"He didn't look like he could jump a bull, but she knew he could. It was all in the hands, he'd often explain. The will. The bloody mindedness." On a cattle station that stretches beyond the horizon, seven people are trapped by their history and the need to make a living. Trevor Wilkie, the good father, holds it all together, promising his sons a future he no longer believes in himself. The boys, free to roam the world's biggest backyard, have nowhere to go. Trevor's father, Murr...

Wilf Healy lives in the wheatbelt town of Selwyn, works in Monk's Irish pub, delivers letters, drives the school bus, holds the place together. But he's had enough, wants to retire - to forget his nephew Connor, at war with the world, his brother Brian, visiting from America, his niece Orla, sick with blood cancer. Although he plans, and tries, he can't leave. Something is holding him back.As the young people flee, the old people die, the drugs arrive in Selwyn, Wilf has to decide ...

From Stephen Orr, the former editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens, comes a collection of essays and photographs that examines the restorative power of gardening, while revealing his own challenges in the garden and offering advice on growing plants and vegetables at home.The road to great gardening is littered with dead plants.Stephen Orr has written about gardening for most of his decades-long career, and now, in The Gardener’s...

Nine-year-old Henry Page is a club-footed, deep-thinking loner, spending his summer holidays reading, roaming the melting streets of his suburb, playing with his best friend Janice and her younger brother and sister. Then one day Janice asks Henry to spend the day at the beach with them. He declines, a decision that will stay with him forever. "Time's Long Ruin" is based loosely on the disappearance of the Beaumont children from Glenelg beach on Australia Day, 1966. It is a novel...

A masterful, gorgeously photographed A-to-Z introduction to the full spectrum of herbal plants, including recipes, growing tips and tricks, DIY crafts, and moreFor centuries, herbs have been prized for their beauty and utility in the garden, kitchen, and medicine cabinet. Modern garden master Stephen Orr’s lushly illustrated guide is the definitive resource for identifying, cultivating, and using these fascinating and varied plants.With information on almos...

In the darkest days of World War II, Ethel Malley lives a quiet life on Dalmar Street, Croydon. One day she finds a collection of poems written by her late (and secretive) brother, Ern. She sends them to Max Harris, co-editor of modernist magazine Angry Penguins. He reads them and declares Ern an undiscovered genius. Determined to help publish the poems, Ethel moves in with Max and soon becomes a presence he can't understand, or control. He gets the feeling something's not quite right. Abo...

As Hitler's war looms, famous Australian artist Roland Griffin returns home from London with his family to live a simple life of shared plums and low-cut lawns in the suburbs. In the yard: a daughter, and a son, Hal, growing up with a preoccupied father who is always out in his shed stretching canvases and painting outback pubs. An isolated man obsessed with other people and places. Everything is a picture, a symbol. Even Hal, the boy in the boat, drifting through a strange world of Incred...

"Dissonance" begins with piano practice. Fifteen-year-old Erwin Hergert is forced to tackle scales and studies for six hours a day by his mother, Madge, who is determined to produce Australia's first great pianist. To help Erwin focus, Madge has exiled her husband, Johann, to the back shed. Jo is diagnosed with cancer and Madge allows him back inside, but only for long enough to die. Madge takes Erwin to Hamburg to continue his studies. Erwin prospers in Germany with his new teac...

A long-deserted drive-in, waiting for a rerun of the one story that might give it life; a child who discovers his identity in a photograph hidden in his parents' room ... Stephen Orr's stories are happy to let you in, but not out. In "Datsunland", his characters are outsiders peering into worlds they don't recognise, or understand: an Indian doctor arriving in the outback, discovering an uncomfortable truth about the Australian dream; a family trying to have their son's name remo...

Among the coppiced carob trees and arum lilies of the Barossa Valley, old-school Lutheran William Miller lives a quiet life with his wife, Bluma, and son, Nathan, making wine and baking bread. But William has a secret. He's been studying the Bible and he's found what a thousand others couldn't: the date of the Apocalypse. William sets out to convince his neighbours that they need to join him in preparation for the End. Arthur Blessitt, a Valley pioneer in floriculture, h...

Clem Whelan's got a problem: trapped in the suburbs in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 he has to decide what to do with his life. Matriculation? He's more than able, but not remotely interested. Become a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Peter encourages hi

A plane in the distance, artillery, his father waiting, and the boy wonders what to do. As with every story in this collection, the child born into a world he can't comprehend, but stands waiting for answers, overcome with possibilities. The Boy in Time charts this child's progress from the Outer Hebrides to a Mongolian desert, from war to kidnapping, a Midwestern American nightmare, falling from the wheel-well of a Dreamliner. Stephen Orr's impressionistic take on the short story...