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‘I hate and despise business and anything to do with making money.’ ‘Do you think it’s wrong?’ ‘It is the enemy of art.’ Eighteen-year-old Honor Lawrence is out of place at the bank where she works. When she refuses to accept a promotion, despite her obvious poverty, her mentor, Augustus Debrett, doesn’t quite know what to make of it, or of her. Honor is an enigma—and she leaves confusion and uneasiness in her wake. In The Puzzleheaded Girl, made up of four thematically linked novellas, Stead’s unsurpassable skills of observation and social critique are on full display. Christina Stead was born in 1902 in Sydney. Stead’s first books, The Salzburg Tales and Seven Poor Men of Sydney, were published in 1934 to positive reviews in England and the United States. Her fourth work, The Man Who Loved Children, has been hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by Jonathan Franzen, among others. In total, Stead wrote almost twenty novels and short-story collections. Stead returned to Australia in 1969 after forty years abroad for a fellowship at the Australian National University. She resettled permanently in Australia in 1974 and was the first recipient of the Patrick White Award that year. Christina Stead died in Sydney in 1983, aged eighty. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential Australian authors of the twentieth century. ‘Christina Stead’s talent is vital and powerful; her work has that original streak of genius so evident in the best Australian writing.’ Sunday Times ‘Stead effortlessly captures the feel of the era she is describing, with spare and beautiful prose.’ BookMooch ‘I loved the Text Classic reissue of Christina Stead’s The PuzzleHeaded Girl, a kind of female version of Bartleby the Scrivener. Stead’s gifts are so ample, her grasp of obsession extraordinary.’ Delia Falconer, Best Books of 2016, Australian ‘These are perfectly pitched stories of flight.’ Australian Financial Review ‘At shorter length, Stead reveals more clearly her gifts in tone and voice and building a scene, while her theme here puts these fictions among the Ur-texts of feminism.’ Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Stead's novels have gained growing readership and critical attention in recent years. This feminist reading of the life and work of Christina Stead focuses on her characters and themes that question established assumptions about gender and class relations and the aesthetic values they support.
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
When her husband of three decades announces he has a younger lover and wants a divorce, Ella Ferguson realises how protected her life has been—she has ‘seen no evil, heard no evil and spoken no evil’. Alone, enraged, she must come to terms with her failed marriage and her relationships with her adult children. A Change in the Lighting, Amy Witting’s third novel, is the compelling story of a woman cast adrift. 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. ‘A wry and powerful novel of family entanglements.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘One of Australia’s greatest novelists puts together...a crew as sad, funny and perverse as any ever gathered.’ Time After the Second World War, bizarre characters from across the ruined continent have gathered at the ‘fourth-rate’ Hotel Swiss-Touring by Lake Geneva. Some are residents, while other guests have come for the season. In the claustrophobic atmosphere of the little hotel, their eccentricities and their desperation—their jealousies and vindictiveness—are all too apparent. First published in 1973, shortly before Christina Stead’s return to Australia, The Little Hotel is a sharp, witty satire of changing lives in postwar Europe. Christina Stead was born in 1902 in Sydney. Stead’s first books, The Salzburg Tales and Seven Poor Men of Sydney, were published in 1934 to positive reviews in England and the United States. Her fourth work, The Man Who Loved Children, has been hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by Jonathan Franzen, among others. In total, Stead wrote almost twenty novels and short-story collections. Stead returned to Australia in 1969 after forty years abroad for a fellowship at the Australian National University. She resettled permanently in Australia in 1974 and was the first recipient of the Patrick White Award that year. Christina Stead died in Sydney in 1983, aged eighty. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential Australian authors of the twentieth century. ‘This neat little volume will appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction with a good dose of satire. Classic fiction from an award-winning Australian author.’ BookMooch ‘How to describe it? It’s like a meteorite from Krypton landed on Ozlit’s bindi-eye-riddled lawn, greenly glowing. Or perhaps a mosaic of imagined intimacies...Stead is a recording angel of the threadbare European middle class of the postwar years.’ Saturday Paper ‘In this highly confined setting, Stead creates a busy mini-Europe of petty and poignant crises, or perhaps a molehill of The Magic Mountain. This is an excellent place for the Stead novice to begin enjoying her artistry.’ STARRED REVIEW, Kirkus Reviews
I love you more Than God loves the world. Little published in her lifetime, Lesbia Harford died young in the late 1920s. Her short lyrical poems—about social justice, revolution, free love, feminism and the experience of women—display a candour and dynamism unusual for her time and place. This essential new selection of her finest work, chosen and introduced by Gerald Murnane, reaffirms Harford’s position as one of Australia’s pre-eminent modern poets. Lesbia Harford was born in 1891. She published few poems in her lifetime. Her work, gathered in posthumous collections and various anthologies, has since been acclaimed for its clear and unadorned style. A congenital heart defect kept her in poor health her whole life and she died in 1927, at the age of thirty-six. Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He has been a primary teacher, an editor and a university lecturer. His debut novel, Tamarisk Row (1974), was followed by ten other works of fiction, including The Plains and most recently Border Districts. In 1999 Murnane won the Patrick White Award and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He lives in western Victoria. ‘Lesbia Harford’s poetry is astonishing.’ Drusilla Modjeska
The unfinished autobiography of one of the great Australian novelists—Henry Handel Richardson, the pen name of Ethel F. Lindesay Robertson. From the author of The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney and The Getting of Wisdom, comes this lively and revealing self-portrait of the artist as a young woman.
Winner, Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, 1996 ‘When I hear the word culture I think excellence and I think access...’ I wasn’t sure where this was going, but at least he wasn’t reaching for his revolver. Murray Whelan, hero of Stiff, is back at his richly futile best in The Brush-Off. When the body of an artist is fished from the moat outside the National Gallery, Murray—political minder, brushed-off lover and art buff on the make—goes looking for the big picture. If he can put the fix in, he might have a chance of staying employed. The second adventure in Shane Maloney’s series brilliantly mixes high art with low blows. Born in Hamilton in western Victoria, in 1953, Shane Maloney is one of Australia’s most popular novelists. His award-winning and much-loved Murray Whelan series—Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask, Something Fishy and Sucked In—has been published around the world. Before becoming a writer, Shane Maloney booked rock bands, promoted public radio, conducted public relations for the Boy Scouts Association, ran the Melbourne Comedy Festival and became a swimming pool lifeguard. There is no evidence that anyone drowned on his watch. In 1996 The Brush-Off won the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction. In 2004 Stiff and The Brush-Off were made into telemovies, starring David Wenham as Murray Whelan. In 2009 Shane Maloney was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association of Australia Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in Melbourne. ‘The Brush-Off brilliantly mixes the comic and the tragic: this amusing thriller has you laughing at the moments where a gasp may be more appropriate.’ Rolling Stone ‘Maloney is top shelf.’ Australian ‘A succulent, consistently funny detective story...The plot is something like John Cleese might dream up if he was drunk with Dashiell Hammett.’ Age
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