A bold new novel which is part whodunit, part psychological thriller, part magical fantasy, charting the lives and decreasing fortunes of the Cleaver family.;

Fin Torrent is a student who's gone to work in the West Australian wheatbelt for the holidays. He's looking for something 'in nature'. Nothing could have prepared him for what he finds in this hard, unforgiving landscape. Set in the 1980s, Oceana Fine is a genre-defying novel in which, as the Sydney Morning Herald put it, 'violence rubs shoulders with a strange lyricism'.

During the twentieth century, the southwestern corner of Australia was cleared for intensive agriculture. In the space of several decades, an arc from Esperance to Geraldton, an area of land larger than England, was cleared of native flora for the farming of grain and livestock. Today, satellite maps show a sharp line ringing Perth. Inside that line, tan-coloured land is the most visible sign from space of human impact on the planet. Where once there was a vast mosaic of scrub and forest, there is now the Western Australian wheatbelt. Tony Hughes-d'Aeth examines the creation of the wheatbelt through its creative writing. Some of Australia's most well-known and significant writers - Albert Facey, Peter Cowan, Dorothy Hewett, Jack Davis, Elizabeth Jolley, and John Kinsella - wrote about their experience of the wheatbelt. Each gives insight into the human and environmental effects of this massive-scale agriculture.

When Anika Molnar flees her home country of Hungary not long before the break-up ofthe Soviet Union, she carries only a small suitcase - and a beautiful and much-lovedpainting of an auburn-haired woman in a cobalt blue dress from her family's hiddencollection.Arriving in Australia, Anika moves in with her aunt in Sydney, and the painting hangs inpride of place in her bedroom. But one day it is stolen in what seems to be a carefullyplanned theft, and Anika's carefree life takes a more ominous turn.Sinister secrets from her family's past and Hungary's fraught history cast suspicion overthe painting's provenance, and she embarks on a gripping quest to uncover the truth.Hungary's war-torn past contrasts sharply with Australia's bright new world ofopportunity in this moving and compelling mystery.

Renowned playwright Osonye Tess Onwueme's powerful new drama illuminates the effect of national and global oil politics on the lives of impoverished rural Nigerians. What Mama Said is set in the metaphorical state of Sufferland, whose people are starving and routinely exploited and terrorized by corrupt government officials and multinational oil companies-that is, until a voice erupts and moves the wounded women and youths to rise up and demand justice. Onwueme's powerful characters and vibrant, emotionally charged scenes bring to life a turbulent movement for change and challenge to tradition. Aggrieved youths and militant women-whose husbands and sons work in the refineries or have been slaughtered in the violent struggle-take center stage to "drum" their pain in this drama about revolution. Determined to finally confront the multinational forces that have long humiliated them, Sufferland villagers burn down pipelines and kidnap an oil company director. Tensions peak, and activist leaders are put on trial before a global jury that can no longer ignore the situation. What Mama Said is a moving portrayal of the battle for human rights, dignity, compensation, and the right of a nation's people to control the resources of their own land.