Isabel Weaving is not quite who she seems. True, she's a daughter, a sister, a mother and an ex-wife, having escaped one unsatisfactory marriage, although not with her relationships with her children intact. Her second husband, Max, is the love of her life but is no longer around, the grief caused by his absence made bearable only by the visits of her beloved granddaughter. Gradually and unwittingly, Isabel discloses more about herself, her family and the enigmatic Max.This dark and elegant literary mystery will have you gasping at its unexpected revelations, but also doubled over at Isabel's blackly comic wit.

It's March 1985 and Nicky Starling is turning eight, but it's a sad day. Nicky's grandmother Didie has just died. Almost worse—his father's beloved football team has lost the first match of the season.Nicky will miss Didie but he still has Rose, Didie's nurse. He wishes he could love footy, but what he really loves are the tales of King Arthur and stories from Shakespeare that his mother reads to him and that he acts out in his bedroom. But these stories often end badly, an alarming fact for a boy whose family life is starting to fracture.Funny, tender and savage, The Starlings is a wonderfully entertaining novel about secrets and defeat, about heroism and love, about what it might mean to lose everything. Vivienne Kelly was born and educated in Melbourne, where she now lives. She has worked at the University of Melbourne and at Monash University, and was awarded a doctorate for her work on myth and history in Australia. Cooee,...