Something that threatens the whole of humanity. Something is going viral. 20 Minutes. 20 People. 20 stories that will make you want to stay inside and never greet another human being again. This is a short novella about a viral outbreak in a small town in the Lake District and shows how quickly disease can spread amongst the population. This isn't the Coronavirus. But it's just as scary. Humans. Viruses. Panic. Fear. There goes the countryside...

    From Aunty Boo’s surveillance of the local farmers’ sheep dip alliance to Aunty Bubby’s fireside tales of the Punic Wars, the women in this book offer sage advice to their nieces about growing up as Aboriginal girls in a white country town. Farming is not an easy pursuit for anyone, but the Aunties take all the challenges in stride, facing torrential rain, violent neighbors, and injured dogs with an equal mix of humor and courage.

    Grey prays that his mother will be returned to him in some form, so he might protect her from the world as his father did not. This prayer, Grey believes is answered in his sister Irene. He becomes obsessed with protecting her purity and innocence.Also with his mother gone and his father turned to drink, Grey begins running with the wild boys, horse-handlers and fox hunters and part-time timber workers - members of a small, vanishing tribe who find themselves caught between an old relationship with place and a new one that is exemplified by the highway that threatens their town. A rash gamble by Grey and Irene's broken father means he and the Mary Smokes boys must steal horses to ensure Irene's safety. The consequences seem set to fall on Greys' closest friend, Ook' Eccleston. As Grey's, Eccleston's and Irene's lives are put at stake his allegiances falter and the world of Mary Smokes slips into a heightened state of darkness and threat.With the passion of Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights and the distilled beauty of Ondaatje Patrick Holland captures the fragility and grace of small town life and how one fateful moment can forever alter the course of our lives.

    

    It is a profound and delicate disclosure of a subject too often simplified, too often made funny. Funny is included, but the beauty of these tales is in the invisible stitching of erudition and the quite breathtaking emotional understanding of what the weight of the word dislocation means in any human life." Helen Elliott, The Monthly.The Judges' Report for the VPLAThe Fireflies of Autumn is a tough and charming book, with echoes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Italo Calvino in its blend of the fantastic, the superstitious, the bawdy and the violent. It’s a collection of interconnected stories – novelistic and written with a refreshing, straightforward sense of humour. It is also, in a sly way, a deeply personal but bracingly unsentimental history of migration - of both its burdens and gains. ‘What if,’ one of the narrators notes early on, ‘after a lifetime you still wonder whether you made a monumental, irreparable mistake by emigrating to Australia?’Based largely in the Italian village of San Ginese and broken down into a number of sections, we meet a cast of memorable characters such as Tommaso The Killer, The Angel of Sadness, The Imbecile Daughters and The Adulteress. Moving backwards and forwards in time – from World War I to post-World War II and back again – the chronology is as disjointed as memory and offers a comprehensive portrait of the life not only of a particular village but of a generation of Italians who often endured great hardship, especially during the Mussolini years, and dreamed of better lives in America or Australia. There is a wonderful sense of the complexity of the relationships between family members and the other villagers. A sense, in fact, of the village as a single, constantly evolving organism.======San Ginese is a village where God lingers in people’s minds and many dream of California, Argentina or Australia. Some leave only to return feeling disheartened, wishing they had never come back, some never leave and forever wish they had.The Fireflies of Autumn takes us to the olive groves and piazzas of this little-known Tuscan village. There we meet Bucchione, who was haunted by the Angel of Sadness; Lo Zena, his neighbour, with whom he feuded for forty years; Tommaso the Killer, the Adulteress, the Dead Boy and many others.These are tales of war and migration, feasts and misfortunes – of a people and their place over the course of the twentieth century.

    An editor-in-chief drives his sister halfway around the country to an east-coast rehabilitation clinic. A single mother flies to Perth with her autistic son for one last holiday. A father at the end of his tether tries to survive the chaos of the Sydney Royal Easter Show. A group of young friends hire a luxury beach house in the final weeks of one of their lives. A postman hits a pedestrian and drives off into the night.When There's Nowhere Else to Run is a collection of stories about people who find their lives unravelling. They are teachers, lawyers, nurses, firemen, chefs, gamblers, war veterans, hard drinkers, adulterers, widows and romantics. Seeking refuge all across the country, from the wheat belt of Western Australia, the limestone desert of South Australia, the sugarcane towns of Queensland, the hinterland of New South Wales to the coastline of Victoria, they discover that no matter how many thousands of kilometres they put between themselves and their transgressions, sometimes there's nowhere else to run.'Masterfully controlled, lingers long in the memory.' Rohan Wilson, author of The Roving Party and To Name Those Lost'Assured, witty and wise.' Stephen Romei, Literary Editor, The Australian'Vivid and compelling.' Jenny Barry, BooksPlus

    

    Penny Bartlett has loved John Dean from afar for years. Will two arrivals to Green Valley prevent Penny from revealing her true feelings to him?From the bestselling author of Australian outback romance. Over 12 million books sold worldwide.When Ross Bennet returns home to the neighbouring estate he doesn't hide his interest in Penny. But Penny long ago gave her heart to family-friend John Dean, despite their ten-year age difference. Could John recognise that Penny is now a young woman, or will she be pushed into Ross's arms?There are more complications when Miss Lucille Ditton comes to the Bartlett homestead as housekeeper. Her brisk efficiency soon seems more like interfering to Penny. Then Miss Ditton crosses a boundary which Penny finds difficult to forgive.Thanks to unsubtle hints from Miss Ditton, everyone in the valley assumes that Penny and Ross will marry. Has Miss Ditton made an innocent mistake, or is her real intention to win John Dean for herself?

    [Penguin Readers Level 6]

    Intelligent and brutally direct talk to a reader about our times, Russia, the Russians, and much more.

    When they meet in Phuket in December 2004 and share their troubles, the future begins to look more promising. Lucy devises a plan to help Kelly escape from her controlling and violent partner. But a tsunami sweeps through the resort causing tragedy and chaos.After recovering from her injuries, Lucy, whose husband died in the tsunami, travels to Llandudno in Wales to visit her in-laws. Thirteen years later, still in Llandudno and having established a successful business there, an unexpected visitor turns up on Lucy’s doorstep who turns her whole world upside down. She then has to consider how far she will go to protect all she holds dear.The Wave is a psychological thriller set in: Phuket, Thailand; Melbourne, Australia and Llandudno, Wales.

    Like many young men he is patriotic, adventurous and headstrong. He also feels assured of a bright future with his sweetheart Catherine. Patrick’s world comes crashing down around him when he becomes a pawn in the political aspirations of the United Irishmen under Wolfe Tone. He finds himself in prison sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales and begins a downward spiral into rage and depression. Patrick’s saviour comes in the form of Father Michael O’Court, the chaplain of the prison ship Boddington. Over time Patrick is guided out of his depression and is able to accept the vastly different directions that his life’s journey has taken. He also finds an unlikely mentor in one Preston Balfour, a British Army officer who was originally his target for assassination, but who ultimately provides him with the means of restoring his life in a new land. Patrick’s life is complete when tragic circumstances eventually lead to him being reunited with Catherine for a new life in a new land. He comes to realise that the most important journey we travel is not measured in miles but by our changes within. Patrick’s Journey is a work of fiction, but is based on the real life history of the author’s great (6 times removed) grandfather.

    Her novels and short stories speak to women and men about their most intense relationships and heartfelt feelings.In this collection of five short stories and a novella, Ms. Godwin is at her best. In the title novella, "Mr. Bedford," a young would-be writer spends time in England under the strange and watchful eye of a rather unusual elderly couple; in "Amanuensis," a charming college student cares for a famous but blocked novelist, with unpredictable results; and in "The Angry Year," a rebellious student is drawn to two different kinds of men until she discovers what she has been running to and from.

    After more than thirty years of being asked the same question—"Why don't you give us some good news for a change?"—veteran television news anchor Bruce Lindsay obliges us with humorous and heartwarming stories from the idyllic town that we believe we grew up in—or wished we did. Inspired from the stories found in real small-town newspapers, Bruce Lindsay introduces us to the down-to-earth, foible-filled characters from Parley's Grove—folks who can make the mundane mesmerizing and the absurd endearing. Warm, poignant, and always hilarious, these affectionate vignettes of small-town life will help you remember who you are and where you're from.

    All the while, the body count mounts.Glass’s suspects include some of the most powerful people in the land, and the press-gallery journalists who cover their every move. It’s a murky world of shifting allegiances, half-truths, and finger pointing, where everyone has a motive for murder.As election day nears, Glass risks everything for a breakthrough in the case, and his life is soon hanging by a thread. But if he thought he’d hit rock bottom, he was wrong …