Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds

Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds PDF Author: Gregory Day
Publisher: Picador Australia
ISBN: 1741980445
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award On the wild clifftop of the coastal town of Mangowak, Ron McCoy lives an almost marsupial existence with his elderly mother. He hunts and gathers while the town sleeps; he is acutely shy, but in the privacy of his imagination, fostered as it is by his love of music and the oceanscape of his birth, all things are possible. Liz and Craig Wilson, meanwhile, are lovers of the surf and the bush. When Craig is offered a job by Colin Batty, Mangowak's larrikin real estate agent, the dream of bringing up their kids away from the city is finally realised. But working for Batty Real Estate is not as simple as it seems. The surrounding landscape is full of alchemic power and mystery and when Ron McCoy and his mother decide to sell half their land, the subtle generational differences between young and old Australia begin to swirl. Written in a precise, painterly style, Gregory Day's follow-up to his award-winning debut novel, The Patron Saint of Eels, is a powerful meditation on belonging, on landscape, and on love.

Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds

Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds PDF Author: Gregory Day
Publisher: Picador Australia
ISBN: 1741980445
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award On the wild clifftop of the coastal town of Mangowak, Ron McCoy lives an almost marsupial existence with his elderly mother. He hunts and gathers while the town sleeps; he is acutely shy, but in the privacy of his imagination, fostered as it is by his love of music and the oceanscape of his birth, all things are possible. Liz and Craig Wilson, meanwhile, are lovers of the surf and the bush. When Craig is offered a job by Colin Batty, Mangowak's larrikin real estate agent, the dream of bringing up their kids away from the city is finally realised. But working for Batty Real Estate is not as simple as it seems. The surrounding landscape is full of alchemic power and mystery and when Ron McCoy and his mother decide to sell half their land, the subtle generational differences between young and old Australia begin to swirl. Written in a precise, painterly style, Gregory Day's follow-up to his award-winning debut novel, The Patron Saint of Eels, is a powerful meditation on belonging, on landscape, and on love.

Words Are Eagles

Words Are Eagles PDF Author: Gregory Day
Publisher: Upswell
ISBN: 1743822502
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
A collection of beautiful and moving essays on the wonder of the natural world and the cultural complexities of writing landscape in Australia Words are Eagles collects in one place the essays of award-winning novelist and nature writer, Gregory Day. Grounded in the landscape of southwestern Victoria, and infused with the heightened sense of place and environmental literacy that have long been key to Day's work, these essays traverse landscape, language and histories. Day's attention is tuned both to beauty of the natural world, returning often to the motifs of ground and sky, ocean and owl, moth and river, and the history of place - whether lost, buried or personal. In a part a reading and celebration of the resurgent global nature writing movement, to which Day was an early contributor, this collection highlights the need for ecological care and value of Indigenous knowledge and practices. This is the kind of nature writing that gets to the heart of our urgent need for a more harmonious and regenerative relationship with the earth that sustains us

After the Celebration

After the Celebration PDF Author: Ken Gelder
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Takes off where Gelder and Salzman's previous book ends. It looks at the major genres of Australian fiction that have flourished in Australia since 1988, from the popular crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance and the action blockbuster to the literary.

Archipelago of Souls

Archipelago of Souls PDF Author: Gregory Day
Publisher: Picador Australia
ISBN: 1743538529
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE PATRICK WHITE LITERARY AWARD "Day is one of a small, bold band of Australian novelists...whose imaginative compass is as spacious as is their appetite for risk." The Weekend Australian "Day has chiselled artfully away at his creation, and the result is lovely." The Saturday Paper In the aftermath of the Second World War, an Australian soldier, Wesley Cress, a hero of the underground resistance on German-occupied Crete, seeks solace and comfort on King Island, in the mouth of Bass Strait, in the Roaring Forties latitude of the Southern Ocean. Wesley carries in his heart the infernal story of the Battle of Crete, the disappearance of his brother in the ensuing evacuation, and the hellish journey he was forced to take after he was left behind on the ancient island. When he meets Leonie Fermoy, the granddaughter of an American whaler with her own nightmares, the private and the public battles of their post-war worlds begin to fuse. Through the agency of John Lascelles - the unassuming postmaster on the island and a crusader for the rights of returned soldiers - Wes and Leonie attempt to negotiate a future in which love can prevail in a morally devastated world. Archipelago of Souls is a novel exploring the difficult realities of nationhood, war, morality and love. Compelling and beautifully realised, it is about the creation of identity, the enigmas of memory and the power of the written word to heal the deepest wounds. "Richly layered and skilfully controlled, Day is one of a small, bold band of Australian novelists whose imaginative compass is as spacious as is their appetite for risk. For each renewal of his career we can be thankful." The Australian "A mature and searching book. It is consummately crafted." Michael McGirr, SMH "Archipelago of Souls is a novel that I read as slowly as I could, not only to savour Day's eloquence and skill in evoking his main characters, the villagers on Crete and King Island, and landscape, plants, and animals; not only to marvel at the moving, universal story he tells; not only to listen to the musicality and rhythm he creates with language, but also because I didn't want it to end. Gregory Day is a master storyteller." Newtown Review of Books "It's a beautifully written book with a poetic ring to many descriptions that evoke strong imagery, complementing the strong storyline, which will be remembered long after the last page is turned."The Weekly Times "Day's account of Cress' grinding struggle on Crete is remarkable in every way." The Age

The Football Girl

The Football Girl PDF Author: Thatcher Heldring
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375987142
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book

The Grand Hotel

The Grand Hotel PDF Author: Gregory Day
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 1741669731
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Strange things are happening at the Grand Hotel... 'A hotel as a work of art in little ol' Mangowak? It was about as unlikely as an indoor creek.' Robbed of his zest for life by the absurd innovations of his local council, including knocking down the only pub in his beloved home town and roofing over a section of the creek to protect swimmers from the rain, artist Noel Lea exiles himself in the hills above Mangowak, on the southwest Victorian coast. He returns to find an unexpected destiny awaits. At a turning point in the town's history it seems he has a crucial role to play, as the unlikely publican of an even unlikelier hotel. This is a novel about an Australian pub twenty-first-century style, where the toilets play automated Dadaist recordings, Happy Hour comes with a blessing from the Pope and the patrons' libidos are as voracious as their thirst for the local ale. As events in the hotel take a twist that not even its inventive publican could have imagined, a long-held local mystery begins finally to unravel. Noel and his friends find themselves in uncharted territory, and, to make matters worse, the local authorities are hell-bent on closing them down. From the award-winning author of The Patron Saint of Eels and Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds, Gregory Day's third novel is a witty, earthy and lyrical tour de force that takes some well-aimed swipes at the aspirations and absurdities of contemporary life.

Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed PDF Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019974369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981

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Book Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

The Cinderella Moment

The Cinderella Moment PDF Author: Jennifer Kloester
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
ISBN: 1742535992
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A love of fashion. A couture competition. A once-in-a-lifetime chance . . . Angel wants to be a fashion designer, but without money or connections, it's going to be a challenge. So when she gets a chance to head to Paris, Angel grabs it - even if it means masquerading as her best friend Lily. That can't be too hard, can it? But faking things doesn't come easy, and when Angel meets her very own Prince Charming, things start to get complicated. She needs to stop her secrets unravelling if she wants to live happily ever . . . From exciting talent Jennifer Kloester comes a modern fairytale of high society, mistaken identity, love, betrayal, friendship - and great clothes.

The Patron Saint of Eels

The Patron Saint of Eels PDF Author: Gregory Day
Publisher: Picador Australia
ISBN: 9780330421584
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
A contemporary fable, this book shows that when life seems dull and cruel it is the power of the natural world, and our ability to imagine it, that can bring the wonder back into living.In the southern Italian village of Stellanuova, in the 1700s, a Franciscan monk, Fra Ionio, becomes known as the Patron Saint of Eels when he brings a distraught fisherman's yearly catch of eels back from the dead in the village market. When Stellanuova's inhabitants emigrate to Australia in the post World War II migrations of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the immortal saint is left looking down on an abandoned town. To fulfil his calling, he decides in heaven to migrate with his countrymen and now looks down on the state of Victoria, where he intercedes in matters relating to eels.In the southern Victorian town of Mangowak, Noel Lea lives with the melancholy inheritance of a place undergoing the gentrifications of contemporary Australia. Along with his oldest friend, Nanette Burns, he longs for a time when life was less complex and unexpected magic seemed to permeate the ocean town and its people. When spring rains flood a nearby swamp and hundreds of eels get trapped in the grassy ditches around Noel's family home, he and Nanette encounter the vibrant Fra Ionio and get more magic than they bargained for.A beautifully written, charming and evocative book by Gregory Day, who also authored Trace, in collaboration with photographer, Robert Ashton.

No Ordinary Joes

No Ordinary Joes PDF Author: Larry Colton
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307717240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
On April 23, 1943, the seventy-man crew of the USS Grenadier scrambled to save their submarine—and themselves—after a Japanese aerial torpedo sent it crashing to the ocean floor. Miraculously, the men were able to bring the sub back to the surface, only to be captured by the Japanese. No Ordinary Joes tells the harrowing story of four of the Grenadier’s crew: Bob Palmer of Medford, Oregon; Chuck Vervalin of Dundee, New York; Tim McCoy of Dallas, Texas; and Gordy Cox of Yakima, Washington. All were enlistees from families that struggled through the Great Depression. The lure of service and duty to country were not their primary motivations—they were more compelled by the promise of a job that provided “three hots and a cot” and a steady paycheck. On the day they were captured, all four were still teenagers. Together, the men faced unimaginable brutality at the hands of their captors in a prisoner of war camp. With no training in how to respond in the face of relentless interrogations and with less than a cup of rice per day for sustenance, each man created his own strategy for survival. When the liberation finally came, all four anticipated a triumphant homecoming to waiting families, loved ones, and wives, but instead were forced to find a new kind of strength as they struggled to resume their lives in a world that had given them up for dead, and with the aftershocks of an experience that haunted and colored the rest of their days. Author Larry Colton brings the lives of these four “ordinary” heroes into brilliant focus. Theirs is a story of tragedy and courage, romance and war, loss and endurance, failure and redemption. With a scope both panoramic and disarmingly intimate, No Ordinary Joes is a powerful look at the atrocities of war, the reality of its aftermath, and the restorative power of love.