Based on a true story, The Jacarandas is about a brutal and morally challenging world, and yet where human dignity and forgiveness find a way to break through the darkness.Daniel is a university student who joins the federal police hunting leftist subversives in Buenos Aires during Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s. But it's an occupation that eats its young, and he soon learns that besides fitness and hate, the military regime requires loyalty, batons, and electric prods.And the disappeared.When Daniel returns to the university as an infiltrator in this subversive hotbed, he begins a struggle between duty and morality and between friendship and survival.The Jacarandas is the story of the purple bloom of the jacaranda tree, whose beauty and messiness are the inextricably intertwined saga that has always been Argentina. It's an untold perspective on this dark stain in Argentina's history that sears its social conscience even today.

A stunning debut novel set in post-revolutionary Iran that gives voice to the men, women, and children who won a war only to find their livesNand those of their descendantsNimperiled by its aftermath.

Hope looms in a vast land wide open with possibilities... Dr. Sunny Rubenstein travels the night train through the black void of Africa to check out his 51st job prospect on the rich Cheetah Gold Mine. Along the way he hears that the mine might be running out. But the appendage to it, Umzimtuti, the smallest municipality in the world, could be big-even King George VI will stop off for tea on his Victory Tour on the Royal White Train. The mine's bonus is a free rambling house with the only indoor toilet in town. It's the perfect antidote to his wife Mavourneen's difficult war years with their ailing son, Douglas. Sunny cannot afford to lose a case in his first year to secure the post permanently. There's plenty to challenge him. Early morning sick parade under the shadeless blue gum trees is followed by surgery, then on to afternoon clinics ending with calls to far-away farms and mud huts. Umzimtuti's a town where poker stakes are high. Liquor flows freely at the Umzimtuti Hotel bar. Bullet holes in the wall attest to its wild past. Sunny will have to unseat the tight-fisted, short-sighted Mayor if Umzimtuti's ever going to put in street lights, get rid of bucket toilets and the honeysuckle brigade so the town can capture the new surge in post-war industry. Sunny's belief that competence, hope, hard work and idealism are enough will be sorely tested.

Five friends are feeling bored on a hot sticky day. Just when they think theyll never find anything fun to place, a simple gust of wind changes everything Jacaranda Magic is a unique rhyming picture book that celebrates imaginative play and highlights the value of boredom and nature in inspiring creativity.

From the bestselling author of Mallawindy and the Woody Creek series "Dettman ... is brilliant at depicting the seemingly inconsequential murmurs of small-town life" Sun-Herald For forty-four years Stella Templeton has been a dutiful daughter and a good citizen, living in Maidenville, population 2,800 where nothing happens. Until one hot summer afternoon. An ugly act has lifted the respectable skirts of Maidenville and mystery starts to surround the daughter of the local minister. Then the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old boy adds to the neighbourhood confusion. Does something rotten lurk behind the neatly trimmed hedges and white picket fences that divide this sleepy town? No-one comes close to knowing the dreadful truth-but after forty-four years of doing the right thing, Stella Templeton is starting to blossom... "Dettman writes compulsively readable stories" The Age Fans of Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker will love Joy Dettman.

Reissue of a novel first published 1988. It is a story of passion and obsession that ranges in setting from an Australian rainforest to Boston and Toronto. A mysterious and elusive love affair haunts the lives of three women in Australia. Twenty years later, on the other side of the world, Charade Ryan sorts through story and counter-story for her father, the legendary Nicholas, and the truth about her origins. This novel was included in the 'New York Times Book Review's' 50 most notable novels of the year, was in the top 16 for the Booker Prize, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, the Banjo and the Adelaide Festival National Fiction Awards. Author has written many award-winning novels including 'The Last Magician' and 'The Ivory Swing' and the short story collections 'Dislocations' and 'Isobars'.

Stories and autobiographical narrations have particular importance in society, whether they are told, shared or just listened to. This book presents 19 narrations of authors about their own experiences as migrants. Coming from different parts of the world, they tell stories about struggles, development, doubt, challenges, hope and empowerment, sometimes amusing the reader and then again containing a saddening or thought-provoking undertone. These creative works are set in various cultural contexts such as for example Germany, Australia, South Africa, America, India or Hungary and describe how life experiences in different countries contribute to and influence the development of transcultural identities. This book is a must for readers interested in transcultural stories, creative writing and identity development in cultural and transcultural contexts.

Never mind the Real Housewives of Orange County—Marla Jo Fisher is the woman everyone can relate to, complete with bad parenting, rotten dogs, ill health, and fashion faux pas. For nearly two decades, in the Orange County Register and many syndicated papers, readers have delighted in Marla Jo’s subversive humor, cranky intellect, and huge heart on her journey through broke, single, after-40 motherhood, when she adopted Cheetah Boy and Curly Girl, to her oddball adventures around the globe, to the sublime ridiculousness of life next door. Even while facing a devastating diagnosis, Fisher teaches us that humor is the balm that eases and the very thing that binds us together.

We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours. With these words, spoken by an illegal Mexican day laborer, The Madonnas of Echo Park takes us into the unseen world of Los Angeles, following the men and women who cook the meals, clean the homes, and struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. When a dozen or so girls and mothers gather on an Echo Park street corner to act out a scene from a Madonna music video, they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife. The Esperanzas’ shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again." Like the Academy Award–winning film Crash, The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the intersections of its characters and cultures in Los Angeles. In the footsteps of Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie, Brando Skyhorse in his debut novel gives voice to one neighborhood in Los Angeles with an astonishing— and unforgettable—lyrical power.