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Fleeing their pandemic-stricken homelands, a shipload of migrant workers departs the UK, dreaming of a fresh start in prosperous Australia. For nine-year-old Cleary Sullivan, deaf for three years, the journey promises adventure and new friendships; for Glaswegian songstress Billie Galloway, it's a chance to put a shameful mistake firmly behind her; while impoverished English schoolteacher Tom Garnett hopes to set his future on a brighter path. But when a crew member is found murdered and passengers start falling gravely ill, the Steadfast is plunged into chaos. Thrown together by chance, and each guarding their own secrets, Cleary, Billie and Tom join forces to survive the journey and its aftermath. The Trespassers is a beguiling novel that explores the consequences of greed, the experience of exile, and the unlikely ways strangers can become the people we hold dear.
‘It is there, in the background. Always. Increasingly urgent. Its ominous hum is the soundtrack to every other story we tell.’ The devastating summer of Australian bushfires underlined a terrifying sense of a world pushed to the brink. Then came Covid-19, and with it another dramatic lurch away from business as usual. Some observers are worried that the all-consuming effort to control the pandemic will distract us from the long-term challenge of limiting catastrophic climate change. At the same time, many people are hoping for a ‘green Covid-19 recovery’: a cleaner, fairer and safer world. This BWB Text brings together mātauranga Māori and Pasifika perspectives, voices from academia, activism, journalism and economics to bear witness to these troubled times.
Tally and Grace are teenage sisters living on the outskirts of society, dragged from one no-hope town to the next by their fugitive father. When an explosion rips their lives apart, they flee separately to the city. The girls had always imagined that beyond the remote regions lay another, brighter world: glamorous, promising, full of luck. But as each soon discovers, if you arrive there broke, homeless, and alone, the city is a dangerous place — a place where commerce and surveillance rule, and undocumented people like themselves are confined to life’s shady margins. Now Tally and Grace must struggle to find each other — or just to survive. Narrated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Black Glass is the work of an exceptional new talent.
How can you feel anchored when you have no place to call your own?Australia has a large shadow population of people who experience homelessness - whether couch-surfing, staying in a refuge, boarding house or caravan park, or sleeping rough. Too often they are dismissed or blamed. They are spoken for, and about, but rarely get to speak for themselves.Edited by former BIG ISSUE deputy editor Meg Mundell, WE ARE HERE is a vibrant and moving collection of true stories showcasing the creative talents of people who have known homelessness. From cold city doorways to lonely bush camps, from a borrowed couch to a discreetly parked car, from dodgy boarding houses to the humid hell of Manus Island, these powerful, defiant and illuminating stories will make every reader question their place in the world. And the kind of place they want the world to be.All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to charities that work with people experiencing homelessness. The writers and visual artists featured in WE ARE HERE have been paid for their contributions.
The first book to explore the complexities of homelessness in Australia – and the future policies likely to improve the situation. What is homelessness? Who counts as homeless? Whose responsibility is homelessness? InHomelessness in Australia experts in the sector offer timely insights into the history, causes and extent of homelessness in this country – and the future policy directions most likely to have a positive impact. Covering issues such as gender, Indigenous homelessness, family violence, young people and the effects of trauma, the book aims to improve both the understanding of the complexities involved and the outcomes for those experiencing homelessness.
Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2020 'A novelist for our times' Anna Funder, author of Stasiland In this brilliant novel of fear and sacrifice, trauma and survival, four characters' lives intertwine across time and place. Australian soldier Toohey returns from Baghdad in 2003 with shrapnel in his neck, crippled by PTSD. A decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father's dementia and family silences that may never be addressed, begins to test boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey's tyranny and heal the wounds inflicted by it. Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation bestows upon the next, and the potential for transformation. It is a searing, powerful and utterly original work by an exceptional Australian writer.
An elderly man, living alone in the suburbs, thinks back on his life—the missed opportunities, the shocking betrayals, the rare moments of joy. When his 10-year-old neighbor hides in his garden one afternoon, they begin an unexpected friendship that gives them a reprieve from their individual struggles. The boy, left to his own devices by his mother, finds solace in gardening and playing chess with his new friend, who is still battling the demons of his past. When a sinister figure enters the boy's life, he has to choose between his burgeoning friendship and blood ties. Can the old man protect the boy he has come to know—and redeem the boy he once was? A poignant novel by a fresh new voice, The Promise Seed will linger long after the last page is turned.
Prose poetry is a resurgent literary form in the English-speaking world and has been rapidly gaining popularity in Australia. Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington have gathered a broad and representative selection of the best Australian prose poems written over the last fifty years. The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetryincludes numerous distinguished prose poets--Jordie Albiston, joanne burns, Gary Catalano, Anna Couani, Alex Skovron, Samuel Wagan Watson, Ania Walwicz and many moremdash;and documents prose poetry's growing appeal over recent decades, from the poetic margins to the mainstream. This collection reframes our understanding not only of this dynamic poetic form, but of Australian poetry as a whole.
England, 1962. Seventeen-year-old Radford arrives at Goodwin Manor, a home for boys who have 'been found by trouble'. Watched over by the enigmatic Teddy, life at the Manor offers a fragile peace at best, as the coldest winter in three centuries sets in. Radford learns that the boys are to care for each other, since their families and the law have been unable to do so. But will this be enough when tragedy strikes? At once both beautiful and brutal, The Everlasting Sunday is an unforgettable debut novel about growing up, growing wild and the shifting nature of friendship.
Gems, shards, quickies, bon bons, snapshots, nuggets, tickles, or even pinpricks. Each 100 Word Story is its own kind of special. NOTHING SHORT OF presents the best of 100 Word Story, the leader in short-short fiction and a popular go-to for great reading. In these very short stories, every word, every detail, every moment matters. And the things left out, the spaces around the stories, are just as intense. What can a hundred words do? They can send chills, they can bring you to tears, they can take your breath away. In often racy, always charged encounters -- from wild messy breakups to a disgruntled clown dinner to quiet revelations over folded laundry -- these 100-word stories take us to lightning moments when everything, big and small, is at stake. In NOTHING SHORT OF, a hundred words is all you need.