Nicholas Jose
Paper Nautilus

In a small town on the Australian coast Penny grows up to marry the boy who has waited for her. Few know the truth about her birth. Her uncle Jack is one, for he shared with her father not only his childhood but also the horror of their wartime experience. Jack and Penny's special bond is as rare and precious as the beautiful nautilus shell they find washed up on the beach - entwined with its history are the secrets of their past and the tenacious passions of the other people who have had a stake in their lives.

Steven Carroll
The Time We Have Taken

One summer morning in 1970, Peter van Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one hundred years old. That same morning, Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband's snores yet it is years since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, has left for the city, and is entering the awkward terrain of first love. As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, Michael's friend Mulligan is commissioned to paint a mural of the area's history. But what vision of the past will his painting reveal? The Time We Have Taken is both a meditation on the rhythms of suburban life and a luminous exploration of public and private reckoning during a time of radical change

Steve Strevens has lived on the Murray for almost 40 years During that time he has fished and swum in its waters, climbed and swung from its trees, collected firewood from its forests and made some of his most important decisions sitting on its banks. Slow River is his ode to the Murray Bumping along in his ute and steering his old tinnie, Steve explores the full length of the Murray from its source to where it meets the sea. This is a rich and generous portrait ofthe river, its many moods and the people and communities who depend upon it for their sanity and survival.