SBS commissions Top End crime drama Dusty
SBS has commissioned new production company TMG Media to develop a 13-part crime drama series based on the character Detective Dusty Buchanon, star of AFI-winner Phillip (Australian Rules) Gwynne’s novel The Build Up.
Dusty will be set in Australia’s Top End, in and around Darwin, the self-styled Capital of the Second Chance.
SBS’s Director of Content – Television and Online, Matt Campbell said:
“What a joy it is to find an audacious new approach to drama. In these tough economic times SBS is proud to be able to support writers and producers who want to make something truly innovative.
“Dusty will not just be your average crime-a-week Aussie series, but something that makes audiences realise just how compelling television can be. The series is the perfect example of what talented people working closely with a forward thinking and engaged network like SBS can achieve. I am tremendously excited by it.”
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Five stars for Piglet
Margaret Hamilton awards five stars to Piglet and Granny the July issue of Bookseller & Publisher.
There is no better combination in picture books for young children than the award-winning team of Margaret Wild and Stephen Michael King. Previous books Piglet and Mama and Piglet and Papa are already firm favourites, so this third book about the lovable little piglet will be a welcome addition to any child’s bookshelf.
This book celebrates the warm and loving relationship between Piglet and her grandmother and highlights Piglet’s childlike impatience and expectation of her loving Granny’s visit, which is typical of children in this age group.
The language is simple, warm and engaging, and the story builds up just the right feeling of suspense, carrying the reader along to the joyous and energetic surprise conclusion.
The uncluttered and lively illustrations extend the story with tenderness and involvement.
They are charming and deceptively simple watercolours which perfectly portray the emotions of the playful character of Piglet, who is impatiently waiting, and the joy when the two are finally together.
The book was dedicated to Sandy Campbell, widely loved publicist and reviewer who died in February. It’s a perfect book for grandparents to share with their grandchildren.
Margaret Hamilton is a former children’s publisher. She now provides freelance publishing services and reviews.
Topics: Childrens books, Margaret Wild, Stephen Michael King | No Comments »
Michael Duffy: The Tower
Michael Duffy’s first crime novel, The Tower, is to be published by Allen & Unwin in August.
Young detective Nicholas Troy is basically a good man, for whom homicide investigation is the highest form of police work.
But when a woman falls from the construction site for the world’s tallest skyscraper, the tortured course of the murder investigation that follows threatens his vocation.
Hampered by incompetent colleagues and organisational politics, Troy fights his way through worlds of wealth and poverty, people-smuggling and prostitution.
He has always seen Sydney as a city of sharks, a place where predators lurk beneath the glittering surface.
Now he uncovers networks of crime and corruption that entangle the city, reaching into the police force itself.
Finally, the shadowy predator Troy has been chasing turns and comes for him, putting his family at risk. Forced to defend himself in ways he would never have considered before, he confronts a moral abyss. He realises it’s a long way down …
Topics: Michael Duffy, Novels | No Comments »
Rave reviews for Marshall Browne’s The Iron Heart
Marshall Browne’s novel The Eye of the Abyss, which introduced the German bank auditor Franz Schmidt, received glowing praise in Australia and the USA.
Its sequel, The Iron Heart, is just out and is already receiving rave reviews.
In the Adelaide Independent Weekly, Stephen Davenport wrote: “… atmospheric, menacing and wonderfully-observed historical thriller set in Hitler’s pre-war Nazi Germany… Browne has a magnificient sense of the period and creates a perfect landscape, filled with zealots, desperate, wounded and hopeful characters… The Iron Heart is scrupulously designed, contains well-drawn characters and an immaculate sense of pace, with a satisfying number of twists and turns… This is one of those books that leaves readers breathless.”
In the Melbourne Herald Sun, Rochelle Jackson was no less enthusiastic: “… meticulous attention to detail in recreating Berlin and the hideously oppressive atmosphere of Nazi Germany… gripping, page-turning crime thriller that tumbles you around in a tumultuous whirlwind of complex sub-plots, engrossing characters and enough twists and turns to leave you giddy and breathless.”
Furthermore:
The Weekend Australian’s, Graeme Blundell: “Browne writes about a brooding landscape, the chill of dread enveloping credible characters. His storytelling is as relentless as a military convoy rumbling across the snow.”
The Canberra Times‘ Jeff Popple: ” The Eye of the Abyss was one of the best crime novels of 2002… (Browne’s The Iron Heart) once again deals with difficult moral choices and personal bravery as well as containing the requisite thriller requirements of tension and suspense… Another powerful novel by one of Australia’s most original crime writers.”
The Brisbane Sunday Mail’s Lucy Clark: “Browne expertly builds a suspenseful mood of danger… a great sense of time and place… diligent historical research is obvious on every page.”
North Shore Times‘ Mary Powis: ” … much more than the usual thriller…the author draws a compelling and convincing picture of daily life as Hitler prepares for war.”
Sunday Examiner: “The chilling horrors of Berlin life during the rise of the Third Reich … are brought to life by this masterful Australian crime writer… It’s nail-biting suspense…”
Readings Monthly’s Kate O’Mara: “the best spy novel I’ve read in years. There’s more intrigue, backstabbing and death in one chapter than most authors can manage in a whole book…. Truly worth your while.”
Brisbane News: Our Pick: “The atmosphere of Nazi Germany in 1939 is chillingly, thrillingly evoked…”
Topics: Marshall Browne, Novels | No Comments »
The Bologna Book Fair revisited
With Catherine's very charming Brazilian publisher, Otacilia de Freitas.
By CATHERINE JINKS | The Bologna Book Fair isn’t about writing. It’s about product – or ‘content’, as they say in the movie business. Writers don’t really belong at the fair; in fact there seems to be a genuine concern in some quarters that the vast array of ‘product’ will depress and discourage even the most egotistical of writers. I have to admit that, when I first went to Bologna six years ago, my heart did quail before the mountains of text confronting me. What’s more, the commercial side of literature momentarily freaked me out; it was like seeing money-lenders in the temple, or something. But then I talked to a few publishers, and soon found a weird sense of comfort in the whole idea of product.
For one thing, it relieves the writer of all responsibility. Normally, when your name’s on a book, you tend to be identified with its many failings. Book reviewers might question your motives; teacher-librarians might take offence at your politics. You might find yourself fretting about the quality of your work, or the effect you’re having on today’s youth. Every attack on the book ends up feeling like an attack on you, personally. Sometimes it is an attack on you, personally – as if you’ve gone out of your way to annoy and disturb, apparently from unadulterated malice. (Not that I’ve been savaged much myself, because I’m too obscure. But I know of several writers who have been.)
Topics: Catherine Jinks, Essays | No Comments »
Laura Bloom: In the Mood
ANZ rights in Laura Bloom’s new novel, In the Mood, have just been sold to Penguin Australia.
Executive Editor Rachel Scully describes it as a novel which is ‘compelling and heart-wrenching’ and ‘explores so many dilemmas facing women of today’. Penguin plan to publish in 2010.
Home was her, Catherine, in her blue cotton dress, dancing to the radio in the living room, the furniture pushed back against the walls to give her space.
Him sitting on one of the chairs against the wall, entranced, not just by the glimpses of thigh and garter belt, her skirt in a perpetual flying ruffle, but her energy, her hips and hands and every part of her so alive.
It’s February, 1946. Robert Booker has just come home from the war, back to his wife, Catherine, and his job as an architect.
Unknown to Robert, Catherine, who has also trained as an architect, has had a baby in his absence, as a result of an affair with an American marine which she embarked on after convincing herself that Robert was dead in New Guinea.
Robert’s bewilderment at Catherine’s unexplained and seemingly contradictory behaviour, and Catherine’s warring instincts over the baby which she has given up, and over the baby’s father, lead to growing tension between them, even while Robert is haunted by the losses and terrors he has experienced on the battlefield.
In The Mood explores fundamental questions of the place of intimacy between women and men, the role of women’s work, the romance versus the reality of war, and how to recover from trauma.
It is also a beautifully written and compelling story, steeped in the post-war period, and at its centre is a profoundly humane vision of what it means to be a man and a woman in a marriage in trouble.
Topics: Fiction, Laura Bloom, Novels | 2 Comments »
Les Murray: The Farm Terraces
A new poem by Les Murray.
The Farm Terraces
Beautiful merciless work
around the slopes of Earth
terraces cut by curt hoe
at the orders of hunger
or a pointing lord.
Levels eyed up to rhyme
copied from grazing animals
round the steeps of Earth,
balconies filtering water
down stage to stage of drop.
Wind-stirred colours of crop
swell between walked bunds
that recall the beast tracks,
harvests down from the top
by hands long in the earth.
Baskets of rich made soil
boosted up poor by the poor,
ladder by freestone prop
stanzas of chant-long lines
by backwrenching slog, before
money, gave food and drunk
but rip now like slatted sails
(some always did damn do)
down the abrupts of earth.
Topics: Les Murray, Poetry | No Comments »
Edrei Cullen: Clearheart
The cover for Clearheart, Edrei Cullen’s sequel to Flitterwig. Clearheart, will be published by Scholastic Press in June.
Ella Montgomery is a Flitterwig — part human, part magical. And not just any Flitterwig. She is the Clearheart — a girl with a special destiny, who can perform magic that no other Flitterwig can.
To foil the Duke’s next dastardly plan to invade Magus, Ella must find her wings, and heal the rift between the Magicals and the Giants.
Praise for Flitterwig
‘A magical romp, packed with slapstick, hilarity and drama … I couldn’t put it down.’
★★★★ Good Reading magazine.
Topics: Childrens books, Edrei Cullen | 3 Comments »
Michael Duffy: The Tower
Michael Duffy’s first crime novel, The Tower, has been sold to Jane Palfreyman at Allen & Unwin, who describes it as ‘a promising and exciting addition to Australian crime writing.’ and plans to publish in August, 2009.
For Nicholas Troy, Sydney had always been a city of sharks, a place where predators lurked beneath the glittering surface. He’d known it when he was growing up on the streets, and when he’d tried and failed to make a living as a boxer. He knew it now, in his work as a homicide detective.
They’re building the tallest skyscraper in the world in the city, and a woman comes off and lands on a police car. At first the investigation looks simple, but in the end it’s not. It takes Troy and his colleagues into the worlds of wealth and poverty, people smuggling and prostitution. They uncover networks of crime and corruption beneath the city’s surface that extend into their own ranks. They discover that every break-through they make leads only to another dead witness.
Troy begins to feel like a killer himself. With his marriage collapsing due to his wife’s post-natal depression, his sense of himself becomes dangerously fragile.
The investigation becomes a mess, a black hole that eventually leads into the city’s dark heart. It also becomes an investigation into Troy’s own heart, into his family and his vocation as a police officer.
Topics: Michael Duffy, Novels | No Comments »
James Moloney: The Book From Baden Dark
The cover of The Book From Baden Dark, the final novel in James Moloney’s bestselling Book Trilogy, which will be published by HarperCollins Australia in June.
Topics: James Moloney, Young Adult | 3 Comments »
