When young Spit MacPhee came to live with his grandfather, the people of the Australian country town of St Helen feared for his future. For Fyfe MacPhee was a crazy old man, and barefoot Spit had to fend for himself along the riverbank where they lived. While some people believed that Spit could look after himself, there were those who believed he would be better cared for in a boys home - and when old Fyfe died after one of his 'turns' a fierce battle to decide Spit's destiny began.

Growing up in an Australian country town before World War 1, Jackie, Hanna and Cushie Moy are carefree and innocent in their love for each other. But Jackie is a dwarf, and his devotion to the beautiful Cushie is condemned by her parents. This is the story of their life-long odyssey, and of the triumph of a special kind of courage.

This is not my story. It is the story of Frances Montrose, an Australian woman with no formal mathematics training who carried across the world, in a borrowed suitcase bulging with a friend's balldresses, something no one knew about the discovery of a new number.

A young Australian woman leaves Sydney for a new world......Guyana, South America. Captivated by Guyana's wild, unspoilt beauty, Madison Wright joins the native Amerindians struggling to preserve their culture against corporate exploitation. But her new-found commitment soon plunges Madison into a mire of murder, drug smuggling and political corruption

In this masterly collection of stories, Elizabeth Jolley has created a splendid array of characters, all of whom fail to achieve the expected. Her stories are sometimes slyly comic, sometimes disturbing - but always they are written with a delicacy and compassion as moving as the characters themselves.

Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen, illegitimate, and in her final year at a wealthy Catholic school. This is the year her father comes back into her life, the year she falls in love, the year she discovers the secrets of her family's past and the year she sets herself free.

Richard Derrington's doing it tough. Since Anna trashed him his job seems pointless. Tuesday seems moderately fucked by ten, his tennis is appalling, long periods of complete crap, punctuated by flashes of a very random glory and the future bleak. This is a hiatus? There I was thinking I was sinking and it's just a hiatus. Apart from his friends, the only thing keeping Richard going is his wicked sense of humour. Then things look up.

Mount Perfect Ranges, western Victoria, 1872. Henry Fanshaw has stumbled upon one of the largest nuggets ever found in the colony. But it isn't on his land and Fanshaw's troubles are only just beginning. The gold is stolen and Fanshaw, not able to approach the law, calls upon the services of John 'Black' Perry, a touring pugilist, sharpshooter and horseman, to track the thieves

Ellie and her friends leave home one quiet morning, wave goodbye to their parents, and head up into the hills to camp out for a while; seven teenagers filling in time during school holidays. The world is about to change forever. Their lives will never be the same again. Would you fight? Would you give up everything? Would you sacrifice even life itself?

Nobody in the Australian country town of St Helen knew who Lola MacKellar was - least of all Lola herself. All they knew was that she had come from a foster home in Melbourne and that her real name was Lorelei. It was a puzzle too why the wealthy Eyres had brought her to their vast riverside property yet lodges her with the Scobies like an outcast. For a while it didn't matter. But Lola couldn't remain the free young spirit she was forever. One day the questions about her identity would begin....