Blacktown
Weavers searing honesty and art for storytelling will leave you winded
Weavers searing honesty and art for storytelling will leave you winded
Genre:
‘The screen door bangs shut. The silence that follows is like the collective intake of breath between the split second a guillotine falls and when it thuds home … Unable to get a clear shot, he rips the bed away from the wall. I scream as the first lick of the electric cord stings my back …’
Imagine a gaggle of little children sitting down to dinner with their mother when suddenly everything goes black. You can’t see in front of you but you know you must hide. Daddy’s home. He’s turned off the power – and he’s coming for you, any one of you.
As a boy Shane Weaver lived this nightmare every day. And this is where his story begins in BLACKTOWN, a raw and powerful memoir of how a boy not only lived through, but overcame the life sentence such a terrifying start usually means – through the unwavering love of his mother, a true survivor.
Weaver becomes an angry young man who learns to channel his rage into boxing, going on to become an Australian champion. Haunted by his past, he embraces alcohol and drugs with a terrifying intensity, teetering on the edge of the criminal, violent world he grew up in. One day, jobless, on the run in Perth with a wife and three kids to support, all his past lives collide to help him create an inspired application for a copywriting job. The result is a new start - and a whole new life. Best of all, he finds the love of a good woman who helps him rebuild his life. Today he is the creative director of one of the world’s biggest advertising brand names.
About the Author
Related books
In her first novel Nikki Gemmell delves into the emotional depth of love and loss set in the wilderness of Antarctica. A young woman gets the chance of a lifetime. To go to ‘the land of mythical tragedies, the place of ships’ hulls being crushed by ice, of long journeys into darkness and death, of soles falling from feet and being strapped back on, of teeth freezing and splitting, fingers dying, toenails coming away, mates disappearing through holes in the ice, mates walking away into blizzards, saying I’m just going outside and may be some time and never coming back…’
Living the good life in the Blue Mountains in NSW with her husband, four grown-up children and four (and counting) grandchildren, Mary Moody’s life was full. At fifty, she had built a satisfying career as a writer and television presenter which allowed her time to look after her family, house and garden. The only thing missing was time for herself, a chance to reflect on life and its meaning. Like many women of her generation, caught up with the commitments of work and family, Mary had never had a moment alone – so she decided to say au revoir.
Daniel Rooke has sailed with the First Fleet to New South Wales. Setting up an observatory, he begins the scientific work he hopes will make him famous. But the place proves far more revelatory than the night sky, and when Rooke forges a connection with one Aboriginal child it changes his life in ways he never imagined. In this compelling novel about friendship and selfdiscovery, Kate Grenville returns to the landscape of her muchloved bestseller The Secret River.
When a man slaps another man’s child at a suburban barbecue the effect on those gathered is profound. Divided over the event and how to deal with it, family and friends are forced to question their lives, expectations, beliefs and desires.
Sex, love, marriage and parenting are all up for grabs. This award-winning novel is both a forensic dissection of contemporary Australia’s aspirations and fears and a potent exploration of loyalty, happiness, compromise and truth.
Three children wake to find themselves in a basement room. They have been drugged and taken from their beds in the middle of the night. Now they are alone. Where are their parents? Who can they trust?
The Book of Rapture is a novel of our time, challenging our beliefs about religion, science and truth. Searing, provocative and unputdownable, it’s every bit as passionate and driven as The Bride Stripped Bare. It will compel, seduce and haunt you.
ANNABELLE BECK IS ATTEMPTING to escape the end of her marriage by returning to her family home in tropical North Queensland. Rather than quietly licking her wounds alone, she meets Bo Rennie, a stockman from the Jangga tribe who she first met years ago as a child. Bo mysteriously claims to hold the key to her future.
FOR MATILDA, LIFE ON a tropical island seems easy. The hardest thing she has to do is think of things to write about at school. Then, a war she knows nothing about takes all their teachers away, and no one is left to teach them…except Mr Watts. Nicknamed Pop Eye, Mr Watts is better known for wearing a red clown nose and pulling his wife around on a trolley. The only education he can offer is to read out his battered copy of Great Expectations page by page. Matilda is transfixed.
IN 1941, AS THE Nazis occupied France, Irène Némirovsky began to write an epic work to convey what her fellow country people were going through. It could not be published in Nazi occupied France and so became lost in time. Sixty years later, long after her death in Auschwitz, Némirovsky’s manuscript was rediscovered in the early 1990s by her daughter and published to international acclaim.
WHEN MAY AND BILLY lose their mother, they are taken in by their aunt. Plunged into a world of brutality and substance abuse, the siblings react in different ways to the sense of loss and not belonging. Billy continues his self-destructive behaviour, while May embarks on a quest around Australia to find her true sense of self, and to re-connect with her Aboriginal heritage.
ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER 1995, Henry Kennedy wakes up and can’t remember anything—who the girl in his room is, what he is doing in Tasmania and whether he’s ever drunk gin at that time in the morning before. All he can remember is that he’s Lord Lucan—the notorious English peer who disappeared after the murder of his nanny in 1974.
This intriguing novel explores notions of truth and deception as Lord Lucan’s story gradually unfolds. The Butterfly Man won the The Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Novel.