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The Magpie and the Snake is a modern Dreaming story. The story revolves around the traditional male and female Bundjalung heroes, Balagaan and Gawngan, who feature heavily in Bundjalung myths about forbidden love and brave feats. Set in the Nyangbal mob's country around Bullinaa (Ballina) two hundred years ago, the story recreates the traditional lifestyle of Australia's first people on the cusp of the English invasion.
One of Samantha Wood's earliest childhood memories is of her grandfather giving her a wobbly rubber map of Mexico that pulled apart like a jigsaw puzzle. He told her of the nomadic Culua-Mexica, who built a great empire in the valley of Mexico and became known as the Aztecs. Suddenly, the wanderers were a people with a new identity, a home... Like her ancestors, Samantha yearns to find a place she can call home. Raised on the enticing glimpses of a dark and magical land conjured up by her Mexican mother's bedtime stories - a land oozing Latin rhythms, full of passion and fire, from bullfights to family feuds and bloody revolutions, roasted iguana and beans, to sugar skeletons - what begins as a visit to her enigmatic grandmother becomes a quest to find out what it means to be Mexican. But as she learns to embrace Mexico verdadero - the real Mexico - she discovers a people who give a new meaning to larger than life, the fabulous strong women who rule the roost, the colourful macho men who think they do, and the invincible bonds between family, food, and the spirit world. Always an outside, this nomad at last feels she has come home.
How far would you go for love? In a rambling house in a small Australian beach town, Elena Jameson is recovering from her recent divorce. To her delight, she is given the opportunity to foster a little boy, Daniel, whose mother is dead and whose violent father is in rehab. As Elena and Daniel explore the beautiful bay and wild bushland, they form a profound bond that will change their lives forever. Then Daniel’s father discovers his whereabouts and begins a campaign of terror – not to get his son back, but to prevent Elena giving Daniel a new life. As the violence escalates, Elena finds that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect Daniel from the brutality of his past and an uncertain future. Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to pay the price in blood. A gothic tale of love and loss, bravery and hope.
Magnus Magpie is a bird with an eye for burglary. He steals only the brightest, shiniest, most dazzling things and stashes them secretly in a hollow at the top of his tree. But do all these riches make him happy? It takes a trip to the moon for Magnus to discover that all that glitters is not gold and that true happiness can often be found at home.
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"Michael was my love - the perfect man, the perfect husband. I had the perfect life. And then it all went wrong." Julia Falconer is an artist married to a successful winemaker in the coastal hinterland of southern Victoria. From the outside, it looks like Julia and Michael have it all - but things are never as they seem. A storm has destroyed a major crop, Michael is devastated, and is taking it out on Julia. And Julia retreats into herself, taking solace in her work, wine ... and the comfort of her friend Christopher. Having stopped communicating almost entirely with Michael, Julia finds herself grappling with how her feelings towards Christopher are changing. He listens, he cares, he talks. But what does he really want? Soon Julia will discover how wrong she was about the man she thought she loved ? and the man she really does love.
Our book showcases just how amazing Australian magpies are, with fun quirky photos and sketches. I share my stories of how I formed such special bonds with wild magpies and express how amazing it is to have these completely wild friends, who are free to come and go whenever they please. None of these magpies have been hand raised by me. Their real parents brought them up in the wild, which I believe... makes our story very special and unique. When I look into the eyes of magpies I see beautiful souls. I see highly intelligent beings that have individual personalities and feelings just like we do. Each one is special, unique and has as much right to live on this earth as what we do.Instead of...
When their new lodger, Kate, becomes obsessed with her, her husband, and the baby they are desperately trying to conceive, Marisa must find out who Kate really is before she loses everything she's worked so hard to create--her perfect romance, her perfect family, and her perfect self.
“From a distance it looked like the carcass of a dolphin from one of the pods that lived in the bay. But dolphins didn’t wear hats. Or expensive leather shoes...” Late one night, when her husband Paul is asleep, Meg Patterson escapes her violent marriage. Driving across the Nullarbor with her twelve-year-old son Josh, Meg hopes this is their chance at a new beginning. But will they ever be safe from Paul? Paul, a trader at the Perth Stock Exchange, is being investigated for insider trading. Meg’s not only taken his son; she’s also taken his car and something very valuable inside it. Something Paul needs to get back before everything comes crashing down. David Harper, newly unemploy...
The Magpie and the Child tells a story of great loss, love, and learning. The volume starts from the days before the poetic journey, in a sort of pre-exploration of events before they were events, moving to and through the death of her child Emily at almost eleven years old from an unsuspected heart condition. The poems speak, lament, and sing among the metaphors and religious resonances that such mourning must inspire. The thieving magpie of the prefatory title poem pecks at its own image in the glass while the poet daubs the hope of intervening blood on the "trembling lintel of faith." The volume is filled with self-examination, suffering, remembered conversations with the living child, and very real ones with the dead, each of which record the steps of the emotional journey. The second half of The Magpie and the Child is an extended sequence taking the form of a fragmented diary, one that captures the pain of loss in a skeptical age yet insists on the ritual compensation of belief. In the rigors of its form, the depth of its despair, and the necessary belief in the meaning of its artistic act, Clutterbuck's poetry carefully and beautifully maintains this very delicate balance.