Creative Books by Our People

New Babylon

Written by: Stephen Carleton

Espace link: coming soon

Publisher: Playlab Theatre

Details: The companion piece to the 2018 hit The Turquoise Elephant, New Babylon is the second in a proposed trilogy of absurdist works dealing with the climate change crisis. Aunt Olympia is on board a “dark tourism” ship, bound for the great plastic vortexes of the Pacific Ocean. She thinks she is touring the world’s great sites of environmental degradation as a privileged voyeur, but when our audience join her to watch her voyage – as lucky lottery winners aboard the ship – things take a bizarre turn. As the ship ploughs through the great Pacific trash gyres on its journey to a mysterious outpost – New Babylon – the occupants begin behaving more strangely, and our own presence aboard the ship, has us questioning our complicity in the dire circumstances we all find ourselves in.

Bogga

Written by: Rob Pensalfini

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:30af7b4

Publisher: Playlab Theatre

Details:  Bogga is a fascinating work based on oral histories of the detainers and detainees of Brisbane most infamous gaol, focussing on the heritage prison’s incredible history and Queensland’s history in general. It explores the fall of Queensland’s Bjelke-Petersen regime and questions through the microcosm of Brisbane’s notorious Boggo Road Gaol in the 1970s and 1980s, whether Queensland has truly buried the values of this bureaucracy, or if it remains, festering unseen in the background. Bogga was first produced by the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble 8-18 November 2017 at the Geoffrey Rush Drama Studio, the University of Queensland, St Lucia.

The Crying Forest

Written by: Venero Armanno

Espace link: coming soon

Publisher: IFWG Publishing 2020

Details: Agata Rosso, a once-mighty yet now aged European witch, believes that the special gifts in a young girl named Lia Munro can restore youth and vitality both to herself and her bedridden husband. She sets a deadly plan in motion to capture and use Lia-but will the girl have enough power to protect herself, plus the father she loves so much?

Shadows in the Stone

Written by: Jack Dann

Publisher: IFWG 2019

Details: In Shadows in the Stone Jack Dann creates a fully-realized, living, breathing universe, a universe where the Vatican is in Venice, Jehovah is really a lesser god known as the Demiurge, and the magus John Dee’s experiments with angels are true and repeatable. Here you’ll discover a nun who has the expertise and agility of a Ninja warrior, the reincarnated snake goddess known as the Daughter of Light, the famed Florentine magician Pico Della Mirandola, a young magus who is part stone, the Knights Templar of the Crimson Cross, the sapphire tablet: the most secret of the Dead Sea scrolls, and a 15th Century dirigible kept aloft by imprisoned souls. Here you’ll find wild adventure and Machiavellian subtlety, treason and heroism, love and carnality, joy and loss, magic, machines, the cosmic machinations of angels, demons, gods, and half-gods; and the absolutely breathtaking vistas that are their battle grounds.

Requiem with Yellow Butterflies

Written by: James Halford

Publisher: UWA Publishing 2019

Details: Requiem with Yellow Butterflies is a love story and travel memoir that unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of Latin America in the 2000s. It takes us on a 1200-kilometre question-mark shaped loop through the newly socialist republics of the “pink tide,” to a requiem mass for Mexico’s disappeared and eventually back to Australia. Through evocative, unexpected pairings of southern hemisphere places and authors—Jose María Arguedas’s Andes and Judith Wright’s Cooloola coast, the Argentine pampa and the central Queensland brigalow country—the book explores distinct but parallel postcolonial literary traditions, the disordering state of love and the strangeness of coming home. 

The Migration

Written by: Helen Marshall

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:86e6a36

Publisher: Random House Canada 2019

Details: Storms and flooding are worsening around the world, and a mysterious immune disorder has begun to afflict the young. Sophie Perella is about to begin her senior year of high school in Toronto when her little sister is diagnosed. Sophie’s mother takes the girls to Oxford, England, to live with their Aunt Irene. An Oxford University professor and historical epidemiologist obsessed with relics of the Black Death. As mortality rates climb, and reports emerge of bodily tremors in the deceased, it becomes clear there is nothing normal about this condition – and that the dead aren’t staying dead. When Kira succumbs, Sophie faces an unimaginable choice: let go of the sister she knows, or take action to embrace something terrifying and new.

Stella the Unstoppable and the School Camp Kefuffle

Written by: Richard Newsome

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:4cc18c5

Publisher: Affirm Press

Details: Hi! I’m Stella and yes, I’ll admit it. I am just a teeny tiny bit obsessed with winning the Camp Cup this year. Who wouldn’t be? The winner gets a pizza party! Year Five camp only comes around once in a lifetime and it’s going to be awesome. Except … the campsite is on the edge of an old abandoned graveyard. And there’s a rumour that a kid called Spud Riley went to camp and never came back. AND we’re on a Camp Cup team with Lizzie Lawless, and the thing you need to know about Lizzie Lawless is – oh. Never mind. You’ll see …

Stella the Unstoppable and the Talent Show Fiasco

Written by: Richard Newsome

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:b0e7c3d

Publisher: Affirm Press

Details: Stella's excess energy and a mishap with a fire extinguisher (and the class guinea pig) have caught the attention of Principal Hinchliffe. In a bid to channel some of that energy into less destructive areas, Stella is given the challenge of creating a play for the annual talent show.

Stella the Unstoppable and the Magic Underpants

Written by: Richard Newsome

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9929e1f

Publisher: Affirm Press

Details: Hi! I’m Stella, and yes, I’ll admit it. My undies are magic. Even though I can tell you don’t believe me, they’re truly the reason that my soccer team has ended its epic losing streak. These underpants are causing quite the stir, and sooner or later, someone’s going to be after them… And then what? There’s trouble brewing in my pants. Yes. No. Really.

Hearing Maud

Written by: Jessica White

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:f21be23

Publisher: University of Western Australia Press

Details: Central to her narrative is the story of Maud Praed, the deaf daughter of 19th century Queensland expatriate novelist Rosa Praed. Although Maud was deaf from infancy, she was educated at a school which taught her to speak rather than sign, a mode difficult for someone with little hearing. It was through uncovering Maud’s story that the author began to understand her own experiences of deafness and how they contributed to her emotional landscape, relationships and career.

Queens of the Sea

Written by: Kim Wilkins

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:ad8b7da

Publisher: University of Western Australia Press

Details: The unthinkable has happened. Warrior queen Bluebell has lost her kingdom to the Crow King, Hakon, and her demented Trimartyr sister, Willow. While Bluebell would like nothing more than to storm the city with her army and crush Willow underfoot, the enemy's threat to burn its inhabitants alive prevents her. Bluebell's niece Rowan has otherworldly power and can help her unite the warring tribes, but her third sister Rose is in hiding with her son, and her fourth sister Ivy, Queen of Sæcaster is fleeing abuse with her children. Ash, under-magician, is the only sister who might be able to help Bluebell solve the conundrum. Together they must cross the sea to the land of giants, and try to recover Ash's power and save the kingdom and those they love.

Burning Down 

Written by: Venero Armanno

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:676112

Publisher: University of Queensland Press 2017

Details: Charlie Smoke is living out his early retirement from the boxing ring as a bricklayer. It is the mid-1970s and he believes his best days are behind him. He’s lost his wife and daughter to his questionable past, but when he meets Holly Banks and her teenage son, Ricky, he has a chance to do things differently. As an unlikely friendship develops with Ricky, Charlie is unwittingly pulled back into the gambling underworld he thought he’d left behind. In order to make a new future, first he must help settle some old scores. 

The Book of Thistles

Written by: Noëlle Janaczewska

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:684657

Publisher: UWA Publishing 2017

Details: The word ‘thistle’ refers to a large and widespread group of plants. Several hundred species within the Asteraceae family, plus a bunch of other plants we call thistles – even though technically, botanically, they’re not. Google ‘thistles’ and many of the sites will tell you how to get rid of them. Dig a little deeper, however, and from this weedy territory other narratives begin to emerge. Part accidental memoir, part environmental history, and part exploration of the performative voice on the page, The Book of Thistles is about the cultural and social life of this group of plants we call thistles.

Stars Across the Oceans

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:513488

Publisher: Hachette Australia 2017

Details: 1874: Only days before she is to leave the foundling home where she grew up, Agnes Resolute discovers that, as a baby, she had been abandoned with a small token of her mother. Agnes always believed her mother had been too poor to keep her, but she now suspects she's the daughter of Genevieve Breckby, the beautiful and headstrong daughter of a local noble family. With only her determination to aid her, Agnes risks everything in a quest that will take her from the bleak moors of northern England to the harsh streets of London, then on to Paris and Ceylon. As Agnes follows her mother's trail, she makes choices that could cost her dearly. Finally, in Australia, she tracks Genevieve down. But is Genevieve capable of being the mother Agnes hopes she will be?

The Silver Well

Written by: Kim Wilkins and Kate Forsyth

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:699083

Publisher: Ticonderoga Publications 2017

Details: One English village. Two thousand years of stories. People have always come to make wishes at the Silver Well: in Pagan times and Christian, during revolution and war. When Rosie arrives in the tiny village of Cerne Abbas with a broken heart, she becomes connected across the centuries with others who have yearned for something. Seven stories, set in seven time periods, reveal the deepest longings of the human heart.

Travel Under Any Star: collected stories

Written by: Venero Armanno

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:563485

Publisher: Bareknuckle Books 2016

Details: Venero Armanno is a writer who fearlessly explores the primal urges, repressed desires, and the intense, contradictory cravings that drive human behavior-and the betrayals, family breakdowns, violence and tragic misunderstandings they leave in their wake. While the settings, and the social and cultural references are contemporary, there are echoes of the ancient Greek melodramas in his work. Armanno's stories probe beneath the explosive surface, and in unmasking his characters, he exposes the elemental human need for intimacy, connection, and a sense of belonging.

Bastard Territory

Written by: Stephen Carleton 2016

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:692943

Publisher: Queensland Theatre

Details: Russell thought he’d made peace with his past, but the skeletons won’t stay in the closet – even if he came out of it long ago. It’s Darwin in 2001, and Russell is about to be shaken by some earth-shattering truths. PNG-born Russell came to the Territory with his adoptive white parents, but his boho mum shot through when he was eight. Suddenly, unpleasant memories are dredged up from the murky past and Russell has a new fire to find out the truth of his biological parentage in this new play from Darwin-raised and Brisbane-based Stephen Carleton.

The Turquoise Elephant

Written by: Stephen Carleton

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:692942​

Publisher: Griffin Theatre Company 2016

Details: Inside her triple-glazed compound, Augusta shields herself from the catastrophic elements, bathing in the classics and campaigning for the reinstatement of global reliance on fossil fuels. Outside, the world lurches from one environmental cataclysm to the next. Meanwhile, her sister, Olympia, thinks the best way to save endangered species is to eat them. Their niece, Basra, is intent on making a difference – but how? Can you save the world one blog at a time? Stephen Carleton’s The Turquoise Elephant won the 2015 Griffin Award. A shockingly black, black, black political farce, it’s the sort of play that pushes itself into a season – it’s urgent, contemporary and perilously close to being real.

The Curiosity Machine

Written by: Richard Newsome

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:409964​

Publisher: Text Publishing 2016

Details: With the strange plans for an even stranger machine in his possession, along with a coded message from a long-dead castaway that could be the key to unlocking its secrets, Gerald finds himself at the centre of a web of mystery and danger. Masked gunmen have taken over his luxury yacht. His parents have been kidnapped. And one of his closest friends has betrayed him. His old enemy Sir Mason Green seems to be pulling all the strings. Gerald, Ruby, Sam and Felicity take off on their final exciting adventure, from glaciers to jungles and the depths of the Pacific Ocean to an island teeming with the most bizarre creatures on earth.

Sisters of Fire

Written by: Kim Wilkins

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:509764

Publisher: Harlequin Mira 2016

Details: The battle-scarred warrior princess Bluebell, heir to her father's throne, is rumoured to be unkillable. So when she learns of a sword wrought specifically to slay her by the fearsome raven king, Hakon, she sets out on a journey to find it before it finds her. The sword is rumoured to be in the possession of one of her four younger sisters. But which one? Scattered as they are across the kingdoms, she sets out on a journey to find them. Her four sisters all have their own paths to tread, the gifted magician Ash is on a journey to find a dragon that could determine her destiny. The beautiful, unhappy Rose has left her undermagician Aunt and is speeding to the aid of her daughter, Rowan, who has been lost to her. Ivy, sold into marriage for the sake of an alliance, is now set to become the ruling Duchess of Seacaster with the imminent death of her much older and sick husband, and the power-hungry Willow is raising her infant child as a potential trimartyr king and training to be a warrior for the fanatical religious order Maava.

Machina

Written by: Richard Jordan

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:340494

Publisher: Playlab Press 2014

Details: 'One month ago, David Sergeant made the ultimate commitment to social media, choosing to forever separate mind and body by uploading his consciousness into social networking site Machina. An experimental and irreversible new process known as ‘going inside’, the user discards their need for a physical body and attains a kind of digital immortality in the cloud.'Now, as David’s family, friends and ex-lovers struggle to come to terms with his physical absence, questions are being asked about why this promising young man committed the equivalent of social suicide. Did he go willingly? Or was he pushed? David’s mother is determined to find out, even if it means reaching out to her son from the other side...'

The House of Puzzles

Written by: Richard Newsome

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:354622​

Publisher: Text Publishing 2014

Details: A mysterious coded message. A search for a fabled perpetual motion machine. A horse ride from hell. And a night in the exclusive Billionaire's Club House of Puzzles. If Gerald thought his term in a Scottish Highlands school camp was going to be all snow-covered heather and tartan rugs he couldn't have been more wrong. With Professor McElderry in the clutches of Gerald's nemesis Sir Mason Green and a seemingly impossible task required to save his life, the stakes are high and the heat is on.

Daughters of the Storm 

Written by: Kim Wilkins

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:337703​

Publisher: Harlequin Mira 2014

Details: Lying in a magic-induced coma, the King of Thyrsland is on the brink of death: if his enemies knew, chaos would reign. In fear for his life and his kingdom, his five daughters set out on a perilous journey to try to save him, their only hope an aunt they have yet to meet, a shadowy practitioner of undermagic who lives on the wild northern borders.No-one can stand before the fierce tattooed soldier and eldest daughter Bluebell, an army commander who is rumoured to be unkillable, but her sisters, the loyal and mystical Ash, beautiful but unhappily married Rose, pious Willow and uncertain Ivy all have their own secrets to keep from her — the kind of secrets that if revealed could bring disaster down upon not only them, but the entire kingdom. Waiting in the wings is stepbrother Wylm whose dealings with Bluebell's greatest enemy, Hakon the Raven King, would end Bluebell's dreams of revenge on his mother and propel his own desperate grasp for power.

Evergreen Falls

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:337700

Publisher: Hachette Australia 2014

Details: 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No one could have predicted what would unfold. 2014: After years of putting her sick brother's needs before her own, Lauren Beck leaves her home and takes a job at a Blue Mountains cafe, the first stage of the Evergreen Spa Hotel's renovations. There she meets Tomas, the Danish architect who is overseeing the project, and an attraction begins to grow. In a wing of the old hotel, Lauren finds a series of passionate love letters dated back to 1926, alluding to an affair - and a shocking secret. If she can unravel this long-ago mystery, will it make Lauren brave enough to take a risk and change everything in her own life?

The Deep North: a selection of poems

Written by: Bronwyn Lea

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:308145

Publisher: George Braziller 2013

Details: The Braziller Series of Australia Poets continues with the acclaimed poet, Bronwyn Lea, deemed "the brightest light to emerge in Australian poetry" in many years (Geoffrey Lehmann, Weekend Australian) Lea's work is a brilliant mapping of the overlapping regions of our sensual, psychic and emotional worlds, presented with a linguistic and intellectual bravura that makes this a captivating collection.

The Sex Lives of Monsters

Written by: Helen Marshall

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:266bf6c

Publisher: Kelp Queen Press 2013

Details: In The Sex Lives of Monsters, award-winning poet Helen Marshall weaves together ancient myths and urban legends in this poignant exploration of what it means to be monstrous. These poems are peopled with gods, murderers and marvels, with Bigfoot and Billy the Kid. Gorgeous and disturbing, comically sly and coloured with sadness, Marshall revels in our animal selves and their angel traces, in gum wrappers, subway ads, love letters and the crooked children left behind to sift through them. 

Ember Island

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:294993

Publisher: Hachette Livre 2013

Details: From nineteenth-century England to present-day Australia - a riveting story of secrets and scandal 1891: Orphaned as a small child, Tilly Kirkland found a loving, safe home with her grandfather in Dorset. But nineteenth-century England is an unforgiving place for a young woman with limited means and as her grandfather's health fails, it seems perfect timing that she meets Jasper Dellafore. Yet her new husband is not all he seems. Alone in the Channel Islands, Tilly finds her dream of a loving marriage is turning into a nightmare. 2012: Bestselling novelist Nina Jones is struggling with writer's block and her disappointing personal life. Nothing is quite working. After a storm damages Starwater, her house on Ember Island, she decides to stay for a while and oversee the repairs: it s a perfect excuse to leave her problems behind her on the mainland. Then Nina discovers diary pages hidden in the walls of the old home. And a mystery unravels that she is determined to solve. 

The Year of Ancient Ghosts: stories

Written by: Kim Wilkins 

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:294994

Publisher: Ticonderoga Publications 2013

Details: The collection opens with the titular "The Year of Ancient Ghosts", original to this collection, in which Jenny, unable to live by the side of her husband Lachlan, comatose after an accident, brings her two-year-old daughter Mary to the Orkney Islands, a trip that had been planned in order for Lachlan to write a book there. The ancient atmosphere of the Orkneys is vividly captured, along with the magic and mystery of the place. Gripping and emotional from start to finish

Black Mountain

Written by: Venero Armanno

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:278972

Publisher: University of Queensland Press 2012

Details: When a boy sold into slavery finds the courage to escape his brutal life, he is saved by a mysterious stranger, who raises the boy as his own. Renamed Cesare Montenero after Sicily’s own ‘black mountain’, Mount Etna, the boy grows up to discover that his rescue was no accident, that his physical strength is unnatural, and that he has more in common with his saviour than he could have imagined.

The Crystal Code

Written by: Richard Newsome

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:295615

Publisher: Text Publishing 2012

Details: Gerald, Ruby and Sam are meeting up with Alisha and Gerald’s Australian school friend Ox for two weeks of snowboarding in the mountains of California. It’s a dream vacation. But soon after they arrive—by helicopter, with Gerald’s butler Mr Fry at the controls, of course—the private chalet is attacked. Gerald and the gang escape through a secret passage, only to be pursued on snowmobiles by men with guns across frozen lakes and into the path of a cascading avalanche. Could this be the work of Gerald’s nemesis Sir Mason Green, recently escaped from prison? Or is someone else behind the attack?Does the old dry cleaning ticket Gerald found amongst Green’s belongings hold the key?And how does an invitation to join the secretive Billionaire’s Club land Gerald in so much trouble?

Entitlement

Written by: Jessica White

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:381464

Publisher: Viking/Penguin 2012

Details: Eigth years after the mysterious disappearance of her much-loved brother Eliot, Cat McConville finally returns to the family farm, only to discover her ageing parents want to sell it and sever her only remaining link to him. Determined to find her brother and retain the property, she enlists the help of a family friend Mellor, her aunt Natalie, and Finchley, the man who has followed her from Sydney on a whim. All have secrets of their own to hide, but Cate senses it's the land itself that holds the key to unlocking Eliot's fate, and the part of her that went with him.

Lighthouse Bay

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:289713

Publisher: Hachette Australia 2012

Details: 1901: Trapped in a loveless marriage, Isabella Winterbourne struggles with a grief from which she doubts she will ever recover. 2011: Alone and heavy-hearted, Libby Slater has finally come home from her Paris life, not sure what she will find. On the wild and isolated east coast of Australia, Isabella and Libby have to wrestle with the choices they have made and the cards fate has dealt them. A mystery that stretches from one to the other leads Libby to the old diaries of the local lighthouse keeper. The dusty pages help her to unearth Isabella's legacy and rediscover the importance of family and forgiveness.

Wildflower hill

Written by: Kim Wilkins (writing under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:289714

Publisher: Touchstone Publishing 2010

Details: Forced to take her life in a new direction when an injury ends her ballet career, Emma returns to her home in Australia and learns that she has inherited an isolated sheep station from a late grandmother who would impart key lessons about love and motherhood.

The Narcissist

Written by: Stephen Carleton

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:6ac8ff9

Publisher: Sydney Theatre Company

Details: Xavier is a narcissist. He is a jaded, single, urban professional living in New Farm for whom middle age looms, and the prospects of finding a psychosexually well-adjusted partner are beginning to fade. Enter Bronwyn, an equally committed boozy malcontent and his best friend who challenges Xavier to a duel – “Six weeks to bag a man! No ifs, no buts, no limits, no boundaries and no rules!” The gloves are off – whoever scores first, wins. The Narcissist is a riotous and politically incorrect post-modern comedy of manners infused with the joy of popular culture

The Other Way Out

Written by: Bronwyn Lea

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:179922

Publisher: Giramondo Publishing 2008

Details: The Other Way Out opens with the white heat of the tropical north - with a sky so pressing it falls like glass to the ground - and closes with the carved hand of an ancient statue, proffering love and gladness and affirming life. At the heart of the book, a series of monologues attempts to draw language from stone: from a Mt Warning cairn, to the sculptures of Coustou and Rodin, to monuments in Sri Lanka, China, Hollywood and beyond. Grounded in the immediacy of the physical world, these poems are at turns humorous, heated and redemptive, yet always keenly alive.

Gold Dust

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:252711

Publisher: Hachette Livre Australia 2008

Details: In Cold War Leningrad, Sofi and her cousins Natalia and Lena hope for a different life for themselves. Their dreams of the West – of fame, wealth and beautiful things – sustain them through creeping poverty, the long shivering winters and the loss of their fathers. When the fall of the Soviet Union brings them new opportunities, the three girls decide that they will stop at nothing to make their dreams come true.

The Pearl Hunters

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:252712

Publisher: Omnibus Scholastic 2008

Details: In the warm waters of the Indian Ocean Alexandre dives for pearls- but they are not his to keep. His talents are far greater than the ability to hold his breath longer than all the other divers. He is an artist, and when he meets the young and beautiful Constance Blackchurch he also finds hope that one day, his life will be different.

The Dirty Beat

Written by: Venero Armanno

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:163219

Publisher: University Queensland Press

Details: Rock and jazz drummer Max, is dead. His middle-aged heart gave out while dancing with a pretty girl in a smoky pub. He was doing the sound for Dirtybeat – a young band with the sort of talent that neither he nor his fellow rock band members had enough of back in the seventies. Those were the years when Max learned about music, life and love in equal proportions. His stepfather Concetto San Fillipo taught him how to play the drums straight and to live the same way. “Shoot straight, or don’t shoot at all,” he told Max. With his first love, Max learnt about sex while Alice Cooper sang, God/I feel so strong/I feel so strong/I’m so strong/I feel so strong; he learned about loss from Debbie Canova, who made the type of music with her soaring violin that could pierce a man’s soul; and he learned about hope and new chances from Laetecia Sparks, who held more dreams and secrets from Max than he could ever have imagined.Now, in his coffin as his friends prepare to bury him, Max is surrounded by the ghosts of his life and the dreams that never faded.

A Curious Intimacy

Written by: Jessica White

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:381463

Publisher: Viking/Penguin 2007

Details: In the 1870s two remarkable women meet in a remote country town in Western Australia. Ingrid is hundreds of miles from home, trying to distance herself from a broken heart after her lover was forced to marry. Ellyn is a young woman living in stark isolation and driven close to madness by the death of her baby daughter.  Ellyn's husband is away indefinitely, and she's had no word from him. When the two women meet, they forge a bond that grows ever deeper. But can their intimacy find acceptance in their conventional world?

Duet

Written by: Kim Wilkins (under Kimberley Freeman)

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:252714

Publisher: Hachette Livre Australia 2007

Details: A story of passion, greed, secrets and lies. Present day: A reclusive woman living in outback Australia receives a letter acknowledging a terrible secret from her past. Thirty years before, she stole another woman's life.

Candle Life

Written by: Venero Armanno

Espace link: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:121015

Publisher: Random House Australia 2006

Details: An Australian novelist is living in an arts community in Paris, trying to write. He is mourning the death of the love of his life, Kiko. Still drowning in grief, one day he is harassed by a beggar, who claims to be a famous American writer, Sonny Lee. As his life is penetrated by Sonny it begins to unravel. Soon the novelist encounters Zoya, a mute Russian girl with whom he makes love, and in turn she introduces him to Les Belles Endormies - a place where, after drinking a potent green tea, clients fall asleep and experience hallucinogenic dreams about episodes in their past. In the meantime the death of a friend brings the novelist into contact with Emilie, and slowly love begins to seem possible to him again.