist author of the Scarecrow series and the Jack West Jr series with new novel The Three Secret Cities out now.

'Deep in the jungle of Peru, the hunt for a legendary Incan idol is under way - an idol that in the present day could be used as the basis for a terrifying new weapon.

'Guiding a US Army team is Professor William Race, a young linguist who must translate an ancient manuscript which contains the location of the idol.

'What they find is an ominous stone temple, sealed tight. They open it - and soon discover that some doors are meant to remain unopened...

'Fans of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton will love Matthew Reilly.' (Publication summary)