Australian Recent Release: The Tulip Tree by Suzanne McCourt
Henryk reached out to embrace him, formally, awkwardly. How rarely they’d touched since childhood, thought Adi, as he sank against his brother, how clumsy their love.
Brothers Henryk and Adam Radecki share a fraught relationship – always a battle between love and jealousy. Henryk, though unhappily married, becomes a wealthy and successful industrialist, while Adi becomes a dedicated vet, discovering and losing love along the way. Their bond is tested over the course of their lives, from the 1920s against the backdrop of Poland’s grievous and turbulent relationship with Russia, through war, invasion and rebellion until 1954 in Australia’s Snowy Mountains.
Adi’s wife and son are at the heart of this spellbinding story, in which family secrets threaten to rip lives apart. This is a book that reminds us of humanity’s capacity to survive extraordinary times, of difficult choices and the dramatic shifts our lives can take.
“Beautifully written, full of the detail of everyday life, its joys and suffering, The Tulip Tree is engrossing historical fiction at its best, a profoundly moving story of love, sacrifice and loyalty” – Text Publishing
Kids Recent Release: Hanna -Jane’s Darling, Gorgeous Cat by Elizabeth Eberstein.
Hannah-Jane adores her cat, Lucifer. She can’t remember a time when he wasn’t part of her family. Such a patient cat, he let her dress him up and play games with him. Hanna-Jane wishes Lucifer could live to be 100 years old, but when she turns 5, he dies. What will Hanna-Jane do without her darling, gorgeous cat?
This is a delightful picture book by Tasmanian author Elizabeth Eberstein about coping with loss and using our memories to move forward.
Tasmanian Recent Release: The Last of the Apple Blossom by Mary-Lou Stephens.
Tasmania, 1967.
Catherine Turner, a young schoolteacher, returns home to find her family’s apple orchard in the Huon Valley in ruins and her brother dead after a catastrophic bushfire leaves much of Tasmania devastated. Catherine is determined to rebuild the family business despite her father’s insistence that a woman will never run the orchard.
Catherine’s friend and neighbour, Annie Pearson, is overjoyed by the birth of a daughter after five sons. As Annie and her husband Dave begin to repair their orchard, Dave’s friend Mark arrives to assist, much to Annie’s annoyance. Mark moved to the valley to escape his life in Melbourne, but his wife has disappeared, leaving their young son Charlie in Mark’s care.
Catherine grows to love Charlie, however the burgeoning friendship between her and Mark scandalises the small town community and threatens to uncover a secret that Annie is desperate to keep hidden.
‘Timeless yet also telling an achingly familiar story to us here and now, this is an unforgettable tale of love and loss, triumph and tragedy’ -Karen Brooks, author of The Good Wife of Bath
Tasmanian Classic: Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography by Roslynn D. Haynes.
How do we engage with landscapes? How do we ascribe cultural resonances to them? How do we decide their value?
For the Aboriginal people, the island, Trowenna, was suffused with spiritual meaning and linked to the Ancestral Beings who created it, but for the first settlers, Tasmania was an untamed and terrifying wilderness.
This book is an exploration of the way Tasmanian landscapes have come to be understood through historical events and also through its imaginative depiction in writing, art and photography. It poses the question, what can ‘wilderness’ mean in today’s world of intrusive technology and satellite surveillance?