Dark Places: Text Classics

Dark Places: Text Classics PDF Author: Kate Grenville
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921811
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Dark Places, a companion novel to Lilian’s Story, is the tale of a man with a comically grand exterior who believes he has the right, and the duty, to conquer the mocking flesh of any woman. Even his own daughter.

Wish

Wish PDF Author: Peter Goldsworthy
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148113
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
J.J. is back living at home in Adelaide, unemployed and drifting after a messy divorce. Then he is offered a job teaching Sign to Eliza. His new pupil is smart, sensitive, attractive - and a gorilla recently liberated from a medical research laboratory by animal rights activists. First published in 1995, the third novel by the acclaimed writer Peter Goldsworthy is unique in Australian literature: a dazzling, moving story about scientific experimentation and ethics, language and love. This edition comes with a new introduction by James Bradley. Peter Goldsworthy has won the FAW Christina Stead Prize for fiction, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and a Helpmann Award, shared with the composer Richard Mills, for the opera Batavia. His poetry and novels have been widely translated; four of his novels and the short story 'The Kiss' have been adapted for the stage. His most recent book is the short-story collection Gravel, shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal for Literature. This year Penguin is publishing His Stupid Boyhood, a comic memoir, and Maestro, his debut novel, is being reissued as an Angus & Robertson Australian Classic. '[Goldsworthy's] greatest achievement...Brave, brilliant, as intellectually challenging as it is playful, it is testament to a restless and unpredictable imagination.' James Bradley 'Stylish, imaginative, poignant, and hugely unsettling.' Australian 'A deeply satisfying book...represents a new achievement in his fiction...Read it. You won't find another novel like it.' Adelaide Review

The Refuge

The Refuge PDF Author: Kenneth Mackenzie
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925095592
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
Late at night Lloyd Fitzherbert, police reporter with the Sydney Gazette, is picked up by his man in CIB - for a last-minute job that won't take a minute - at the morgue. A body has been found in the harbour. Irma, a beautiful young woman who fled persecution in Nazi Europe, is dead. She was Fitzherbert's lover. And, though the police don't know it yet, he killed her. Gripping and atmospheric, The Refuge is a murderer's confession - a tale of wartime Sydney, with its paranoia about communism and spies. Kenneth Mackenzie's last novel is utterly different to his lauded debut, The Young Desire It, yet it shares that book's psychological acuity and mastery of language. Kenneth Mackenzie was born in 1913 in South Perth. His parents divorced in 1919, and thereafter he lived with his mother and maternal grandfather. Unhappy years boarding at Guildford Grammar School were the basis for his highly acclaimed first novel, The Young Desire It, which was published in London in 1937. Mackenzie's subsequent novels were The Chosen (1938), Dead Men Rising (1951), based partly on his experience of the Cowra breakout and The Refuge (1954); he also produced two volumes of poetry. He received a number of grants and awards, including the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. 'The history of a crime told as excitingly and with as much dramatic tension as anything by Graham Greene or Raymond Chandler.' Kenneth Slessor, Sun 'Remarkable...A genuine personal tragedy.' A. D. Hope, Sydney Morning Herald 'Fascinating, extremely skilful and subtle.' Sun-Herald 'One of our most gifted novelists.' Sunday Observer ‘The Refuge is also a stunning enactment of its central idea. It could have been filmed by Hitchcock.’ Age

Fairyland

Fairyland PDF Author: Sumner Locke Elliott
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148172
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The final book by Sumner Locke Elliott, the award-winning author of Careful, He Might Hear You. Drawing heavily on Locke Elliott's own experiences, Fairyland charts the life of Seaton Daly, an aspiring writer coming to terms with his homosexuality in the repressive atmosphere of inner-city Sydney during the 1930s and '40s. Lonely and naive, Daly dreams of escaping to the 'promised land' of the United States. Fairyland is an intimate, affecting, sometimes harrowing portrayal of a lifelong search for love. Sumner Locke Elliott's 'coming out' novel, it was first published in 1990, the year before his death. This new edition comes with an introduction by Dennis Altman. Sumner Locke Elliott was born in Sydney. His mother was the writer Helena Sumner Locke. She died of eclampsia the day after his birth, and the boy was raised by his aunts. Careful, He Might Hear You was Elliott's debut novel. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1963, was translated into a number of languages and became an international bestseller. In 1983 it was made into an outstanding film directed by Carl Schultz, starring Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin and Nicholas Gledhill. Elliott wrote ten novels in all. He won the Patrick White Literary Award in 1977. After a lifetime of concealing his homosexuality, he spent his final years living with his partner Whitfield Cook. Sumner Locke Elliott died in New York City in 1991. 'Beautifully written and moving...an elegantly crafted novel of lasting importance.' Dennis Altman

The Delinquents

The Delinquents PDF Author: Criena Rohan
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925095142
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Brownie and Lola are young and in love. But the odds - not to mention their mothers, the cops, welfare officers and the stifling conventions of 1950s Brisbane - are against them. When they are forced to face adult responsibilities, will they rise to the challenge, or fall apart? The Delinquents, Criena Rohan's classic novel of rock and roll, youthful rebellion and big dreams, is a love story for the ages. Deirdre Cash, who published under the pseudonym Criena Rohan, was born in 1924 in Melbourne. She grew up in South Australian and Melbourne, and went on to attend the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. She married twice, had two children and worked variously as a singer and ballroom-dancing teacher. Ill-health inspired her to pursue her love of writing in the late 1950s. She published her first novel, The Delinquents in 1962. It was followed by Down by the Dockside in 1963. Cash passed away from cancer that same year at the age of thirty-eight. 'A back-street Tristan and Isolde.' Daily Mail, 1962

Moral Hazard

Moral Hazard PDF Author: Kate Jennings
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925095150
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
I disapproved of bankers, on principle. Not that I knew any. Until this job, I had worked and made friends with people who shared my views. Mostly moral, mostly kind. An unlikely candidate, then, for the job of executive speechwriter, to be putting words in the mouths of plutocrats deeply suspicious of metaphors and words of more than two syllables. An unlikely candidate, too, to be working for a firm...whose ethic was borrowed in equal parts from the Marines, the CIA, and Las Vegas. A firm where women were about as welcome as fleas in a sleeping bag. Wall Street in the mid-1990s: the recession is over and finance companies are gearing up for the next boom. Cath—wisecracking Australian-born ‘bedrock feminist, unreconstructed left-winger’—has given up freelance writing for corporate life at one of the big investment banks. Her husband, Bailey, has Alzheimer’s, and they need serious money. For seven years Cath lives in two worlds, both of them mad. By day she grapples with the twisted logic and outsized egos of high finance. By night she witnesses the inexorable decline of the man she loves as, ravaged by disease, he is 'reduced to a nub'. Wise, unsentimental and darkly funny, Kate Jennings' Moral Hazard is a crisp accounting of looming meltdowns—financial and personal. Kate Jennings was a poet, essayist, short-story writer and novelist. Both her novels, Snake and Moral Hazard, were New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and she won the ALS Gold Medal, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Adelaide Festival fiction prize. She died in 2021. 'This is a unique book by an extraordinary writer, the great city illuminated from within. Kate Jennings brings all her powers of pace and tone to bear in a novel that is humane and unsparing; witty, unsettling, and wildly intelligent. I know of no other voice that so conveys the contemporary workplace in its vulnerability and its denaturing, and its difficult morality.' Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus 'An engrossing, cautionary tale for the twenty-first century...with unsparing rapier wit.' Philadelphia Enquirer 'A work of considerable formal beauty.' Age 'The finest novel I've read this year...Don't let its brevity fool you. Moral Hazard is a big book in the truest sense of the word.' Salon.com 'Written in spare and starkly honest prose, this novel foreshadows the recent accounting scandals at Enron, World-Com and other companies, and shows that even in the midst of corruption and tragedy, individuals can stick to their beliefs.' Wall Street Journal 'Jennings is a writer of substance—and Moral Hazard is substantial writing.' Australian 'Compelling reading; Cath's thorny humour adapts well to both terminal illness and terminal greed.' New York Observer 'An insider's view of the city without the spin; a steely, unsentimental vision delivered with a poet's sure touch.' Bulletin 'An extraordinary novel: pleasurable and powerful, mordant and harrowing.' New Statesman 'A piercing novel, gleaming with facets of hard-won knowledge, polished by experience and a keen intelligence.' Publisher's Weekly

When Blackbirds Sing

When Blackbirds Sing PDF Author: Martin Boyd
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148997
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
The last novel in Martin Boyd's celebrated Langton Quartet, which includes The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man and Outbreak of Love. At the outbreak of World War I, Dominic Langton leaves his wife on a remote sheep farm in New South Wales to enlist in the British Army. What he experiences in the trenches changes him forever; his return home sees him cast off his past and find his own integrity. He has seen the true nature of war - the senseless waste of life, the millions of young men condemned to pointless slaughter - and has emerged a wiser, but troubled, man. When Blackbirds Sing is a masterful recreation of the vanished world of 1914, and a moving and powerful testament to the devastation of war. In this final instalment of Martin Boyd's celebrated Langton Quartet, Boyd confirms his reputation as one of the most outstanding novelists Australia has ever produced. Martin a' Beckett Boyd was born in Switzerland in 1893. After leaving school, he enrolled in a seminary, but he abandoned this vocation and began to train as an architect. He served in the Royal East Kent Regiment and the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and settled in England after the war. His first novel, Love Gods, was published in 1925. Three years later The Montforts appeared, then Lucinda Brayford in 1946. In the coming decade he was to write the Langton Quartet: The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love, When Blackbirds Sing. In 1957 he went to Rome, where he lived and continued to write until his death in 1972.

Selected Stories

Selected Stories PDF Author: Amy Witting
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925410498
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Amy Witting was a master of the short story, the genre in which she felt ‘most at home’. Her subjects—childhood and school, marriage and loneliness, the cruelty of men and women—are rendered in a crisp, understated style, at once compassionate and unsentimental. This new selection of twenty pieces from across five decades includes the acclaimed novella-length ‘The Survivors’ and the final appearance of Isobel Callaghan from I for Isobel. Amy Witting was born in Annandale, an inner suburb of Sydney, in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria’s War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty Is the Straw; and her Collected Poems. She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as Quadrant and the New Yorker. Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award. Amy Witting died in 2001. ‘Brilliant distillations...tinged with latent tenderness.’ New York Times

Me and Mr Booker

Me and Mr Booker PDF Author: Cory Taylor
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925410587
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
I know what Mr Booker would say on the topic of experience. He would say what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. Martha could have said no when Mr Booker tried to kiss her. But Martha is sixteen, she lives in a dull town, her father is mad, her home is stifling. Of course she would kiss the charming Englishman who brightened her world with whiskey and cigarettes, adventure and sex—whatever the consequences. Me and Mr Booker, Cory Taylor’s acclaimed debut, is a novel about feeling old when you’re young and acting young when you’re not. Cory Taylor was born in Queensland in 1955. She was an award-winning novelist and screenwriter who also published short fiction and children’s books. Her first novel, Me and Mr Booker, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Pacific Region) in 2012 and her second novel, My Beautiful Enemy, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. She died on 5 July 2016, a couple of months after Dying: A Memoir was published. ‘Cory Taylor’s characters are magnificently created.’ Australian ‘A vibrant, questioning and unpredictable read.’ West Australian ‘Me and Mr Booker is sharply observed and blackly comic, but it is also a tender depiction of love, sex, power and one girl's heartbreaking step into adulthood.’ Australian Bookseller + Publisher ‘Cory Taylor's Me and Mr Booker has the heart of Lolita and the soul of Catcher In The Rye, this is one of the most assured debut novels I have ever read. These characters feel so real that they become almost family. Refreshing, surprising, sexy and ultimately very moving.’ Krissy Kneen ‘Elegant and controlled and wickedly funny.’ David Vann

Fishing in the Styx

Fishing in the Styx PDF Author: Ruth Park
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 192577421X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
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

Blue Skies

Blue Skies PDF Author: Helen Hodgman
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925410714
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
In Helen Hodgman’s dazzlingly written debut a young woman is trapped in a small city on an island at the end of the world—by motherhood and an absent husband, by busybody in-laws and neighbours, by a drab society yet to throw off the shackles of its colonial past. A darkly funny tale of a crack-up in stultifying suburbia, Blue Skies marked the emergence of a unique, acerbic voice in Australian fiction. This edition includes an introduction by the acclaimed Tasmanian author Danielle Wood. The clock always said three in the afternoon, no matter what you did to it...No matter what you tried, the day ran out then, and there was nothing left to fill it with. Helen Hodgman was the author of the novels Blue Skies (1976), Jack and Jill (1978; winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Broken Words (1988; winner of the Christina Stead Prize), Passing Remarks (1996), Waiting for Matindi (1998) and The Bad Policeman (2001). She died in June, 2022. ‘Singularly searing and merciless prose.’ Sunday Age ‘As fresh, punchy and relevant now as it was on its [first] release...A compelling vision.’ Australian ‘Scarily unforgettable.’ Peter Conrad ‘Strange and memorable.’ Eva Hornung ‘The very essence of Tasmanian gothic.’ Carmel Bird ‘Sensuous...Prickly as a sea urchin.’ Nicholas Shakespeare ‘A convincing study of a woman slowly losing her mind.’ Sunday Herald ‘Elegantly written, atmospheric.’ Brenda Niall, Australian Book Review ‘Has a masterpiece’s power to thrill and discomfort.’ Sunday Tasmanian ‘Stylistically assured...Daring and persuasive in its depiction of a controlled and vengeful anguish.’ Peter Pierce, Sydney Morning Herald