Requirements: .ePUB reader, 4.9 MB | Retail
Overview: Georgia Blain published novels for adults and young adults, essays, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel was the bestselling Closed for Winter, which was made into a feature film. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards including the NSW, Victorian, and SA Premiers’ Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble Award for her memoir Births Deaths Marriages. Georgia’s works include The Secret Lives of Men, Too Close to Home, and the YA novel Darkwater. In 2016, Georgia published Between a Wolf and a Dog and the YA novel Special (Penguin Random House Australia). Between a Wolf and a Dog was shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, and was awarded the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 University of Queensland Fiction Book Award. Georgia passed away in December 2016.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics
Closed for Winter (1998)
Something happened that day on the jetty. A haunting novel of family secrets.
Twenty years have passed since that day on the jetty but it is only now that Elise has found the strength to go back and face the events of her past. And so she begins to unravel all that has been tying her up, picking through that day, piece by piece, from beginning to end. Over and over again.
But sometimes what you uncover is not what you were searching for, and Elise finds herself face to face with a truth she had not expected.
Closed for Winter is a gripping novel that will haunt you to the very end, and a powerful, positive story about the pain of letting go.
Candelo (1999)
The place, the impetuousness of youth, the heat of a desolate town. Choices made unthinkingly. Young lives that would never be the same again, and the secrets that come to light years after.
Ursula’s childhood is marked by a summer holiday in Candelo, a sleepy south coast town. It’s the seventies and her mother takes foster boy, Mitchell, away with them. Charismatic, charming and troubled, Mitchell finds his way into their lives, his brief time with them altering who they are – forever.
Years later, when she hears of Mitchell’s death, Ursula is forced to confront heartbreaking truths about herself and her family – and to realise the strength and sadness of family ties stretched to their limit.
The Blind Eye (2001)
Silas is haunted by the vision of a luminous, surreal garden on the outskirts of Port Tremaine, a desolate country town. In this garden lives Constance, as beautiful as the morning and as blind as the night. They say Constance can see the truth at the heart of things to which others are blind – but where does truth begin and blindness end?
When Silas leaves Port Tremaine, he is unable to live with his memories of the garden and unable to make sense of his fractured life. He goes to Daniel for healing, but he is not the only one who needs to be healed. As Silas learns to come to terms with what he saw and what he refuses to see, Daniel, too, begins to recognise his own habitual blindness and learns to open his eyes to the truths about his own past.
The Blind Eye is a shimmering tale of nature and artifice, love and obsession, vision and sight, and memory and forgetting.
Names for Nothingness (2004)
What happens when the life you choose involves denying everyone you love?
In her final year at school, Caitlin meets Fraser, a Satya Deva devotee, on the bus. Her life is instantly changed, and she gives up everything to be with him and to follow his faith. Her past means nothing to her – all that matters is that she is with her new family, a family who can give her what she needs as she pursues a path that involves denying the person she once was and the people she once loved.
Her parents, Liam and Sharn, have reached an impasse. Sharn spends her days resenting Liam and his inaction; Liam spends his watching video footage of his family in happier times. With Caitlin’s sudden disappearance, the relationship is stretched even further, almost to breaking point.
When Sharn finally tracks Caitlin down, what she discovers will force her to take matters into her own hands. If her daughter won’t come home, she’ll make her.
Darkwater (2010)
A beautifully atmospheric mystery about family, politics and murder in an idyllic Sydney suburb.
Amanda Clarke is dead. Her body was found floating facedown by the riverbank, and no one knows what happened. As rumours fly and fear grows, it seems that everyone suspects Lyndon, one of Amanda’s friends. He’s known for his temper, his cruelty and his criminal family – and now the police want to talk to him.
It’s the end of summer, 1973, the heat is enough to melt asphalt and a sleepy riverside suburb is losing some of its innocence. Fifteen-year-old Winter went to the same school and hung out in the same places as Amanda. As she finds herself alone in trying to defend Lyndon, Winter learns that you can never really know someone – and the answers she has been looking for are closer than she has ever wanted to believe.
The Secret Lives of Men (2013)
In these thirteen short stories, Georgia Blain examines human nature in all its richness: our motivations, our desires and our shortcomings. The men in these tales frequently linger at the edges — their longings and failures exerting a subterranean pull on the women in their lives. In ‘The Secret Lives of Men’, a woman revisits her hometown and learns a long-held secret about her first boyfriend. In ‘The Bad Dog Park’, a man’s devotion to his dog ultimately forces him to confront his true hopes and fears. And in ‘The Other Side of the River’, we watch as a woman makes a snap decision about her life’s future direction, with devastating consequences for her family. Written in Blain’s trademark unadorned yet powerful prose, these stories resonate long after they are finished.
The Secret Lives of Men is an exceptional collection by one of Australia’s leading writers.
Too Close to Home (2011)
Shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferiss Award. Too Close To Home takes us right inside who we really are.
How tenuous the links are that build a life.
Freya writes uncomfortable domestic dramas. Her friends work in theatre and film, show in galleries, talk politics and are trying new ways of having children with friends. These are the people who are slowly gentrifying the next ring of inner-city suburbs while praising their diversity.
As the stultifying heat of summer descends, Shane, an Aboriginal man, moves up the road. He was once close to Matt, Freya’s partner, and he not only brings with him a different approach to life, he also has news of a boy who might be Matt’s son. Despite wanting to embrace all that Shane represents and the possibility of another child in their life, Freya and Matt stumble, failing each other and their beliefs.
Between a Wolf and a Dog (2016)
Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the anxieties of the middle class: loneliness, relationships, death. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Estranged from both her sister, April, and her ex-husband, Lawrence, Ester wants to fall in love again. Meanwhile, April is struggling through her own directionless life; Lawrence’s reckless past decisions are catching up with him; and Ester and April’s mother, Hilary, is about to make a choice that will profoundly affect them all.
Taking place largely over one rainy day in Sydney, and rendered with evocative and powerful prose, the multi-award-winning Between a Wolf and a Dog is a celebration of the best in all of us — our capacity to live in the face of ordinary sorrows, and to draw strength from the transformative power of art.
Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/GO8df2
https://ouo.io/i4Bng3
