Books
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Requiem For A Riot
November 1942. From battlefront New Guinea, war correspondent Pat Kinnane lands in Brisbane, General MacArthur’s Headquarters, and finds himself in another kind of war. Amid serious Allied tension, with his guide Kay Dalberg a smart, political young woman, over nine days he liases with operational US military, befriends a desperate Kokoda veteran, edges into a complicated love triangle and is witness to the mysterious death of a soldier. The crucial personal issues of his visit reach their climax on the sultry evening of Thursday the 26th, American Thanksgiving Day, when the city’s discords boil over into the fatal street riot known to history as The Battle of Brisbane.)
The Baker’s Alchemy
In a corner of old Poland, near a great forest touched by magic, a baker receives a secret to help his ailing marriage. Ignacy Wadowski has taken a new and much younger wife, and while Jadwiga is attentive and dutiful, she hasn’t allowed him into her bed. With the help of a healer from the forest enchantment comes, but when things start to go wrong there is also a price to pay.
In a marvel of plotting, a spiral of double-identity comedy and moral conundrums which require the invention of photography, a Count’s soirée, a squad of Cossacks and a balloon ride to Rome to sort them out, The Baker’s Alchemy brings charm and triumph again to the institution of marriage.
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The Optimist
The Optimist is an Australian love story: about Chris Brennan, a brilliant shambolic young man, Mary Cecilia the servant girl, and the eligible but enigmatic Hilda Monahan.
In this tender tragicomedy John Stephenson recreates a bustling world of tipsy priests and hearty landowners, of chaperones, picnics and parties in an age where sexual desire is ruled by class and creed.