AustLit

'In 1720s Scotland, a priest and his son get lost in the forest, transporting a witch to the coast to stop her from being killed by the village.

'In the sad, slow years after the Second World War, Ruth finds herself the replacement wife to a recent widower and stepmother to his two young boys, installed in a huge house by the sea and haunted by those who have come before.

'Fifty years later, Viv is cataloguing the valuables left in her dead grandmother's seaside home, when she uncovers long-held secrets of the great house.

'Three women, hundreds of years apart, slip into each other's lives in a novel of darkness, violence and madness.' (Publication summary)

'Who or what is watching Jake Whyte from the woods?

'Jake Whyte is the sole resident of an old farmhouse on an unnamed island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. It's just her, her untamed companion, Dog, and a flock of sheep. Which is how she wanted it to be. But something is coming for the sheep - every few nights it picks one off, leaves it in rags.

'It could be anything. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumours of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is Jake's unknown past, perhaps breaking into the present, a story hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, in a landscape of different colour and sound, a story held in the scars that stripe her back.

'Set between Australia and a remote English island, All the Birds, Singing is the story of one how one woman's present comes from a terrible past. It is the second novel from the award-winning author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice.' (Publisher's blurb)

'When the evil Shadow Lord plots to invade Deltora and enslave its people all that stands between him and victory is the magic Belt of Deltora which holds seven gems of great and mysterious power. When the gems are stolen it appears that Deltora is lost and the Shadow Lord will triumph. However, two unlikely companions set out on a perilous quest to find the gems and bring them back so that the rightful ruler can regain the throne. Together they enter the sinister Forests of Silence and there the mystery begins.' (Source: Back cover)

'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."

'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)

'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)

Holland lived with his only daughter, Ellen, by a khaki river four hours west of Sydney. In spite of their remote location, tales of Ellen's beauty had traveled long distances and in the process inscribed a small legend. But Ellen's desirability was Holland's blindspot and finally he decided that the man who correctly named every eucalypt on his property would win the hand of his daughter. (Source: Trove)

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

(Source: Publisher's website)

Simon Brent is orphaned. Still shocked, he is taken to live with his only relatives, brother and sister Charlie and Edie Waters, who live on a farm. There, Simon meets the Aboriginal spirits who also live on the land. Together Simon, Charlie, Edie, and the spirits save the land from the ancient Nargun. The story is memorable in the portrayal of the Nargun and the spirits, as well as the characters of Charlie and Edie, and the depiction of Simon's change from a shocked and emotionally frozen individual to a normal boy.

'A cryptic and mysterious case history appears in the autobiography of pioneering Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung: 'A lady came to my office. She refused to give her name ... What she had to communicate to me was a confession. Some twenty years ago, she had committed a murder ...'

'Jung's encounter with the woman had an explosive effect on him, and brought him very close to total breakdown. Morris West recreates this episode in a gripping blend of truth and dramatic speculation.

'Set in pre-World War I Europe, The World is Made of Glass is a powerful novel of love, sexual obsession, murder and guilt It has been called Morris West's finest creation of the imagination.'

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

'It’s the Great Depression. Six-year-old PS is an orphan. He lives in Sydney with his Aunt Lila. But all that is about to change. Now his Aunt Vanessa has decided to take proper care of him.

'Careful, He Might Hear You is one of the most extraordinary portraits of childhood in Australian fiction.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)

'The profound story of a cardinal who steps out from the Iron Curtain to become Pope amid the machinations of Cold War politics—the first title in the Vatican Trilogy.'

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

'At high noon on a hot summers day, a beautiful young woman shoots the mayor dead.

'So begins a story of passion and betrayal in a Quiet Tuscan village, leading to a sensational trial. The defence team, headed by the brilliant but unhappy Carlo Rienzi, uncovers a sinister conspiracy of silence that threatens to split the community.

'Can Carlo persuade the judge to grant clemency in what appears to be an open-and-shut case? Can the law intervene in the brutal tradition of vendetta?'

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

'A moving exploration of the meaning of faith, and a vivid portrayal of life in impoverished post-war Calabria.'

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