An old friend, a new character &– C. K. Stead is scribe to love and grief in this beautiful new collection.In two sequences the poet plays with the lines of history and love, the fictional and the autobiographical. Reflecting on a long career and familiar faces, the first sequence walks the reader from classical Rome to contemporary Aotearoa. Then in the shade of Parnell begins a tender address to a new character, Kezia, lover and friend just lost.Lyrical and deeply moving, In the Half Light of a Dying Day is a late-career masterpiece.

To protect what little family she has left, Lady Catrin Fitzalan switches places with her cousin when King Edward orders the pious girl to wed his royal champion, a vicious knight called the King’s Raven. Rumors abound that this savage is responsible for the deaths of Lady Catrin’s father and brother. How can she allow her sweet cousin to wed a murderer? Bran ap Madog, bastard son of a Welsh prince, has devoted his life to serving the English king. His badge is the raven, a creature that feeds off rotting spoils, just as Bran feeds off the spoils of war. Now he wants a reward for his service: a wealthy wife and the land and power she can bring him. But there’s another side to the rapacious black birds Bran has chosen for his badge. Social and family-oriented, ravens mate for life. Which gives them something Bran never had—a family, a sense of belonging, and a rightful place in the world. Bran has fought for everything he’s ever had. But his last battle, with his new wife, may cost him the one thing he isn’t prepared to lose: his heart.

Dobbs is unwittingly becoming an undercover psychic detective on the trail of the greatest gold robbery ever conceived. So large that it's taken quite some time, millennia in fact, to plan and get everything in place. Now it seems all the thieves have to do, in this romantic and deeply obscure psychedelic thriller, is blow the safe door but that's not as easy as it might sound. There's only one thing powerful enough to bust through the walls of this time-locked vault system, and that's karma - if you can harness enough of it and apply it in the right way at the right time. Well, karma mixed in with the essential incendiary ingredients: pain and fear. Then the door can be blown clean off its hinges. A non-fiction ayahuasca tale. If Paul Theroux had teamed up with William Burroughs & then Robert Anton Wilson had sat & edited their manuscript, they still would have fallen short of producing this masterpiece. Visionary & shockingly daring! - Steven Ashe - Qabalah of 50 Gates.

1975: When bloody war ravages his beloved Portuguese Timor, Cesar da Silva flees with his wife and children from a country in flames. But in their desperate bid for freedom, amidst the chaos and devastation, Cesar's young family becomes separated. Believing his wife and two daughters dead, Cesar finds passage to the Portugal of his heritage and later to Australia. In occupied Timor, Cesar's wife is alive, but her troubles are far from over. Hunted by a sadistic warlord and with no way to get a message to the outside world, she despairs she will never see her husband again... 1997: More than twenty years later, a young Australian journalist and her photographer are drawn to the killing fields of Timor and discover the terrible suffering of the Timorese people at the hands of a brutal foreign invader. They are compelled to expose the truth to the world, but in their quest for justice, they become entangled in the da Silva family tragedy, placing them all in the gravest of danger... Powerful, moving and enthralling, The Devil's Tears announces the arrival of a bold new voice in Australian fiction. "A captivating story of bravery and honour in a time of war, The Devil's Tears will grip you from the first page to the last." (Peter Watt)

Originally published in 1954, this is a collection of 32 stories from a variety of historic eras filled with missions against all odds. “The stories in this collection are generally firsthand accounts by irregulars. The principles of selection were simple: Were they good stories—interesting, exciting and honest? And did they show fresh and different phases of guerrilla warfare? The weightier writings on irregular strategy and the politics of modern partisan warfare were omitted except for T. E. Lawrence’s classic chapter on the former and Julian Amery’s brilliant and brief analysis of the latter. “I have tried briefly to set these stories in time and circumstance. As editor I have tried not to draw the fine lines between resistance which takes place in urban communities and guerrilla warfare which requires space for movement. I have tried not to belabor the differences between regulars as irregulars and the native guerrilla in the field. I have avoided the fine lines drawn between a guerrilla who attempts sabotage and the saboteur, the guerrilla who collects intelligence and the spy. In short, if too rigid a definition is observed, a fascinating and vital subject could be reduced to a dull and academic one. The irregular’s objective is simply to destroy the enemy. This book attempts to tell of the many ways in which he has tried, and is still trying, to do so.”—Irwin R. Blacker, Introduction