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  The Serpent of Division - Alyce...

  Christina Hardyment

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  The Serpent of Division features murder and mystery, a charming pirate, Oxford colleges and libraries, a buxom bookseller reminiscent of the Wife of Bath and a Persian physician with a fondness for Rumi. All have a part to play, as the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer fights for survival against her ruthless neighbour Sir Robert Harcourt and the machinations of Elizabeth Wydeville, descendant of the serpent fairy Melusine and queen of Edward IV. It is set during the politically rocky final years of the Wars of the Roses.

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  The Settlement

  Jock Serong

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  In The Settlement, Jock Serong reimagines in urgent, compelling prose the ill-fated exploits of George Augustus Robinson at the settlement of Wybalenna—a venture whose blinkered, self-interested cruelty might stand for the colonial enterprise itself. 
   
  On the windswept point of an island at the edge of van Diemen’s Land, the Commandant huddles with a small force of white men and women. 
   
  He has gathered together, under varying degrees of coercion and duress, the last of the Tasmanians, or so he believes. His purpose is to save them—from a number of things, but most pressingly from the murderous intent of the pastoral settlers on their country. 
   
  The orphans Whelk and Pipi, fighting for their survival against the malevolent old man they know as the Catechist, watch as almost everything about this situation proves resistant to the Commandant’s will. The wind, the spread of disease, the strange black dog that floats in on the prow of a wrecked ship… 
   
  But above all the Chief, the leader of the exiles, before whom the Commandant performs a perverse, intimate dance of violence and betrayal. 
   
  ‘An extraordinarily vivid imagining of one of the most significant encounters in Australian history.’ AMANDA LOHREY 
   
  ‘Grips from the first page. It’s unsentimental, truthful and profound – all in a milieu effortlessly imagined.’ DON WATSON

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  Yoruba Boy Running - A Novel

  Biyi Bandele

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  “A true artist. A brilliant writer. An original thinker.”—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 
  A captivating, fictionalized retelling of African linguist and clergyman Samuel Ajayi Crowther's miraculous journey from slave to liberator. 
  “Run, Àjàyí, run!” 
  When Malian slave traders invaded the Nigerian town of Òsogùn, thirteen-year-old Àjàyí's life is split in two. 
  Before, there was his childhood, surrounded by friends and family, watched over by the ancient Yorùbá gods of forest and water, earth and sky. 
  After, there was capture, slavery—and eventually release—with Àjàyí, left transfigured, unrecognizable, and now, inthe service of a new god, with a new name and a culture different from the one left far behind. Àjàyí becomes Samuel Crowther—missionary, linguist, minister, and eventually abolitionist, driven to negotiate against his own people to end the evil trade in human beings which destroyed his family and transformed his own life. 
  Drawing on the prolific writings of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, novelist and filmmaker Biyi Bándélé creates a many-voiced, kaleidoscopic portrait of an extraordinary man. From the heart-stopping drama of Àjàyí's last day of freedom to the farcical intrigue of the Òsogùn court; from a meeting with Queen Victoria to consecration as the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church, Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s journey, like all great odysseys, circles back to where he began. By turns witty, moving and revolutionary, Biyi Bándélé's reimagining of Crowther's life is a brilliant tour de force. 
  Cover artwork Chris Ofili, Blind Leading Blind, 2005 © The artist.

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  A Northern Gentleman - One man...

  Lane Everett

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  Read the book Kirkus Review calls "An inspiring tale of a quest for purpose." 
  Handsome and quick-witted Drucker May is miserable in the privileged life that he leads working at a bank in Atlanta. So he runs away. He wants to find what it is that he’s really supposed to do with his life and he wants to have a good time doing it. Because the year is 1890, the people who he meets after he leaves Atlanta have no easy way to find out who he really is, allowing Drucker to reinvent himself in each stop that he makes along the way to California. As he travels, he explores late 19th century America as well as his own identity – both real and mistaken – all while solving a mystery, falling in love and getting caught up in a wild west caper gone awry. This story isn't just a rollicking ride from one town and one mistaken identity to the next, though. It's the tale of a man trying to strike a balance between his responsibility to his family and his desire to be his own man. Alternately moving and laugh out loud funny, A Northern Gentleman chronicles the adventures that unfold when one man decides to leave his boring desk-work behind to seek out the life he's meant to lead and to find that special something that his life has been missing. 
  "The tale is full of engrossing historical details, including information about the various towns and political climates that Drucker encounters as he travels west. It also effectively brings to life the experience of 19th-century rail travel. ...Everett’s prose is full of compassion and insight as she explores the psyche of a character who’s discontented with the status quo. As Drucker tries to determine his place in the world, readers will find themselves rooting for him the whole way. An inspiring tale of a quest for purpose." - Kirkus Review

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  That Dazzling Sun

  Lawrence Reid Bechtel

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  That Dazzling Sun, Book 2 in The Tinsmith's Apprentice trilogy, continues the vivid coming-of-age story of Isaac Granger, slave to Thomas Jefferson, begun in Bechtel's marvelously adept debut novel, "A Partial Sun" in which Isaac begins his complicated apprenticeship at age fifteen as a tinsmith in Philadelphia in the fall of 1790.In this second book, Rachel Bringhouse, the tinsmith's daughter and Isaac's tutur, sails off to Englad to work alongside the famous social activist and poet, Hannah Moore, writing enthusiastic letters to Isaac and which Isaac answers back with assistance from the irrepressibly poetic cook's helper, Ovid. Meanwhile, Billey gardner, the feisty and opportunistic former slave of James Madison, pesters Isaac with notions of a business partnership; the charismatic Dr. Cornelius Sharp uses Isaac to confront Jefferson as a debt-ridden slaveowner; and the Reverend Richard Allen provides Isaac with a most surprising document.When an exuberant Rachel returns from England with a key insight and Isaac's hated nemesis Daniel Shady reappears, bent on revenge, the book rises to its crescendo, in which Isaac must rise to his own power and bargain at last with Thomas Jefferson on his own terms.

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  Damn Loot!

  Mario Micolucci

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  An Italian-style Western 
  On a day like any other in the morally depraved town of Little Pit, a dusty man on a horse rides up. The man is in a hurry and carrying with him a suspicious package. Hugg Badfinger cannot resist the temptation to discover what’s inside, so he takes the man down and sends his kid to claim the man’s effects. Not long after, father and son burst out of the town on horseback as though they have the devil at their heels. What did they find?

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