Consumed with despair, Palestinian Nassrin walks into the ocean with her baby in her arms. Susanna dares to take a stand against gay-bashers. By starlight, Bodil sees the city of Malmo from the roof of a church. Estella meets her tough little half-brother for the first time. Lonely Rhyme seeks shelter in a tree full of fairy lights. And all around them, the hum of concrete.

James Brandt didn't look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now he has returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge. The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm triggers James's journalistic curiosity - and his anxiety - both of which cropped up during his turbulent journey to adulthood. But it is the unexpected homophobic attack he survives that draws James into a hunt for the reasons one lonely Kippen farm boy in every generation kills himself. Standing in the way is James's father, the town's recently retired top cop, who is not prepared to investigate crimes no-one reckons have taken place. James must use every newshound's trick he ever learned in order to uncover the brutal truth.

One sultry October morning in Darwin, hemp-wearing army wife Amy Silva grips a trembling fist around two pink lines on a plastic stick. Struggling to come to terms with her rampant fertility, disillusioned with a haughty obstetrician, and infuriated by an inordinate amount of peeing, Amy finds solace in a decision to homebirth. After all, it worked for the cavewomen, right? But as a tropical cyclone threatens to whip down the main street, Amy finds herself facing more than biology. Peace, Love & Khaki Socks explores what it is to be a woman, an expectant mother, a lover and a friend in a patriarchy. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes hilarious and always honest, this unforgettable story is one woman’s struggle to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.

1901. The slide clunks into the lantern, and Phantoms come alive on the wall. The father-son Magic Lantern team of Bert and Tom Eliot are masters of the Art of the Story. The only problem is that they are missing a wife and mother. Then one morning eleven-year-old Tom wakes to find his father missing, too. The Lanternist's apprentice is thrown out of home, forced to work for the arch-criminal Jimmy Sacks, arrested and imprisoned. Will he ever be able to escape with his new friend Max and make the long, flea-bitten, rat-infested journey to Sydney in search of his parents?The Lanternist is a story about stories, and how they show us a way through life, despite the callous landladies, corrupt officials, criminal companions and the problems with living in incinerators. But mostly, it is about searching, and making your own endings.

"It's 1665. Rats have infested homes and alleys in Marie Perrin's provincial French town. Twelve-year-old Marie is set to become a maid, although she hungers for adventure. However, one mistake alters her fate and as punishment she is forced to apprentice for an intimidating rat-catcher. Away from her parents and twin brother, and handling gnarly rat traps under Gustave Renard's unusual mentorship, Marie must overcome a new set of challenges which come after a plague enters her town. Are rats responsible for the spread of the illness? Can Marie find a way out of the bubbling danger around her?"--Publisher's description.

1987. The Philippine government fights a total war against insurgency. The village of Iraya is militarised. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her twelve-metre hair, Estrella, the Fish-hair Woman, trawls corpses from the water that tastes of lemon-grass. She falls in love with the Australian Tony McIntyre who disappears in the conflict. Ten years later, his son travels to Manila to find his father. From the Philippines to Australia, Hawai'i, to evocations of colonial Spain, this transnational novel spins a dark, epic tale. Its storytelling is expansive, like the heart -- How much can the heart accommodate? ... Only four chambers but with infinite space like memory, where there is room even for those whom we do not love.

The hilarious, tender and heartbreaking story of a watershed day in the life of Stephen - aimless, unhappy and unfulfilled, this stiflingly hot December day is the day he has decided to dump his girlfriend. A sharply observed, 24-hour urban love story.