Set in southern India in the mid 1990s. Four strangers are on quests related to India's neem tree. Meenakshi runs a village-based women's project. Pandora is an eco scientist looking for a story. Jade wants natural products for a New York store. Andy hopes to find a cure for HiV/AIDS. The neem has been used since ancient times for household, medicinal and agricultural purposes and now is the centre of the clash between tradition and modernisation. When first published in India in 2003 Neem Dreams was widely acclaimed for the accuracy of observation and the pitch perfect depiction of the various characters.

Australian Made is a collection of essays about the writers, the readers and the texts of multicultural Australia. Presenting the work of critics and scholars from both Australia and abroad, this collection creates a synergy between local and international perspectives as it explores what it means for a writer or a reader to be 'Australian' and a text to be 'Australian made'.

T he material in this volume is culled from over two thousand stories about Maharajji gathered during five years from more than one hundred devotees. To these devotees who shared their treasured memo ries, I wish to express my deep love and appreciation. Some of them felt that no book could or should be written about a being with qualities as vast, formless, and subtle as Maharajji’s, and yet they contributed their stories nevertheless. I honor them for this kindness and I hope that in my zeal to share experiences of Maharajji with others who were not fortu nate enough to have met him, I have not misused their trust. Some devotees tell me that stories told by other devotees are not fac tually accurate. I have no way of ascertaining the authenticity of any single story. All I can report is that those o f us who gathered the stories were impressed by the credibility of those of us who told the stories. Though the responsibility for this manuscript lies solely with me, I am delighted to acknowledge a lot o f loving help from my friends:

In 1992 the author left her inner city life in Sydney to take up a volunteer position working with and for women in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. She landed in the intersection of very old cultures with the very latest in western religion, mining and development philosophies. The opposition of the men in power, the extreme otherness of the culture and the isolation were the difficulties; the beauty and fascination of the place and new friendships found there were the joys. This new edition includes an Afterword about the writing and reception of the book, which was first published in 1992. More at http: //www.inezbaranay.com/?books=rascal-rain-a-year-in-papua-new-guine

"One last look at Europe" - that was the idea behind a 3-month trip in 2006. The weather was always good and that 3 months led to a life of unanchored travels, for years moving among countries and continents. In Local Time: a memoir of cities, friendships and the writing life New York, London, Bristol, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Barcelona all have a chapter devoted to them, and Rome has more. Other chapters explore themes like sexuality, Europe, identity among hybrids and hyphens, family secrets, the self fiction creates, ageing, beginnings, the history of friendships, and a life in which writing has been the centre. Known for her stylish provocative work the author has once more gone in new directions in this memoir.

A collection of short stories, 7 Stories of Mystery, Romance and Fabulation, mostly previously published, which include stories of a vampire cousin, aliens at a women's gathering, a woman with a penis for a day, a lover both man and woman, Heathcliff appearing to a desiring woman. The 2 novellas of the 60s, previously published, tell of teenage girls in the 1960s, stories of, love, identity and protest, of revolutionary music, rebellion and experiment, of Sydney and Asia, of the spirit of the times and the promise of the times ahead. From a critically acclaimed writer, author of 11 other books.

In Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility, Arianna Dagnino analyzes a new type of literature emerging from artists increased movement and cultural flows spawned by globalization. This "transcultural" literature is produced by authors who write across cultural and national boundaries and who transcend in their lives and creative production the borders of a single culture. Dagninos book contains a creative rendition of interviews conducted with five internationally renowned writersInez Baranay, Brian Castro, Alberto Manguel, Tim Parks, and Ilija Trojanowand a critical exegesis reflecting on thematical, critical, and stylistical aspects. By studying the selected authors corpus of work, life experiences, and cultural orientations, Dagnino explores the implicit, often subconscious, process of cultural and imaginative metamorphosis that leads transcultural writers and their fictionalized characters beyond ethnic, national, racial, or religious loci of identity and identity formation. Drawing on the theoretical framework of comparative cultural studies, she offers insight into transcultural writing related to belonging, hybridity, cultural errancy, the "Other," worldviews, translingualism, deterritorialization, neonomadism, as well as genre, thematic patterns, and narrative techniques. Dagnino also outlines the implications of transcultural writing within the wider context of world literature (s) and identifies some of the main traits that characterize transcultural novels.

Here creative writers who are also university teachers monitor their contribution to this popular discipline in essays that indicate how far it has come in the USA, the UK and Australia.

3 eras, 3 women: linked by Berlin, performance art, and a poem In the 1890s young poet Erika Kieler attends the most progressive artistic salon in Berlin to perform her poem inspired by a visitor from the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In 1989, just before the Wall comes down, punk artist Trudi Zahn performs her own version of the same poem in an East Berlin club. And in 2009 Lottie Hoffmann prepares to perform Trudi's work at a cabaret for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The story explores the drive for women's authentic creativity and personal freedom, cross-cultural exchange, interpretations of history, artistic influence, and a universe in which ghosts appear.

Described in reviews as "refreshing, sophisticated, playful, beguiling, horrifying and sexy" this is a vampire story for literate adults, in a world of writers, cult figures and international travel. Yearning for the lands of the old gods, escaping the pressures of New York, controversial cultural commentator Marisa comes to Amsterdam in search of escape and inspiration. A fiery transsexual cult figure follows her intent on a showdown. A mysterious blonde beauty has waited centuries to be ready for this. The tenth book in Inez Baranay's lively and varied career, Always Hungry is an erotic entertainment about ambition, mortality and relationships, a social comedy with a chilling edge, with questions about the rationalisations we all make when our way of life is based on the suffering of others.