Jennifer Fallon

Fantasy fiction

A fantasy author with great freshness and style. Jennifer’s Demon Child trilogy, consisting of Medalon, Treason Keep and Harshini, was published by HarperCollins Australia. The books are very popular, and the trilogy was also sold to the US, Germany and Russia.
     Her second series, the Second Sons Trilogy, was also published by HarperCollins. The three books are Lion of Senet, Eye of the Labyrinth and Lord of the Shadows, and they have all been sold into the US (Tor) and the UK (Orbit).
     Wolfblade, Warrior (cover detail, right), and Warlord, making up Jenny’s third series, The Hythrun Chronicles, were released in 2005. This series will be released by Tor in the US.

Her latest work, The Tide Lords, a four-title series, has been contracted to HarperCollins for Australian rights and to Tor for North America and Canada. Book One is titled The Immortal Prince:

“He’s insisting he’s a Tide Lord and he’s begging us to try again ...
to kill him, that is.”

When a routine hanging goes wrong, the survivor announces he is Cayal the Immortal Prince, a Tide Lord. However, the only known record of the immortal beings of Amyrantha is the Tide Lord Tarot... and everyone knows it is just a parlour-game, an amusement. Arkady Desean, an expert on the legends of the Crasii — a part-animal, part-human race — is sent to interrogate Cayal. But, in exposing this would-be immortal, Arkady’s own web of deceit threatens to unravel. Nothing is really as it seems around the Immortal Prince. The lies seem plausible, his stories improbable ... and the truth is more than any of them bargained for.
Praise for Jennifer Fallon:
——— ‘in a word: captivating’ HERALD SUN on Wolf blade
——— ‘an outstanding fantasy read’ AUSSIEREVIEWS on Wolf blade
——— ‘sparkling high fantasy’ KIRKUS REVIEWS on Medalon
——— ‘The Immortal Prince is the beautifully woven story of Cayal’s journey to immortality and his gradual seduction of Arkady. Featuring Fallon’s usual snappy dialogue, intricate plots and three-dimensional characters, this is epic fantasy at its best. Four and a half stars.’  — Good Reading Magazine, April 07.

Follow this link to read the first chapter of Jennifer Fallon’s Harshini here on this site

Jennifer’s website: www.jenniferfallon.com

Jeremy Fisher

Crime fiction

A crime novel set among the wealthy and corrupt political world of Sydney, The Poofter’s Dog deals with media mogul Wardell Costello whose son Julian has disappeared. Immediately the State Premier is on the phone to Wardell Costello. She knows Costello is used to getting his own way but these two barons of power have fallen out and the Premier’s Office is looking to rub the Costello name in mud.
    The Premier suspects Julian is cheating on his own high-profile model wife, but women are not the issue with Julian, it’s the men in his life that are the problem.
    A fast-paced, hard-hitting erotic novel that pulls no punches.
    (All rights available)

Judith Fox

Historical fiction

Scraping Through Stone is Judith’s second novel and is a work of great scope and imagination. Part medieval love story, part historical fable, it traces the life of 16-year-old Sybilla, who cross-dresses to join an expedition to the Holy Land with the Army of Richard Couer-de-Lion and a young man, Dominic, who like Sybilla is determined to fight in the Holy Wars.
     Beautifully written, Scraping Through Stone captures the twelfth century with wonderful accuracy, but also deals with the underlying emotions that have moulded these two young lives. It follows their journey as they gravitate towards each other reaching a dramatic climax — this is a novel that tells a truly great love story. It was published in 2003.

RIGHTS SOLD: Aust/NZ (Allen & Unwin)

Follow this link to read ‘Book I — A Chronicle of the Times’, a 14,300-word excerpt from Judith Fox’s Scraping Through Stone, here on this site.

Susan Fraser

Fiction

is an Australian living in France. Her first novel, Déjà Vu, is a beautifully written account of a couple who get another chance at life. The novel opens with Annie and Marc driving through the pouring rain. They are having a row and have decided the best solution would be to separate. When they arrive home they hear their son upstairs on the computer. The door bell rings and the son, Charlie, races downstairs to answer it. A poiceman is standing in the doorway. He tells the boy there has been a car accident and both his parents are dead. And so begins a journey back in time to see if the course of their lives can be changed.

Susan trained as a lawyer. She taught French and English in Sydney and later in Paris. She now lives in the town of Lherm with her son and her French husband.

Jane Freeman

Journalism and fiction

Jane’s first novel Flipside was published by Random House in 1999. It is witty and sharply observed, and follows the fortunes of two sisters — a 30-something career woman who hears the ticking of her biological clock, and the other, a mother of two young children who envies her sister’s free and exciting world. It was released in Germany in 2001.
     Jane’s second novel Tick Tock, about a comically dysfunctional marriage, was published by Random House in 2002.

Pamela Freeman

Children’s and young adults fantasy and non-fiction

Her delightful fable Victor’s Quest was shortlisted for The Children’s Book Council of Australia Award in 1996 and The Centre of Magic was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award in 2000.
     Allen & Unwin published the Floramonde Trilogy, which consists of The Willow Tree’s Daughter, Windrider and The Centre of Magic. This highly imaginative trilogy has secured Pamela a position as one of Australia’s leading writers of fantasy for children.

The illustrated fairytale Cherry Blossom and the Golden Bear was released by Omnibus in February 2000. Pamela is also completing a series of titles for Koala Books. Those already published include The Hair of the Skeleton, Scum of the Earth and Trick of the Light.
     A work on the early life of Mary McKillop titled The Black Dress was published by Black Dog Books. It won the 2006 New South Wales Premier’ Priize for History.
     Pamela’s Blood Ties, the first book of her new adult fantasy sequence for adults, The Castings Trilogy, was published in 2007 by Hachette Livre.

The Eleven Domains were forged in blood a thousand years ago. The blood is about to flow again.

Bramble is as wild as the animals she follows deep into the forest near her village. Her dark eyes betray her heritage — she’s a Traveller, one of the despised original people of the Domains. And for as long as she can remember, she has wanted to take to the Road like her grandfather. But the gods who dwell near the alders always say no … In Turvite, where ghosts drift along dark cobbled streets, Ash must leave his parents, and the Road, to begin an apprenticeship with the only person who will accept a Traveller — the scheming, yet irresistible, Doronit. But the gods who linger in the gloomy square have other plans for him … From different ends of the Eleven Domains, death casts Bramble and Ash on journeys across valleys and mountains, deep into themselves and the dark history of their ancestors.

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Nobel Prize for Literature 2000

Gao Xingjian

Novels, plays (in Chinese and French)

Gao Xingjian was born in China but now lives in France. It was there that his novel La Montagne de L’ame or Soul Mountain was originally published and became a best-seller, going into three editions. Mabel Lee’s English language translation of the novel was first published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia in July 2000 (see below). Mabel Lee is represented by Australian Literary Management, and ALM is the lead agent for the English language translation of Soul Mountain.

You can read the first chapter of Soul Mountain on this website, as well as Mabel’s perceptive and informative Introduction to the book, and the Swedish Academy’s bibliographical note published on the occasion of the 2000 Nobel Prize:

Soul Mountain - Chapter One
Mabel Lee - Introduction to Soul Mountain
Swedish Acedemy - bibliographical note

"On the traveller’s journey to Soul Mountain he visits a nature reserve, listens to toothless old men and women squatting along the river banks, hears atrocious stories which make up the history of the country: women violated by outlaws of the Red Army, women who know how to embroider but who have guns hidden under their clothes, women with flashing eyes hungry for love, young women singing for the festival of the boat dragons, women who threaten their unfaithful lovers with a knife. Portraits of these admirable women punctuate the journey in the form of temptations towards drunkenness, nostalgias and violent sexuality." (Le Figaro, 11/1/96)

Gao’s new novel One Man’s Bible focuses the political horrors of the twentieth century through the lens of desire and memory. It has received rave reviews in the US.
     Gao has also released a beautiful collection of short stories Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather, HarperCollins 2004.
     The Case for Literature, a collection of Gao Xingjian’s essays, including his Nobel Laureate address, was released by HarperCollins Australia in 2006 and has been contracted to Yale University Press.
     ALM represents the English language translations of Gao’s novels internationally.
     Gao Xingjian is also known as a painter with a strong yet subtle style. You can view some of his watercolors on the website of the Art Gallery La Tour des Cardinaux in France, at http://www.cardinaux.com/site_eng/gao_eng.htm

Mabel Lee

Translation from the Chinese

After a distinguished academic career in South-east Asian studies at Sydney University, Mabel Lee turned to literature.
   HarperCollins Australia published her translation of Soul Mountain in June 2000. It won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Translation in 2001. HarperCollins released Soul Mountain in hardcover in the US and printed 85,000 copies to meet demand in the first two months of publication. HarperCollins UK released their edition early in 2001.
   Mabel’s translation of Gao’s next novel, One Man’s Bible , was published by HarperCollins in the US, UK and Australia in 2002. Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather, a beautiful collection of Gao’s short stories, was translated by Mabel and published by HarperCollins in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.A. in 2004.
   

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Leon Gettler

Organisations Behaving Badly

Modern corporations, like the mythical hero and king Oedipus Rex, are often afflicted with a refusal to acknowledge the truth. A strange power seems to draw company directors, managers and accountants into a grotesque and deadly dance of collusion and self-deception...

Why else would Arthur Anderson, a venerable but now failed accounting firm whose integrity was once an industry benchmark, happily approve the accounts associated with some of the biggest company disasters the world has ever seen?

How was Hollinger International able to be looted of virtually 440 million US dollars over a seven-year period? Was everyone asleep?
Greed, hidden unconscious forces and disaster!

Combining an understanding of the tragedies of Sophocles with the psychoanalytical insights of Freud and others, journalist Leon Gettler explorers a litany of corporate disasters from the 18th-century South Sea Bubble to the rich stew of present-day scandals.

Published by John Wiley and Sons.

Amanda Hampson

The Olive Sisters

‘A moving novel of journeys, family and finding yourself — by an exciting new Australian author.’

— Bryce Courtenay

“I open the gate and walk into the field... As the sun pours a river of light down this valley, I realise there are hundreds and hundreds of trees and I’ve seen those silver leaves before, not here in Australia, but shimmering in the groves that grace the terraced hillsides of Tuscany!”

When Adrienne’s marketing company goes down, her lifestyle does too. She retreats from the city to the beautiful, abandoned olive grove once owned by her Italian grandparents. A ‘tree change’ isn’t what Adrienne has in mind, however, and life in the country delivers some surprises as she confronts the past and learns the secrets of the Olive Sisters ...

Old loves, new loves, warm toast and rich traditions are all part of the delicious blend of this absorbing story.

The Olive Sisters was published by Penguin in 2006 and has been contracted to Heyne in Germany.

You can read an excerpt from the book on Amanda’s Internet site at http://www.amandahampson.com/, as well as a Q&A with Amanda, and a discussion for reading groups.

Christine Harris

Young adults, illustrated children’s books, public speaking

Christine is a prolific and popular author for young readers. Her young adult novel, Foreign Devil(Random House, 1999), won an Aurealis award for best novel in the horror genre.
     Random House published her collection of witty anecdotes Oddballs in 1998 and have also recently released Warped, a bizarre collection of short stories. An illustrated book I Don’t Want to go to School, with Craig Smith, was released by Random in January 2000 and has proved very popular.
     The Little Book of Elephants was published in March 2000 by Hodder Headline, who have also published a three-book series, Brain Drain, Windbag and Psycho Gran. Christine’s other titles include Hairy Legs, Sleeping In and Jamil’s Shadow. Christine’s latest series is Spy Girl. The four volumes have been released by Scholastic in Australia, the USA, the UK, Japan and Brazil.

You can visit Christine Harris’s website at: www.christineharris.com.au

Vicki Hastrich

Novels

A new author with a great gift for humour and characterisation. Vicki’s novel, Swimming with the Jellyfish, evokes an Australian country town through the eyes of an eccentric woman, still coming to terms with the disappearance of her mother twenty years ago. The novel has a fantastic cast of characters: the pale, body-pierced librarian; the retired football hero with an interest in local history; and the socialite wife who escapes the seaside town for night-time window shopping in the city. A fresh, original voice, filled with wonderful ironic touches.
     Swimming with the Jellyfish was published by Simon & Schuster Australia in 2001.

Follow this link to read the first chapter of Vicki Hastrich’s Swimming With the Jellyfish here on this site.

Sally Henderson

When an elephant saved Sally Henderson’s life in Botswana, it was to change her irrevocably. A passion to conserve this majestic species was ignited, and in 1990 she left Australia to join an elephant research project in the wilds of Zimbabwe. What follows is a remarkable journey into the world of Africa’s elephants, and a deeply personal memoir of one woman’s awakening and the choices she makes to follow her calling. Sally paints a rare and unforgettable portrait of a herd and its matriarchs, and the perils they face in an unforgiving landscape further torn apart by civil strife.

But it is the daily pleasures of being in their mighty presence that gives her story its countless wonders. Beautifully written, Silent Footsteps is a love letter to the spirit of Africa and a jubilant portrayal of the lives of elephants.

Silent Footsteps has sold to Limes/Blanvalet in Germany.
Rights in UK and US territories are available.

Jose Sevilla Ho

Roses From San Gabriel is a family saga across four generations, set in the Philippines before and after World War II. It tells the story of two brothers, Jorge and Miguel, who grow up in an empty, loveless house with their father. Their mother, the mysterious Rosanna, died not long after Jorge was born, leaving Miguel with faded memories of a beautiful woman who is no longer there.
     As Miguel grows he stifles in the small village. He sets out to live the life of an adventurer, leaving Jorge at home with his remote father and the servant woman, Adia. Through her tantalizing tales Jorge forms a vivid picture of the mother he never knew, and learns of the fading city where he and his brother were born, a former Spanish port town in the Pacific, where Vasco da Gama’s great flagship the San Gabriel strayed long ago on its voyage to India, met disaster and sank.
     Roses From San Gabriel takes on the form of a beautifully inlaid mirror. Obsessed by the circumstances of his mother’s death, Jorge strives to understand the past. His search takes him to the capital, where he learns of his family’s struggles through war and political change. There he also discovers that Adia’s enchanting tales have concealed her own role in the family’s tragedy.
     Jose Sevilla Ho is a truly remarkable storyteller. He was born in the Philippines in 1961. In 1986 he left for Russia to study Film Directing at the Moscow Film Institute and spent seven years there. He has since worked and lived in Britain, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong and currently lives in the USA. He is married to a British journalist.

World rights sold to Text Publishing, Melbourne.
Contact: Michael Heyward at michael.heyward@mel.textmedia.com.au

Sarah Hopkins

Sarah Hopkins has worked in the area of social justice and prisoner rights for 15 years. She is currently working as a lawyer with the Aboriginal Legal Service in Sydney.

Billy Fish is granted parole. After serving three years for a violent robbery he walks out of the prison gates. His life has revolved around drugs, crime and custody, while his sister Rose has lived a structured existence working and caring for her son. When Rose's life unravels after a tragic accident, it is up to Billy to leave his crimes behind him and to find the strength to save his sister.

Sue Howard

Travel, Memoir

Overworked and overtired, a busy career woman is offered a second chance. When her doctor orders complete rest, an invitation to Tuscany leads to her quitting her job, a new start in Pisa, a passionate affair — and the opening of a whole new chapter of her life.
    Leaning Towards Pisa is a frank and heartwarming story, an adventure that takes place in a rich culture among people who know how to live life to the full. It was released by Bantam Transworld in 2005.

Australia New Zealand rights: Bantam/Transworld

Lyn Hughes

Novels

Lyn’s novel The Bright House (Random House, 2000) is set in South Africa and Britain, and explores the devastation caused by a passion that crosses the borders of racial segregation and the trauma following the stillbirth of a child.
     Born in Wales in 1952, Lyn spent eighteen years in South Africa before settling in Australia in 1982. Her first two novels were The Factory (1990) and One-Way Mirrors (1993).

Adib Khan

Novels

Born in Bangladesh, Adib Khan came to Australia in 1973. Adib’s debut novel Seasonal Adjustments won the 1995 Commonwealth Writers Prize. This was followed by Solitude of Illusions in 1996 and The Storyteller in June 2000, and Homecoming in 2005.

His new novel is Spiral Road. Masud Alam has lived in Australia for the past 30 years. Now his father is dying, drifting in a haze of Alzheimer’s, and Masud has returned to Bangladesh to say goodbye and to reconnect with his family. Still unmarried, he instantly becomes the focus of his mother’s match-making. He also begins to appreciate how far his family’s fortunes have fallen, and how hard his brother, Zia, has worked to keep them all afloat.

As Masud reacquaints himself with the country whose independence he fought for, he is surprised by the shifting, complex views of his old friends and neighbours. He also discovers some family secrets, when a chance remark by his father prompts him to examine old family papers. But most disturbing of all are the secrets of his young nephew, Omar, recently returned from America with a quiet steeliness in his gaze.

“Spiral Road is a rare work that gives insights into the ties that bind and the world views that reverberate beyond the placid, prosperous streets of Australia.” The Sydney Morning Herald April 14 2007

Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (HarperCollins Australia)

Margo Kingston

Journalism and non-fiction

Margo is a Canberra-based journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald. Her personal account of Pauline Hanson’s 1998 election campaign, Off the Rails, was published by Allen and Unwin in 1999 and won the Dobbie Award for the most outstanding first book by a female author. Margot’s analysis of the Howard Government, Not Happy, John!, was published by Penguin in 2004 and went straight to the best-seller lists.

Karen Kissane

Silent Death

Julie and Jamie Ramage were the classic middle-class Australian couple. They appeared to have it all: good looks, a nice home and children in private schools. But Julie walked out of their seemingly perfect marriage. And then Jamie killed her.

Journalist Karen Kissane follows the accused into the courtroom. There he pleaded not guilty to murder on the basis that his wife had driven him over the edge. Silent Death tells the story behind the controversial trial and examines what it says about men and women, guilt and justice. The book walks us through the front door of the Ramage home and into a relationship marked by affairs, obsession and a history of violence. Written with a taut urgency, Silent Death is a powerful and provocative courtroom drama about murder, marriage and the law.

It is also a story about the suburban dream, and the dark side of love.

Australian rights: Hodder

Malcolm Knox

Fiction, non-fiction, journalism

Website: http://www.malcolmknox.com.au/

One of Australia’s most highly acclaimed and versatile writers, Malcolm Knox has published five books. The former literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Malcolm won a Walkley award in 2004 for the expose of fraudulent author Norma Khouri. He was runner up for Journalist of the Year 2004.

Malcolm was named as one of 2001’s Best Young Novelists by the Sydney Morning Herald for his first novel, Summerland, which was published by Random House in 2004 and sold into the U.K. and U.S.A by Picador. It was published in Germany, Italy, Argentina and The Netherlands.

Malcolm’s third novel, Jamaica, was published by Random House Australia in 2007.

“As a remembrance of things past, Knox’s novel is exquisite, blending a lyricism and exuberance of language with subtle undertones that point towards the denouement… Summerland works on many levels and Knox is, quite simply, a fabulous writer.”  — Literary Review, UK

“This is one of the most intense depictions of family love and strife in Australian fiction (think Christina Stead)… The book is a dark, exacting triumph.”  — The Bulletin on A Private Man

...as this intricate narrative unfolds, tensions and rivalries, some reaching back far into childhood, begin to well up, as do subtle differences of class and status.... Here the vision is darker and more complex.... The liveliest pages of this novel — and there are many — chart the absurd, sometimes terrifying adventures of these not-so-innocents abroad.... His journalist’s ear, eye and attention to detail have stood him in good stead.... As he takes his characters inside Jamaica’s bars and nightclubs.... as he exposes them to nightmarish experiences on the dark, twisting alleys of the island’s shantytowns, on beaches and on the deserted slopes of a volcano, he taps into a rich vein of wry, and at times macabre, comedy.... Knox’s vignettes of Jamaican life — the thud of reggae, the all-pervading smell of ganja — are wryly observed and very funny too.... The account of the great race and its unexpected aftermath is a tour-de-force. — Andrew Riemer, SMH, August 31, 2007, on Jamaica

Susan Kurosowa

Travel and fiction

Susan is an award-winning travel editor and columnist in The Australian newspaper. Her debut novel Coronation Talkies was published by Penguin in 2004.

    This is a rollocking romp of a story set in India and featuring the indefatigable Mrs Banerjee, whose obsession with the glamorous age of Hollywood has left her just a little divorced from the real world. A hilarious over-the-top novel, full of lies, lust and seduction, that will entrance all those who are familiar with the British Raj. A UK edition will be released in 2007.
    Susan is currrently working on a sequel to this book, which is also contracted to Penguin.

Rights available: US and translation.

Nicholas Kyriacos

Fiction

Billy’s Tree is a distinctly Australian novel set in the working class suburb of Redfern in the inner city of Sydney. We follow the lives of the early immigrants, the Greeks, Lebanese and also the disenfranchised Aborigines who make up this lively area. But Bill’s Tree also addresses the past pain and history of these people. Strongly featured also is the local rugby league club, the “Rabbitohs” which represents a powerful force for many of the Redfern locals. It was published by Scribe in 2006.

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http://www.austlit.com/a-list-f-k.html

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