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Transit Lounge Transit Lounge i(A77950 works by) (Organisation) assertion
Born: Established: 2005 Yarraville, Footscray - Maribyrnong area, Melbourne - West, Melbourne, Victoria, ;
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1 1 y separately published work icon The One That Got Away : Travelling in the Time of Covid Ken Haley , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 23070364 2021 single work autobiography travel

'In 2020, Australian author Ken Haley mapped out an enticing menu of travel destinations, comprising the Caribbean island states for main course, with Central America for dessert. Main course soon turned into obstacle course. Cuba was a breeze, but then the world went into Covid lockdown mode and he had to decide whether to push on. As a pioneer wheelchair traveller, Haley knew exactly what to do. He took the brakes off.

'After an unplanned detour to Trumpian Florida, he returned to the tropics intent on dividing his time between sun worship, historical exploration and observation of life’s realities for the community of West Indian nations. In a year that wasn’t long on fun, Haley had his share but he also met his quota of hardship and risks – from developing hurricanes to a no-longer-dormant volcano, from robbery to an acute health crisis that had him wondering whether he might have been wiser to buy a one-way ticket in advance.

'2020 was the year most of us stayed at home. Ken Haley turned an accident of timing into a rollicking, but dangerous adventure. The result is a triumph: a humorous and penetrating insight into a world grappling with an unforeseen calamity and a rare and empathetic travel book.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 y separately published work icon Past Life William Lane , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21997141 2021 single work novel

She wanted to photograph time: everything lost to time, and everything returned by it.

'Anna grows up in a third-storey unit in Parramatta with her adoptive Russian mother Sophia. When her teacher Miss Glass gives her a Box Brownie camera, small acts of observation coupled with the art of photography become her escape. On visiting the suburb of Castle Hill with her schoolfriend Lisaveta she falls into a seductive world of gardens and orchards.

'At the Thompson’s place she embarks on a mission to photograph the orchard by night and day. It is there she meets Friedrich, an older man of German origin but from the Soviet Union, who lives in a shed on the property. She eventually learns that he was once a celebrated writer, his ambitions destroyed by the war.

'As events unfold Anna realises that her connections to the orchard and to Friedrich are deeper than she ever could have imagined. The mysteries and secrets of the past unravel in the most shocking, tender and unexpected of ways. 

'Set in Sydney, and in Russia, Past Life is a glorious novel about the various ways the gifts and traumas of the past play out in the present. It is the affecting story of relationships across generations and William Lane’s most hauntingly beautiful work to date.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 2 y separately published work icon Travelling Companions Antoni Jach , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21996952 2021 single work novel

'Solitary travellers and a couple encounter Nina, an eloquent storyteller, on their travels through Spain, France and Italy. She entrances them all with her tales, which prompts her fellow travelling companions to share their own stories.

'A handsome young man from Staten Island, who believes that life forms exist in other galaxies, vows to never work in an office again and travels by container ship to a commune in Italy. A lonely postal worker from Łódź takes home and reads the most interesting love letters, often becoming convinced a relationship needs his intervention, before delivering them the next day. A woman named Pauline calls herself Kim because her surname is Nowak. Depressed about turning forty, she mysteriously disappears from her own birthday party. Told by people on a journey, these are stories – rich with unexpected wisdoms – of lives in transit.

'Travelling Companions is charming, amusing and philosophical – a wholly original exploration of what it means to honour our strangest dreams and disappointments. It is both a confrontation with, and a sweet diversion from, these, the darkest of times.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 y separately published work icon The Stoning Peter Papathanasiou , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21996756 2021 single work novel crime

'A small outback town wakes to a savage murder.

'Molly Abbott, a popular teacher at the local school, is found taped to a tree and stoned to death. Suspicion falls on the refugees at the new detention centre on Cobb’s northern outskirts. Tensions are high between immigrants and some of the town’s residents.

'Detective Sergeant Georgios ‘George’ Manolis is despatched to his childhood hometown to investigate. His late father immigrated to Australia in the 1950s, where he was first housed at the detention centre’s predecessor – a migrant camp. He later ran the town’s only milk bar.

'Within minutes of George’s arrival, it is clear that Cobb is not the same place he left as a child. The town once thrived, but now it’s disturbingly poor and derelict, with the local police chief it seemingly deserves. As Manolis negotiates his new colleagues’ antagonism and the simmering anger of a community destroyed by alcohol and drugs, the ghosts of his own past flicker to life. His work is his calling, his centre, but now he finds many of the certainties of his life are crumbling.

'White skin, black skin, brown skin – everyone is a suspect in this tautly written novel that explores the nature of prejudice and keeps the reader guessing to the last. The Stoning is an atmospheric page-turner, a brilliant crime novel with superb characters, but also a nuanced and penetrating insight into the heart of a country intent on gambling with its soul.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 2 y separately published work icon Danged Black Thing Eugen Bacon , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21996700 2021 selected work short story

'Danged Black Thing is an extraordinary collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, patriarchy and womanhood, from a remarkable and original voice. Traversing the West and Africa, they celebrate the author’s own hybridity with breathtaking sensuousness and lyricism.

'Simbiyu wins a scholarship to study in Australia, but cannot leave behind a world of walking barefoot, orange sun and his longing for a ‘once pillow-soft mother’. In his past, a darkness rose from the river, and something nameless and mystical continues to envelop his life. In ‘A Taste of Unguja’ sweet taarab music, full of want, seeps into a mother’s life on the streets of Melbourne as she evokes the powers of her ancestors to seek vengeance on her cursed ex. In the cyberfunk of ‘Unlimited Data’ Natukunda, a village woman, gives her all for her family in Old Kampala.  Other stories explore with power what happens when the water runs dry – and who pays, capture the devastating effects on women and children of societies in which men hold all the power, and themes of being, belonging, otherness.

'Speculative, realistic and even mythological, but always imbued with truth, empathy and Blackness, Danged Black Thing is a literary knockout.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon A Voice in the Night Sarah Hawthorn , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21214150 2021 single work novel thriller

'Following a bitter separation, Lucie moves to London to take up a position with a prestigious law firm. It seems an optimistic new beginning, until one day she receives a hand delivered note with the strange words: At last I’ve found you. A shock I ‘m sure. But in time I ‘ll explain. Martin. 

'Lucie hasn’t forgotten a man called Martin who was tragically killed twenty years ago in the 9/11 attacks. When she was working in New York as young intern Lucie had fallen in love with him and he vowed to leave his wife to be with her permanently.  

'As an inexplicable series of events occurs Lucie wonders if her long-dead lover could have staged his own disappearance under the cover of that fateful day. Or could it be that someone else is stalking her, or that her vivid imagination is playing tricks? 

'In a novel filled with compelling characters, and set in London, New York and Sydney, it seems that anyone could be out to sabotage Lucie’s memories and ambitions, including herself.

'A Voice in the Night is an addictive thriller of twists and turns, a gripping and emotionally resonant debut from a striking new voice.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 y separately published work icon Pietà Michael Fitzgerald , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21214045 2021 single work novel

'These are the last days of 1999. At St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as the world waits for the new millennium, Lucy, a young Australian woman looks up at Michelangelo’s Pietà behind its pane of bullet-proof glass; a red kabbalah string circles her wrist. She has come with the mysterious parcel her recently deceased mother asked her to bring to the box marked POSTE VATICANE.

'But before Rome there is Saint-Cloud. Here, on the outskirts of Paris, Lucy works as an au pair for Jean-Claude and his wife Mathilde. When Mathilde leaves for Central Australia to research the Aboriginal artist Kumanjayi, Lucy’s circle of contacts becomes smaller and strangely intimate: Jean-Claude, the baby Felix for whom she cares, and the couple’s charismatic friend Sébastien, a marble restorer. Yet Lucy’s homesickness for Australia and its vastness haunts her world, surfacing in the memories of her mother, the Australian garden at Empress Joséphine’s Malmaison, and Mathilde’s letters from Alice Springs. 

'Lucy’s mother, Jude, who was a nun in the 1970s, once warned her daughter ‘to be careful what she wished for’. It is a caution that marks but rarely alters the choices these characters make. With lushness and tenderness, and revelation, Fitzgerald’s unforgettable novel Pietà exquisitely captures the glorious and imperfect relationships between parents and children, between art and life.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 y separately published work icon You've Let Them In Lois Murphy , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 21213914 2021 single work novel children's

'Scott is in shock when his family — his father Leo, sister Natalie, the twins and their stepmother Sally — move to a rundown old house on the outskirts of town.

'The garden is a menacing jungle that refuses to be tamed. An ancient gnome in its midst supposedly stands guard against lurking secrets, much to Scott's disgust and Sally's delight.

'When strange and scary things start occurring and the creatures from the trees begin to invade the house, Scott must face the peril of an unknown force that threatens to turn their world upside down.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 y separately published work icon Tussaud Belinda Lyons-Lee , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 20879701 2021 single work novel fantasy

'‘Thrilling, eerie, fun, and psychologically compelling, Tussaud cleverly blurs the line between history and the fantastical to create a Gothic delight of mysterious mansions, grimy London streets, stage magicians, wax-work automatons, secrets and subterfuges. MARY SHELLEY would be proud.’

'H.G. Parry, author of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

'Paris, 1810. Haunted by the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud has locked herself away in her shop with the death masks she was forced to make to avoid the guillotine. Philidor, a famous magician, offers her the chance to accompany him to London to assist in creating a wax automaton that will bring them both money and success.

'Following a disastrous performance on their opening night in which the wax on their prized spectacle melts, the eccentric Duke, William Cavendish, invites them to his rambling estate, Welbeck, where he suggests they take up residence, use his underground ballroom for a new show and in return create a private commission for him: a wax automaton in the likeness of Elanor, a beautiful girl who mysteriously disappeared from the estate when he was a child.

'In this delicious novel of twists and turns, Welbeck, with its locked doors and rooms, is full of secrets and no-one is who they seem. There is the seductive aura of Shelley, Dickens and Du Maurier in Tussaud. Marie must fight for survival in a world dominated by male advantage and power in a mesmerising story filled with wisdom about human behaviour and motivations.  

'‘Lies, treasons and twists will lure and enthral the reader. At the heart of Tussaud a mysterious automaton challenges the limits of its physical body, craving for a conscience. The reader is in for  wondrous ride as Belinda Lyons-Lee poignantly captures  Marie Tussaud’s  proud self-denial,  her struggle to achieve independence in a world dominated  by con-artists, and her rare talent to create the most perfect illusion of life.’

'Mariano Tomatis, Italian writer and magician '

Source : publisher's blurb

1 4 y separately published work icon Night Blue Angela O'Keeffe , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 20879552 2021 single work novel

'Potent, haunting and lyrical, Night Blue is a debut novel like no other, a narrative largely told in the voice of the painting Blue Poles. It is a truly original and absorbing approach to revisiting Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner as artists and people, as well as realigning our ideas around the cultural legacy of Whitlam’s purchase of Blue Poles in 1973.

'It is also the story of Alyssa, and a contemporary relationship, in which Angela O’Keeffe immerses us in the essential power of art to change our personal lives and, by turns, a nation.

'Moving between New York and Australia with fluid ease, Night Blue is intimate and tender, yet surprisingly dramatic. It is a glorious exploration of how art must never be undervalued.

Source : publisher's blurb

1 1 y separately published work icon Pushing Back John Kinsella , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 20879395 2021 single work novel

'‘The tall trees nearby called them up and red-tailed black cockatoos carried messages to them that they told no one else about.’

'Pushing Back is John Kinsella’s most haunting and timely fiction to date. It is populated with eccentric, compelling characters, drifters, unlikely friendships, the silences of dissolving relationships, haunted dwellings and lonely highways, the ghosts of cleared bushland and the threats of right-wing nationalists and senseless destruction.

'A couple make love in an abandoned asbestos house, a desperate carpet cleaner beholden to the gig economy begs a financially distressed client not to cancel his booking, an addict cannot bear to see his partner without the watch he once gave her, a mother casts her shearer son’s ashes on the property on which he worked, fascists pile into a little red car with the intent of terrorising tourists on the Nullarbor, a man more at home with machinery than people rescues a drowning kitten.

'Yet throughout this assured distillation of contemporary Australian life, empathy rises like the red-tailed black cockatoos that appear and reappear, nature coalescing with the human spirit, the animals, the trees, the land, the people pushing back. These stories are at once disturbing, tender and hopeful.  

'‘One of the nation’s most significant living writers.’ Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Australian Book Review'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 1 y separately published work icon Chasing the McCubbin Sandi Scaunich , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2021 20877343 2021 single work novel

'The Pines, an outer Melbourne suburb down on its luck. A country in the grip of recession.

'Experienced collector Ron senses new possibilities: swift evictions provide hard-rubbish to scour and garage-sales have doubled. There's only one problem: since losing his wife, Ron has struggled to navigate the suburbs alone. Plus, his deteriorating health slows him down.

'This all changes through a chance meeting with Joseph, a troubled, withdrawn and unemployed 19-year old who knows nothing about antiques. As Joseph comes to understand and appreciate Ron's world of eccentric bargain hunters, and hopefulness, his ability to navigate a history of family violence and to see a future for himself grows. Both come to share the wild dream of finding a rare bargain such as an original Frederick McCubbin painting and making their fortune. So begins an exhilarating adventure and an unlikely and beautiful friendship.

'Set against the background of the early 1990s, Chasing the McCubbin is funny and sad in equal measure. A story of loneliness and the ageless desire for belonging, it will be the most heartbreaking yet feel-good novel you will read this year.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon The Rock Aaron Smith , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 20097125 2020 single work autobiography

'Journalist Aaron Smith's new memoir holds up a unique mirror to Australia. What he sees is at once amazing, disturbing and revealing. The Rock explores the failings of our nation's character, its unresolved past and its uncertain future from the vantage point of its most northerly outpost, Thursday Island.

'Smith was the last editor, fearless journalist and the paperboy of Australia's most northerly newspaper, the Torres News, a small independent regional tabloid that, until it folded in late 2019, was the voice of a predominantly Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal readership for 63 years across some of the most remote and little understood communities in Australia. 

'The Rock is a story of self-discovery where Smith grapples to understand a national identity marred by its racist underbelly, where he is transplanted from his white-boy privileged suburban life to being a racial and cultural minority, and an outsider. Peppered with his experiences, Smith gradually and sensitively becomes embedded in island life while vividly capturing the endless and often farcical parade of personalities and politicians including Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott.' (Publication summary)

1 3 y separately published work icon The Fifth Season Philip Salom , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 20062282 2020 single work novel

'Jack retreats to an Airbnb cottage in a small coastal town. As a writer he is pre-occupied with the phenomenon of found people: the Somerton Man, the Gippsland Man, the Isdal Woman, people who are found dead – their identities unknown or erased – and the mysterious pull this has on the public mind.

'In Blue Bay, as well as encountering the town’s colourful inhabitants, Jack befriends Sarah, whose sister Alice is one of the many thousands of people who go missing every year. Sarah has been painting her sister’s likeness in murals throughout the country, hoping that Alice will be found. Then Jack discovers a book about the people of the town, and about Sarah, which was written by a man who called himself Simon. Who once lived in the same cottage and created a backyard garden comprised of crazy mosaics. Until he too disappeared.

'While Sarah’s life seems beholden to an ambiguous grief, Jack’s own condition is unclear. Is he writing or dying? In The Fifth Season Philip Salom brings his virtuoso gifts for storytelling, humour and character to a haunting and unforgettable novel about the tenuousness of life and what it means to be both lost and found.

'‘An immensely wise, witty, recognisable and haunting story.’
ROBERT DREWE'

Source: publisher's blurb

1 2 y separately published work icon Everything in its Right Place Tobias McCorkell , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 19560489 2020 single work novel

'Coburg, Melbourne. Ford McCullen is growing up with his mother Deidre and his Pop and Noonie in 'The Compound', a pair of units in the shadow of Pentridge prison. His father, Robert, has left them to live in the bush with his new male partner. Nobody is coping.

'When Ford's paternal grandmother Queenie's good fortune allows him to attend a prestigious Catholic private school on the other side of the river and to learn the violin, Ford finds himself balancing separate identities. At school he sees himself being moulded into an image that is not his own, something at odds with the rough and tumble of his beloved north.

'Crumbling under the weight of his family's expectations and realising that he just might be the only adult amongst them, Ford embarks on a quest for meaning while navigating the uncomfortable realities of his father's life, his mother's ongoing crisis, and the pillars of football and religion, delving ever deeper into a fraught search for the source of the 'McCullen curse'. 

'Everything in its Right Place tackles themes of class, love and sexuality with humour, truth and grit. It is a story of the legacies and dilemmas that families bring, of how we all must find our own way, astonishingly told.' (Publication summary)

1 5 y separately published work icon Revenge : Murder in Three Parts S. L. Lim , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 18830833 2020 single work novel crime

'‘Before I go into my grave,’ she says out loud, ‘I will kill that man.’

'A brilliant new novel from the author of Real Differences. A family favour their son over their daughter. Shan attends university before making his fortune in Australia while Yannie must find menial employment and care for her ageing parents. After her mother’s death, Yannie travels to Sydney to become enmeshed in her psychopathic brother’s new life, which she seeks to undermine from within …

'This is a novel that rages against capitalism, hetero-supremacy, mothers, fathers, families – the whole damn thing. It’s about what happens when you want to make art but are born in the wrong time and place. 

'S. L. Lim brings to vivid life the frustrations of a talented daughter and vengeful sister in a nuanced and riveting novel that ends in the most unexpected way. It will not be easily forgotten.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Broken Rules and Other Stories Barry Lee Thompson , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 18828294 2020 selected work short story

'These awards-listed, interlinked stories vividly capture the small, rarely spoken moments of our lives that reverberate with meaning, with darkness and with light. An adolescent son and his parents on their annual holiday at a Bournemouth guesthouse become intrigued with the glamour and otherness of an American family from Boston. An adult son and his mother navigate an unnerving relationship based on dependence and ritual. A woman transgresses her husband’s rules and his distaste for parties. A sex-worker empathises with the life of an elderly client. From derelict industrial districts, to a lonely highway diner, to the faded charm of a British seaside resort, these are stories of growing up marginalised and living in working-class England and Australia. Thompson’s writing is so clear and deep and lucid you can see every crumb on the tablecloth, every drop of water on a person’s hair.

'Broken Rules and Other Stories´ nuanced play of character, psychology and language, and its focus on the mysteries we are all involved in when we are out of our depth, exposed to our emotions, our wonders and our longings, marks the emergence of a remarkable new talent.' (Publication summary) 

1 5 y separately published work icon Navigable Ink Jennifer Mackenzie , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 18827279 2020 selected work poetry

'Indonesian writer and activist Pramoedya Ananta Toer spent most of his adult life in jail, imprisoned first by colonial powers and later by Indonesian governments. In 1993 Jennifer Mackenzie received a copy of Toer's manuscript Arus Balik and the author's blessing to translate it into English. This was at a time when the author's now celebrated work was banned in Indonesia and he was under house arrest in Jakarta.

'Jennifer Mackenzie's own Navigable Ink is a rare poetic exploration of Toer's tragic, visionary and ultimately triumphant life. With skill, knowledge and sensitivity Mackenzie captures the beauty of Indonesia and Toer's fight to preserve its integrity and essence. Throughout our world his concerns for the environment, gender equality, free speech, non-discrimination and freedom are now more crucial than ever.' (Publication summary) 

1 3 y separately published work icon Displaced : A Rural Life John Kinsella , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 18449396 2020 single work autobiography

'John Kinsella's memoir of his rural life takes us deep into the heart of what it means to belong and unbelong. The joys and travails of childhood, adult addictions, missteps and changing directions are acutely captured in poignant and poetic detail. While centred on Jam Tree Gully in rural Western Australia, the memoir also moves between Ohio, Schull and Cambridge, mixing regionalism with an international sense of responsibility. What will strike the reader are the detailed observations of daily life, the engagement with topography and flora and fauna that embody the author's conviction that ‘all is in everything and that every leaf of grass is vital’.

'In his most intimate prose work to date, Kinsella never shies from writing about the violence and intolerance of those scared of difference, and the ways in which his ethics have sometimes been met with disdain or outright hostility. But with nuance and humour he also celebrates rural community and its willingness to lend a hand.

'At once tender, urgent and intelligent, Displaced is ultimately a call to personal action. ‘We all have choices to make.’ It argues through it vivid accounts of small acts of living for the values of pacifism, veganism, environmentalism and justice for First Nations peoples — the principles we just might need to heal our world.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 1 y separately published work icon Spinoza's Overcoat Subhash Jaireth , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 18416119 2020 selected work essay travel

'‘It starts to rain as I step out of my hotel ….’ So begins Subhash Jaireth’s striking collection of essays on the writers, and their writing, that have enriched his own life. The works of Franz Kafka, Marina Tsvetaeva, Mikhail Bulgakov, Paul Celan, Hiromi Ito, Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and others ignite in him the urge to travel (both physically and in spirit), almost like a pilgrim, to the places where such writers were born or died or wrote. In each essay a new emotional plane is reached revealing enticing connections. As a novelist, poet, essayist and translator born into a multilingual environment, Jaireth truly understands the power of words across languages and their integral connections to the life of the body and the spirit. Drawing on years of research, translation and travel Spinoza’s Overcoat – and its illuminations of loss, mortality and the reverie of writing – will linger with readers.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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