The Shiralee

His style is realistically forthright and uninhibited, his prose crisp, and, at times, tremendously vivid' Walkabout A shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone – and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley. He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back. Strangers to each other at first, father and daughter drift aimlessly through the dusty towns of Australia, sleeping rough and relying on odd jobs for food and money. Buster's resilience and trust slowly erode Macauley's resentment, and when he's finally able to get rid of her, he realises he can't let his shiralee go. In evocative prose that vividly conjures images of rural Australia, The Shiralee reveal and understanding of the paradoxical nature of the burdens we carry, creates a moving portrait of fatherhood, told with gruff humour and a gentle pathos.

Fred Scully searches for his pregnant wife, who disappears without an explanation, leaving him with Billy, his seven-year-old daughter.

Murray Tepper would say that he is an ordinary New Yorker who is simply trying to read the newspaper in peace. But he reads while sitting behind the wheel of his parked car, and his car always seems to be in a particularly desirable parking spot. Not surprisingly, he is regularly interrupted by drivers who want to know if he is going out. Tepper isn’t going out. Why not? His explanations tend to be rather literal: the indisputable fact, for instance, that he has twenty minutes left on the meter. Tepper’s behavior sometimes irritates the people who want his spot. (“Is that where you live? Is that car rent-controlled?”) It also irritates the mayor—Frank Ducavelli, known in tabloid headlines as Il Duce—who sees Murray Tepper as a harbinger of what His Honor always calls “the forces of disorder.” But once New Yorkers become aware of Tepper, some of them begin to suspect that he knows something they don’t know. And an ever-increasing number of them are willing to line up for the opportunity to sit in his car with him and find out. Tepper Isn’t Going Out is a wise and witty story of an ordinary man who, perhaps innocently, changes the world around him. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin.

What is it about the Australian outback? For nearly two centuries, narratives of outback journeys have been suffused with the aura of death. Why? It is not just that the desert is big, dry, hot and apparently empty. The outback is Australia’s “mythological crucible,” and journeys there have become rites of passage. It is where settler Australians go to die and perhaps be reborn. This book explores the landscape of this evolving national mythology. It argues that a more conscious engagement with the process of symbolic death and rebirth is needed for Australians to enter into a deeper understanding of themselves and their relationship to the land and its Indigenous people.

What is a mixed movie? A film to which artists of various nationalities contribute. Popular examples are "Land of the Pharaohs," "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Casino Royale" and "The Sundowners." British players like Errol Flynn, Stewart Granger, Rex Harrison and James Mason have always been welcome in Hollywood. Not so well known are the numerous examples of American actors who lent their talents to British films, such as Robert Ayres, Phyllis Kirk, Mona Freeman, Frank Sinatra, Carol Lynley, William Bendix, Russ Tamblyn, William Holden, Raquel Welch, Joan Crawford, Gene Tierney, Van Johnson, Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Alex Nicol, Zachary Scott, and Wayne Morris, to mention but a few such appearances that are detailed in this book.

For over a century the Warren family has earned a hard and dangerous living, fishing out of Eden on the south coast of New South Wales. From the family's first fisherman, Old Ike, plying the coast in an open sailing boat in the late nineteenth century, to the Warrens today, using satellites and computers; from handlining to the brutal efficiency of purse seining, we witness a century of profound change that has forever altered the nature of our oceans. As the seasons unfold, and generations come and go, there emerges an intimate portrait of a family earning their living in a perilous and unforgiving environment. Through depression, war, shipwreck and storm, record catches and bitter disappointments, fights and family feuds, the Warrens have endured in a game where only the hardiest survive. Filled with unforgettable characters, adventure, humour and pathos, this is the inspiring story of a fishing dynasty – showing just how extraordinary the ordinary can be.

Beatrice Davis, 1909-1992, was general editor at Angus and Robertson the main Australian publishing company from 1937 to 1973. There she discovered and published such writers as Thea Astley, Miles Franklin, Patricia Wrightson, Xavier Herbert and Hal Porter becoming a literary tastemaker in the process. A central figure in Australian literature – ‘respected, feared, courted and berated.’ Originally published to great acclaim in 2001, A Certain Style introduced this stylish and formidable woman to thousands of readers and told a history of books and publishing in twentieth-century Australia. This reissue has a new introduction and updates throughout as the author presents a compelling account of a contradictory woman and her times.

Following on from A Fence Around the Cuckoo, this is the second volume of autobiography by one of Australia’s best storytellers, Ruth Park, author of The Harp in the South and the Miles Franklin-winning Swords and Crowns and Rings