Tin River is a townlet of terminal attractiveness.Tin River is a state of mind.Researching in the archives Belle discovers the long-dead Gaden Lockyer, a colonial pioneer in Jericho Flats, and soon becomes obsessed. Belle's quest for Lockyer is her way of coming to terms with the past—her mother, 'a drummer in her own all-women's group'; her absent American father; and her ineffectual husband, Seb. In Reaching Tin River, Thea Astley's satire is at its sharpest and most entertaining.Thea Astley was born in Brisbane in 1925. Her first novel, Girl with a Monkey, was published in 1958 and her third, The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Many notable books followed, among them the groundbreaking A Kindness Cup (1974), which addressed frontier massacres of Indigenous Australians, and It's Raining in Mango (1987). Her last novel was Drylands (1999), her fourth Miles...

A story of rebellion and loyalty on a small Pacific Island where one man becomes caught in a struggle for independence from colonial rule.Written in 1985, and awarded the ALS Gold Medal the following year, Beachmasters remains relevant in our globalised, post-colonial society, offering pertinent observations about politics, nationalism and race.Thea Astley AO (1925–2004) was a multi-award-winning novelist and short story writer. She won the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times, for The Well Dressed Explorer (1962) and The Acolyte (1972), both also part of the Untapped Collection, as well as The Slow Natives (1965), and Drylands (1999). Her personal awards included the Patrick White Award in 1989 and, in 2002, a New South Wales Premier's Special Award for a lifetime's achievement in literature.

There are distant shouts, rifle shots, the pounding of feet across the bridge, the sound of running. A woman's scream carves the night then bubbles away.In 1930 the superintendent of a mission on a Queensland island, driven mad by his wife's death, goes on a murderous rampage. Fearing for their lives, the other whites arm a young Indigenous man and order him to shoot Uncle Boss dead. The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow traces the lead-up to this bloody showdown and the repercussions in the years after—for Aboriginal people and the colonial overseers.Thea Astley was born in Brisbane in 1925. Her first novel, Girl with a Monkey, was published in 1958 and her third, The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Many notable books followed, among them the groundbreaking A Kindness Cup (1974), which addressed frontier massacres of Indigenous Australians, and It's Raining in Mango (1987)....

Jack Holberg is a blind musician and composer from Queensland who becomes world famous. Paul Vesper, 'the acolyte' of the title, tells the great man's story—and his own—in this dark, funny portrait of an artistic genius and those who worshipped, and suffered, at his feet.First published in 1972, The Acolyte won the Miles Franklin Literary Award that same year.Thea Astley, AO (1925–2004) won the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times, for The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), also in the Untapped Collection, The Slow Natives (1965), The Acolyte (1972) and Drylands (1999). Other awards for her work include The Age Book of the Year, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and a Queensland Premier's Literary Award. She also received multiple personal awards including, in 1989, the Patrick White Award and, in 2002, a New South Wales Premier's Award for a lifetime's achievement in literature.

Pompous, vain and a self-professed charmer, George Brewster moves from one unfulfilling journalism job to the next, one empty relationship to another, his faithful wife and daughter ever the afterthought. The Well Dressed Explorer is the story of a man of his time, but as a story of toxic workplaces and an Australia where comfort and self-interest breed men like George, it might well feel familiar to a new generation of readers.Described as a 'formidable and enduring novel' by the American magazine Publishers Weekly on its original publication in 1962, The Well Dressed Explorer won the Miles Franklin Literary Award at same year. Thea Astley AO (1925–2004) went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award three more times, for the novels The Slow Natives (1965), The Acolyte (1972) which is also part of the Untapped Collection, and Drylands (1999). Other awards for her work include The Age Book of the Year, the New...

Wresting his family from the easy living of nineteenth-century Sydney, Cornelius Laffey takes them to northern Queensland where thousands of hopefuls are digging for gold in the mud. They confront the horror of Aboriginal dispossession, and Cornelius is sacked for reporting the slaughter. This is an unforgettable tale of the other side of Australia's heritage.

In her flat above Drylands' newsagency, Janet Deakin is writing a book for the world's last reader. Little has changed here in 50 years, except for the coming of cable TV. Loneliness is almost a religion, and still everyone knows your business. The town is being outmanoeuvred by drought and begins to empty, pouring itself out like water into sand. Small minds shrink even smaller in the vastness of the land. One man is forced out by council rates and bigotry; another sells his property, risking the lot to build his dream. And all of them are shadowed by violence of some sort — these people whose only victory over the town is in leaving it."Drylands is a wake-up call for millennial Australia... Astley's brilliance rests not only in her distinctive prose style but her willingness and courage to make social statements, to assemble portraits of pain as a bridge to compassion."The Bulletin

This stylish reissue of one of Thea Astley's finest early novels is a classic story of small-town life. Two schoolteachers are drawn to each other by their concern for a lonely young girl. As long as Vinny Lalor could remember she had been on the fringe of things—in her family and at school. But as the final term of the year progresses, rumor and malice mount against Vinny and her two teachers, sweeping them toward scandal and, for one of them, disaster. A Descant for Gossips was Thea Astley's second novel, released in 1960 in England and Australia. In 1983 it was adapted for television by the ABC.

Thea Astley is in top form in this 1965 Miles Franklin Award winner.'If one saw behind the faces into the hearts, one would die.'A suburban couple have drifted into the shallows of middle-aged boredom. Their fourteen-year-old son is a stranger, meeting their attempts at love with hostile indifference. Surly at home, he is a dab hand at shoplifting and looks like sliding into delinquency.Moving from Brisbane to a country convent and the Gold Coast, the novel is a brilliant, witty portrait of the surface of ordinary life. The Leverson family and their connections appear normal but desire and inner emotion are never quite so simple.

The story of Taws, an Australian town about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. But one man is not about to celebrate. Returning from 15 years exile, he is intent on reminding the town of the brutal acts they perpetrated during their early years of settlement.In nineteenth-century Queensland, Lieutenant Freddie Buckmaster takes a band of men to 'disperse the natives' from Mandarana, an outback town. Violence is the inevitable result. Terrified, a young mother, Kowaha, leaps from a cliff, holding her baby.Two decades after the massacre, Tom Dorahy returns to his hometown for a reunion, bringing with him memories of its dark past and an attempt to reclaim justice for the victims of that night.A Kindness Cup addresses the efforts made to forget and to remember by both white and indigenous Australians, so that they may negotiate a future together.

Thea Astley's brilliant satire on old age shimmers with grief and irony. One of Australia's most important novelists, Thea Astley, is at her most wickedly funny and pertinent in Coda.Kathleen is facing old age alone. Between her selfish children - 'Brain' and his straying wife, and daughter Shamrock and Shamrock's hubby the 'Big Developer' - there is no longer a place for her. But Passing Downs Old People's Home is still not the place for a woman like Kathleen. She is not ready for that and they're not ready for her.'I've skipped the grandma years,' Kathleen said. 'The four ages of women: bimbo, breeder, baby-sitter, burden ... I've cut and run. Wasn't going to tell a soul but I've decided cutting and running is what it's all about.'Thea Astley is at her most wickedly funny and pertinent in Coda. This brilliant satire on old age shimmers with grief and irony.Praise for Coda: '[a] jewel of a book' - Jane Wheatley, HQ'It is spiky and restless......

Thea Astley's first novel, back in print.Loneliness has driven a young school teacher in a small North Queensland town to form an unlikely relationship with a road worker. Harry is older and more experienced than Elsie, but vulnerable through his possessive love for her.In an attempt to escape from him, Elsie obtains a transfer. Her last day in town is spent trying to avoid Harry, fearing the violence of his reaction to her desertion and their inevitable encounter.Girl with a Monkey is Thea Astley's first novel.

Only the force of a hurricane could reveal the deepest currents of their ordinary lives.When the tourist ship Malekula arrives at a tropic island in the the Pacific the crushing heat and the looming hurricane intensify the hostilities and frustrations of the egocentric people on board. And when the hurricane bursts on the island the havoc it brings is less perhaps than the personal storms of man and wife, of spinster friends, of man and mistress, of erring priest.Gerald Seabrook's pointless womanising achieves a finality of irritation for his suffering wife; elderly Miss Paradise drives her life-long friend, Miss Trumper, to make a fatal pilgrimage; the agent Stevenson sees the failure of his dream of love with his mistress; and the priest, Father Lake, explodes his own petty vices and his spiritual impotence. Their moments of truth are brilliantly illuminated as the story moves to its climax in the hurricane and its aftermath.A sensitive and unsentimental...