AustLit

'Cotters' England follows the lives of Nellie Cook, sister Peggy Cotter and brother Tom. Set in post-war England, it is a study of politics and betrayal in Nellie's professional and personal life. It is a story of smothered aspirations and dashed hopes, as class politics trap the Cotters and stifle their attempts to break free from the boundaries of the working- and middle-classes.

'The book is also an exploration of love and sexuality. An undercurrent of incestuous flirtation and a lesbian affair add further strain to Nellie's relationships with family and friends, driving one of them to suicide. By the renowned author of The Man Who Loved Children, this is the first Stead work to be set wholly in England. It weaves a strange and compelling story that explores the limits of class, politics, lust and passion.' (Publication summary)

Novel, based on the film of the same name, about a droving expedition from the east Kimberleys, Western Australia through the Northern Territory and Queensland during World War II; secondary characters include Aboriginal characters.

'Eleanor Herbert Brent is a beautiful woman - tall, blond and athletic. Sexuality forms her personality and as a young English graduate on the loose in London, she savours the capacity to excite - and sleep with - every man she meets. At the same time she is deeply conventional, believing in respectability, in the desire to be a wife and mother in the 'dear old-fashioned way'. But real love between a man and a woman - something which could transform her into the passionate woman she really is - Eleanor determinedly avoids. When she is thirty she marries and has children. However, her wholesome but unsatisfying suburban life collapses with the departure of her pompous prig of a husband. She survives to find some success on the fringes of literary life, new lovers, new friends, but never to know herself. Eleanor is a literary portrait on a magnificent scale, but she is more than that. Divided in herself and deeply self-deluded, Eleanor's life is a powerful metaphor for the England of the 1920s to the 1950s through which she lives.' (Publication summary)

'A coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.' (From the publisher's website.)

'A coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Eleanor Herbert Brent is a beautiful woman - tall, blond and athletic. Sexuality forms her personality and as a young English graduate on the loose in London, she savours the capacity to excite - and sleep with - every man she meets. At the same time she is deeply conventional, believing in respectability, in the desire to be a wife and mother in the 'dear old-fashioned way'. But real love between a man and a woman - something which could transform her into the passionate woman she really is - Eleanor determinedly avoids. When she is thirty she marries and has children. However, her wholesome but unsatisfying suburban life collapses with the departure of her pompous prig of a husband. She survives to find some success on the fringes of literary life, new lovers, new friends, but never to know herself. Eleanor is a literary portrait on a magnificent scale, but she is more than that. Divided in herself and deeply self-deluded, Eleanor's life is a powerful metaphor for the England of the 1920s to the 1950s through which she lives.' (Publication summary)

'A story of friendship and love set in the goldfields of Western Australia in the 1890s. The determined Sally Gough braves hardship and danger in this classic tale of pioneering Australia.' (Source: Bookseller's website.)

'A passionate and controversial novel set in turn-of-the-century Europe

'Henry Handel Richardson’s debut, published in London in 1908, is set in the music scene of Leipzig, a cosmopolitan centre for the arts drawing students from around the world—among them Maurice Guest, a young Englishman, who falls helplessly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. Maurice Guest is the story of this overwhelming passion.

'The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.' (Publication summary)

'Tomorrow is a novel within a novel. Knarf (read it backwards and remember Dalby Davison) is a 24-century novelist who has written an historical novel about a group of Sydney people in the 20th century.

'His story begins in the 20s, runs through the Depression, faithfully describes the course of WWII until the time when the date catches up with the story, and Marjorie had to begin to prophesy'. Source: review 'The Censorship of Yesterday Hid a Great Tomorrow'.

'Weekly, nicknamed The Newspaper, cleans the houses on Claremont Street, spreading the neighbourhood gossip as she works. No one knows or cares where Weekly goes in her spare time, or what she dreams of at night – no one, that is, until Nastasya discovers her secret.' (Publication summary)

'Edwin Page, a fussy middle-aged professor, no sooner bids farewell to his obstetrician wife, Cecilia, who accepted a fellowship abroad, when his new neighbors, Mrs. Botts and her sexy, twentyish daughter, Leila, arrive. Since they're locked out of their house, Edwin invites them in—and then can't get them to leave. He becomes obsessed with Leila and convinces himself that she is a perfect surrogate mother for the childless Cecilia.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Persea ed.).

'Three young boys in postwar London at Christmas time hear a story of the fox who came to the manger to see the Christ Child, and defended to the other animals his right to be there and his gift for the child.'

Source: Trove.