World rights in each title are held by Scribe,Recursive Mind: the origins of human language, thought, and civilization (2011). Reviewers internationally have hailed Corballis for telling

World rights in each title are held by Scribe, unless otherwise stated

Please address rights enquiries to:

Amanda TokarRights & Contracts [email protected]

Scribe Publications Pty Ltd18-20 Edward Street, Brunswick

Victoria 3056 AustraliaTel: +61 3 9388 8780Fax: +61 3 9388 8787

Non-Fiction

5

POPULAR SCIENCE JUNE 2012

Rights sold: Greek (Aiora Press)Material: PDF available (112pp, B+ format pb)

A lively and captivating collection that illuminates the inner workings of our minds.

Why do we remember faces but not names? If your brain was cut in half would you suffer more than a splitting headache? Does your dog remember where it buried its bone? And do we really only use 10 per cent of our brains? In 21 short walks around the human mind, Michael Corballis answers these questions — and more.

The human mind is arguably the most complex organ in the universe. Modern computers might be faster, and whales might have larger brains, but neither can match the sheer intellect or capacity for creativity that we humans enjoy. In this book Michael Corballis introduces us to what we’ve learned about the intricacies of the human brain over the last fifty years.

Leading us through behavioural experiments and neuroscience, cognitive theory and Darwinian evolution with his trademark wit and wisdom, Corballis punctures a few hot-air balloons (‘You only use 10 per cent of your brain!’ ‘Unleash the creativity of your right brain!’) and explains just what we know — and don’t know — about our own minds. From language to standing upright, composing music to bullshitting, he covers some of the fascinating activities and capabilities that go towards making us human.

At one time or another, we’ve all wished that we could get inside someone else’s head. Here’s how.

MichaelCorballis

Pieces of Mind21 short walks around the human brain

MICHAEL CORBALLIS is professor emeritus of psychology at The University of Auckland. An outstanding science communicator, he is the author of From Hand to Mouth: the origins of language (2003) and most recently The Recursive Mind: the origins of human language, thought, and civilization (2011). Reviewers internationally have hailed Corballis for telling ‘captivating’ stories (The New York Times) with writing that is ‘informative and entertaining’ (American Scientist).

6

What happens when a father asks his son to lie for the greater good?

Growing up, Scott Johnson always suspected that his dad was somehow different. Only as a teenager did he discover the truth: his father was a spy. When Johnson later became a war correspondent, he returned to the countries of his youth — the dusty streets of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the cold urbanity of Yugoslavia — and came face to face with his father’s murky past.

The Wolf and the Watchman is an account of Johnson’s life as the son of a CIA operative and his attempt to reconcile his past with his own moral imperatives as a journalist. A provocative, meditative reckoning of how the choices of two men defined their own relationship to slippery and often uncomfortable ideas like truth, deception, and manipulation, it is also an intensely personal story of how a close bond between father and son endured when tested by one of the world’s most secretive and unforgiving institutions.

The Wolf and the Watchmana CIA childhood

Scott Johnson

Rights held: World EnglishMaterial: manuscript available (app 110,000 words)

SCOTT JOHNSON was the chief of Newsweek magazine’s Africa bureau until its recent close. He spent most of the last decade in the Middle East, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in Mexico, covering politics and the economy in Latin America. He was Baghdad bureau chief for two years, and has been based in South Africa since 2007. He has appeared on NPR, The World, MSNBC and CNN, and was part of the Iraq team that contributed to Newsweek’s 2003 National Magazine Award. The Wolf and the Watchman is his first book.

Magnus Linton

Cocaínaa book on those who make it

A unique insight into the cocaine industry and what hangs off it.

When the world’s greatest ‘King of Cocaine’, Pablo Escobar, was killed in 1993 in a joint military operation undertaken by the CIA, the Colombian military, and Escobar’s enemies, the entire world celebrated the event, thinking that cocaine production would fall rapidly. But twenty years later, Colombia produces five times as much cocaine as it did during the Escobar era, and consumption worldwide is on the rise.

How has this come to pass? Based on three years of research and more than one hundred interviews, Cocaína tackles this question by following coca growers, drug traffickers, refugees, hit men, anti-drug police, cocaine processors, politicians, intellectuals, DEA directors, cocaine tourists, guerrilla fighters, death squads, and the many victims of violence.

Cocaína is an exceptional book with a rare political edge. It provides a unique insight into drug production, drug corruption, and drug-related misery, as well as the failed war on drugs and the future of drug consumption.

Rights held: World English, English translationMaterial: sample chapters available (app 36,000 words)

MAGNUS LINTON is a Swedish writer and reporter, and lives in Stockholm and Bogotá. Cocaína was first published in Swedish in 2010 and was nominated in the category of Best Swedish Non-Fiction Book 2010 for The August Literary Award, Sweden’s most important literary prize.

MEMOIR/CURRENT AFFAIRS AUGUST 2012

CURRENT AFFAIRS MAY 2013

7

The true story of the most controversial psychological experiments of the modern era.

In the summer of 1961, a group of men and women volunteered for a memory experiment to be conducted by young, dynamic psychologist Stanley Milgram. None could have imagined that, once seated in the lab, they would be placed in front of a box known as a shock machine and asked to administer a series of electric shocks to a man they’d just met. And no one could have foreseen how the repercussions of their actions, made under pressure and duress, would reverberate throughout their lives. For what the volunteers did not know was that the man was an actor, the shocks were fake, and what was really being tested was just how far they would go.

When Milgram’s results were released, they created a worldwide sensation. Milgram became both hero and villain, and his work seized the public imagination for more than half a century, inspiring books, plays, films, and art. For Gina Perry, the story of the experiments never felt finished. Listening to participants’ accounts and reading Milgram’s unpublished files and notebooks, she pieced together an intriguing, sensational story: Milgram’s plans went further than anyone had imagined.

Behind the Shock Machinethe untold story of the Milgram obedience experiments

Gina Perry

Material: book available (432pp, trade paperback)

GINA PERRY is an Australian psychologist, writer, and broadcaster. Her feature articles, columns, and short fiction have been published in many of Australia’s leading newspapers and literary magazines. Gina’s ABC Radio National documentary about the obedience experiments, Beyond the Shock Machine, won the Silver World Medal for a history documentary in the 2009 New York Festivals radio awards..

Mike Richards

Wakool Crossinga modern-day investigation into the mysterious death of a young waman in 1916

A true-life memoir about the mysterious death of a young girl almost one hundred years ago.

In November 1916, just a few years after federation and while Australia was at war in Europe, Hazel Hood, the beautiful 18-year-old daughter of a Riverina grazier, went to a local dance and never came home. Her mysterious disappearance caused a sensation in the district around the pioneer settlement of Wakool Crossing near the Victorian–New South Wales border.

The mystery further intensified when, a week later, Hazel’s body — still clothed in her white party dress — was recovered from the Wakool river with a mark of violence upon her head, and her silk scarf tied tightly around her neck.

As a child in the Mallee in the 1950s, Mike Richards was told the story of Hazel Hood’s tragic disappearance by his grandmother, Hazel’s elder sister, who believed she had been murdered. Now, almost 100 years after her death, the author takes us with him as he seeks to unravel the mystery and reveal the truth about what happened to Hazel Hood.

Material: PDF available (160pp, B+ format pb)

MIKE RICHARDS is a former journalist, senior media executive, political scientist, and management consultant, and a former political adviser to the state Labor premier of Victoria, John Cain. He was chief of staff to the Australian Labor leader, Simon Crean, and his successor, Mark Latham, and recently completed a term as chief executive officer of the ANZ College of Anaesthetists.

POPULAR SCIENCE/BIOGRAPHY MAY 2012

BIOGRAPHY/TRUE CRIME SEPTEMBER 2012

8

‘I was the binge-drinking health reporter. During the week, I wrote about Australia’s booze-soaked culture. At the weekends, I wrote myself off.’

Raised in Scotland, the home of whisky, Jill Stark had booze in the blood. Alcohol had been at the centre of her social life since she had her first furtive sip of beer at the age of 13, and it hadn’t changed since. Even her job as a health reporter couldn’t curb her love of big nights out that resulted in even bigger hangovers.

In January 2011, in the shadow of her 35th year, Jill made a decision: she was going to give up alcohol. But what would it mean to stop drinking in a world awash with booze? Could she handle it? And would a year of sobriety be social suicide?

This lively memoir charts Jill’s tumultuous year without booze, as she struggles to reinvent herself — from learning to handle stress without heading straight for a wine bottle; to dating sober; to a trip to Scotland, where boozing is a national pastime; and to enduring censure from friends and colleagues, who tell her that a year without booze equals ‘a year without mates’. This is a funny, moving, and insightful exploration of why we drink, how we got here, and what happens when we turn off the tap.

High Sobrietymy year without booze

Jill Stark

Material: manuscript available (app 100,000 words)

JILL STARK is currently Melbourne’s Sunday Age health reporter, where she writes on issues such as alcohol abuse, eating disorders, obesity, smoking, and sexual health. In 2008, Jill won a National Drug and Alcohol Award for Excellence in Media Reporting and a VicHealth Award for Excellence in Journalism for her work on the ‘Alcohol Timebomb’ series, which included more than 40 articles investigating Australia’s binge-drinking crisis.

Richard Watson & Oliver Freeman

Four Seeable Futuresscenarios for the world in 2040

The future is not what it used to be. In this volatile era, with the world changing at a rapid rate, people are more anxious than ever about what lies ahead.

Will relentless consumerism end up destroying our planet? Or can science and technology allow us to innovate our way out of trouble? Perhaps a greater social consciousness and community-based living will take over — or, conversely, the competition for limited resources may result in everyone fighting for themselves.

Using these ‘four seeable futures’, Richard Watson and Oliver Freeman invite us to critically examine the risks and opportunities to come. They discuss the key factors and trends that led them to develop these scenarios, guiding us to a greater awareness of longer-term issues and decisions, and empowering us not only to adapt to what might happen but also to shape our future and generate change.

It’s impossible to know for certain what the future holds, but we can remove some of its surprises by engaging in a meaningful debate about the choices we face now. This book shows us how.


RICHARD WATSON is the author and publisher of What’s Next, a quarterly report on global trends, and works with various governments, corporations and non-profit organisations on environmental scanning and scenario planning projects. OLIVER FREEMAN has been a publisher for more than 40 years. He worked for McGraw-Hill and Pearson Longman before setting up Prospect Media, Richmond Publishing, and Third Millennium Information. He is the co-founder of eBooks.com, leagle.com, and homepageDAILY.com.

MEMOIR/SOCIOLOGY FEBRUARY 2013

FUTUROLOGY/SOCIOLOGY NOVEMBER 2012

9

An investigation of a disaster that has changed everything — especially how governments and citizens around the world think about nuclear power.

On a calm, northern spring morning on 11 March 2011, a force-9 earthquake jolted the Pacific Ocean seabed 66 kilometres due east of the Japanese city of Sendai. Within 20 minutes, a black tsunami wave 14 metres high rolled in from above the earthquake’s epicentre and crashed onto the nearby coast. Entire towns collapsed, villages turned into rubble, and up to 20,000 men, women, and children were swept either inland or out to sea, along with animals, cars, buses, trucks, and trains. While struggling to convey to the world some idea of the unfolding destruction, Japan had to cope with a third calamity — the consequent malfunctioning of a nuclear-power complex near the town of Fukushima.

Fallout from Fukushima looks first at the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors and how these have almost bankrupted their owners, TEPCO — the largest electricity-supply company in the world. In tracing the fallout and its impact on the people most affected, it also examines the effects of the disaster on the future of nuclear energy, both in Japan and across the world, and on major uranium-suppliers to Japan.

Fallout from FukushimaRichard Broinowski


RICHARD BROINOWSKI has been an Australian diplomat and ambassador. He became general manager of Radio Australia in 1990 and, on his retirement in 1997, became an honorary professor, first at the University of Canberra and then at the University of Sydney. His previous book, Fact or Fission: the truth about Australia’s nuclear ambitions was also published by Scribe.

Scott Bennett

Pozièresthe Anzac story

‘An astounding tome of military history that will not only force readers into asking questions about the Pozières campaign, but it challenges the many “truths” built around the Anzac legend.’ — PS News

In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozières, perched on the highest ridge of the battlefield. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task. At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed and took Pozières. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren, lunar landscape. Despite the toll, the capture of Pozières was heralded as a stunning victory.

Drawing on the letters and diaries of the men who fought at Pozières, this superb book reveals a battlefield drenched in chaos and fear. Bennett sheds light on the story behind the official history, re-creating the experiences of those men who fought in one of the largest and most devastating battles of the Great War and returned home, all too often, as shattered men.

Material: book available (416pp incl maps + 16pp photo section, B+ format pb)

SCOTT BENNETT holds an Executive Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of Sydney. Over the last ten years, he has worked for many of Australia’s most recognised retail companies as a management consultant or an executive manager. In 2003, he visited the Great War battlefields in France and Belgium to retrace the steps of his great-uncles, who had fought there. The experience led him to question the many ‘truths’ that have developed around the Anzac legend.

CURRENT AFFAIRS/ENVIRONMENT OCTOBER 2012

MILITARY HISTORY PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – B-format edn MARCH 2012; original tpb edn APRIL 2011

10

‘Despite the evidence presented here, do not despair about the state of the language, do not lose hope. For in exposing this language James and Scruby arm you with the best weapon for fighting back: laughter. So read, laugh, and keep this book close at all times. It’s your survival manual for the language jungle.’ William Lutz, author of Doublespeak

Twenty years ago, Harold Scruby’s Manglish became an instant bestseller. This version expands on the consummate mangles of the original, with all-new Scrubyisms and recent classics from the shame files of the Plain English Foundation.

Modern Manglish explores the traditional linguistic traps of mixed metaphors and mispronunciation, new words and old clichés, and euphemisms, tautologies, and jargon. It also exposes the latest Manglish in serially offending professions such as politics, business, and the law. Alongside these are the newest contenders for the Manglish crown, ranging from sports talk to silly signs, and from food speak to fancy-pants job titles. For your delectation — and perhaps chagrin — here are the worst excesses of Manglish, illustrated by Australia’s premier editorial cartoonist, Alan Moir.

Modern Manglishgobbledygook made plain

Neil James & Harold Scruby Illustrations by Alan Moir

Material: book available (160pp, B-format pb)

NEIL JAMES chairs the International Plain Language Working Group and features regularly in the media throughout Australia. The latest of his three books is Writing at Work. HAROLD SCRUBY was born in Singapore and educated in Sydney. He spent over 25 years in the rag trade, while writing two books: Waynespeak and Manglish. ALAN MOIR has worked for The Bulletin and The Courier-Mail, and is currently editorial cartoonist on The Sydney Morning Herald.

Leah Kaminsky (ed.)

The Pen & the Stethoscope

‘The beauty of this collection is that it speaks of the bittersweet experience of medical practice. Kaminsky ... has given us a precious glimpse into the world of a doctor, both as they practice and as they imagine themselves to be.’ — Australian Medicine

The Pen and the Stethoscope is a unique collection of fiction and non-fiction by doctor–writers that gives us a fascinating look behind the doctor’s mask, and gets inside the minds of those who deal with enormous existential issues and traumatic situations on a daily basis.

These stories canvass emotional experiences acutely felt by doctors: an awareness of our mortality, of how humanity interplays with medicine, of the weight of responsibility carried by the profession.

With a foreword by Jerome Groopman, contributors include Oliver Sacks, Atul Gawande, Irvin Yalom, Jacinta Halloran, Abraham Verghese, Gabriel Weston, Peter Goldsworthy, John Murray, Robert Jay Lifton, Danielle Ofri, Perri Klass, Nick Earls, Ethan Canin, Sandeep Jauhar, and Leah Kaminsky.

Rights sold: North America (Knopf Doubleday); Indian subcontinent (Hachette India)Material: book available (240pp, trade pb)

LEAH KAMINSKY is an award-winning author and a practising family physician. She has published prose and poetry in many literary magazines and newspapers, and is the author of four books, including Stitching Things Together, a collection of poetry. She is currently completing her first novel, has studied writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, NYU, and RMIT University, and is a student in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpellier, USA.

LANGUAGE/CARTOONS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – DECEMBER 2011

LITERATURE/MEDICINE PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – NOVEMBER 2010

11

Truly great businesspeople become leaders in their industry because of the quality of their ideas — and here are seven that are proven to work.

In The Power of Seven Frameworks, bestselling Japanese business writer Kazuyo Katsuma synthesises the strategies of the world’s top business thinkers, and distils them into techniques to help you hone your problem-solving ability and consistently produce exceptional ideas. She believes that learning to use the power of frameworks will release your creative potential and turn it into successful business practice.

The seven frameworks will help you to interpret information quickly and make fast, effective decisions; make accurate forecasts about a new business or venture; communicate effectively with words, diagrams, and images; understand statistics and use them to your advantage; and turn chance and coincidence into opportunities.

The seven frameworks are the keys to achieve success, inspiration, and balance in business. Unlock their power and find out how to be a step ahead of everyone else.

The Power of Seven Frameworksthe key to business success

Kazuyo Katsuma translated by Stacy Smith

Rights held: UK & Cw excl. Canada, English languageMaterial: book available (188pp, B-format pb)

KAZUYO KATSUMA has worked for some of the world’s top financial firms, such as Arthur Andersen, McKinsey & Company, and JP Morgan. In 2005, The Wall Street Journal anointed her one of the ‘Top 50 Women to Watch’, and in 2009 she was chosen as one of the Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum. Katsuma’s books have sold over four million copies in Japan, Taiwan, China, and Korea.

Hans Keilson translated by Elena Lappin

There Stands My Housea memoir

‘An inspirational memoir of beauty and realism.’ — The Courier-Mail

Hans Keilson was a German-Jewish psychiatrist, writer, and poet. He survived the Holocaust in hiding in Holland, where he emigrated in the 1930s and settled after the war. Shortly before his death in 2011 at the age of 101, his two masterpieces, The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key, were re-published in many languages, to great acclaim.

In this memoir, Hans Keilson revisits the key periods of his life, spanning an entire century of dark European history: his childhood in a small German spa town, the first rumblings of the Nazi era, studies in Berlin, and his exile and war years spent in hiding in Holland. This memoir is a distillation of poignant memory fragments, adding up to a deeply humane, insightful, and moving portrait of the life of a man who was the last surviving witness of both world wars.

The memoir is followed by an in-depth interview with one of his editors.

Rights held: ANZ + English-language translationMaterial: book available (128pp, B-format pb)

HANS KEILSON was born in Germany but, following the Nazis’ rise to power, was forced to move to the Netherlands before the outbreak of World War II. An award-winning psychiatrist, he was particularly renowned for specialising in the traumatic effects of the Holocaust on Jewish survivors. Keilson’s other best-known works include his novel The Death of the Adversary, first published in 1959, and Comedy in a Minor Key.

BUSINESS/MANAGEMENT PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – FEBRUARY 2012

MEMOIR PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – DECEMBER 2011

12

‘A very large portion of Americans are crazier than shithouse rats and are being led by a gang of pathological misfits, most of whom are preachers and politicians.’

In 2004, at the age of 58, writer Joe Bageant sensed that the internet could give him editorial freedom. Without having to deal with gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking, and started submitting his essays to left-of-centre websites.

Joe’s essays soon gained a wide following for his forceful style, his sense of humour, and his willingness to discuss the American white underclass, a taboo topic for the mainstream media. Initially thinking that most of his readers would be very much like himself — working class from the southern section of the USA — he was pleasantly surprised when the emails started filling his in-box. Emails from younger men and women readers, from affluent people who agreed that the political and economic system needed an overhaul, from working-class Americans in all parts of the country.

Joe Bageant died in March 2011 at the age of 64, having published 78 essays online. The 25 essays presented in Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball have been selected by Ken Smith, who disseminated his work to the wider media and to Joe’s dedicated fans and followers.

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ballthe best of Joe Bageant

Ken Smith (ed.)

Material: book available (304pp, trade pb)

JOE BAGEANT frequently appeared on US national public radio and the BBC, and wrote for newspapers and magazines internationally. His book Deer Hunting with Jesus has been adapted for the theatre and is being developed as a television series in America. He also wrote an online column (www.joebageant.com) that made him a cult hero among gonzo-journalism junkies and progressives.

ESSAYS/CURRENT AFFAIRS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – DECEMBER 2011

Fiction

15

FICTION JULY 2012

Rights held: UK & Cw; English-language translationMaterial: PDF available (384pp, trade pb)

Certain secrets are more dangerous than others. Certain truths have to be suppressed.

In a Kabul ravaged by violence and corruption, Homicide Division boss Osama Kandar still believes in integrity, a code of honour, and loyalty to old friends. But the apparent suicide of a businessman called Wali Wadi changes everything.

As Kandar’s routine investigation starts to suggest murder, the Minister for Security attempts to foil his every move, motivating him even more to solve the alleged crime. Meanwhile, a Swiss-based secret organisation known as The Entity is doing everything in its power to terminate Kandar’s investigation, even if it means putting an end to his life and those of innocent civilians. Wali Wadi’s murderer must not be found, whatever the cost.

At the same time, Entity analyst Nick Snee is looking for a man named Leonard Mandrake, who has information that The Entity is desperate for. Nick discovers that Mandrake’s information is related to Wali Wadi’s death, but he doesn’t know how. He starts to question The Entity’s motivations for wanting to stop Kandar.

Snee joins forces with Kandar to find out what everybody is after, and why so many innocent lives are being destroyed in the wake of the Mandrake Affair. What they discover is far more important than either could have possibly imagined.

Cédric Bannel translated by Polly McLean

The Mandrake Filea novel

CÉDRIC BANNEL began his career as a foreign diplomat and as a high public official working on financial sanctions against Iraq. Today he is the founder and CEO of one of France’s biggest internet companies. His previous novels are Le huitème fléau (1999), La menace Mercure (2000), and Elixir (2004).

POLLY McLEAN is an award-winning freelance French-to-English translator, based in Oxford, England. Her previous translations include The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi, Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble, and Secret by Philippe Grimbert.

16

FICTION OCTOBER 2012


Winner, 2011 Scribe Fiction Prize

A delightfully comic and wry multicultural saga in the vein of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.

Cat & Fiddle centres on two British families, the Muslim Chaudrys and the landowning Bournes, whose lives become intertwined at the country estate of Bourne Abbey in rural Wiltshire. Mrs Begum’s main concern is with marrying off her daughters, whose chances of good matches seem to be dwindling by the day. Meanwhile, her son, Tariq, a former fundamentalist, is wrestling with his own problems. Her husband, Dr Chaudry, is of no help, as he’s preoccupied with his work advising Henry Bourne on the restoration of Bourne Abbey to its former glory.

The Bourne family dynamics are also messy. Eldest son and barrister Richard, who gave up his inheritance, is feeling increasingly dissatisfied with London life, and more and more connected to the family home. And Henry’s wife, Thea, is having somewhat of a mid-life crisis.

This is a charming comic novel of contemporary multicultural British life.

Lesley Jørgensen

Cat & Fiddlea novel

LESLEY JØRGENSEN trained as a registered nurse while also completing simultaneous arts and law degrees, and has worked as a medical-negligence lawyer in Australia and England. While in England, she married into a Muslim Anglo–Bangladeshi family, and then returned with her husband to live in Australia. Cat & Fiddle is her first novel.

17

Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript

A revealing, evocative, and moving portrayal of life in a fundamentalist Christian sect in rural Wisconsin.

Ruth and her cousin Naomi live in rural Failing, Wisconsin, part of an insulated community of Pentecostal fundamentalists. The girls share a devastating secret of abuse and resist in the only way they know how: prayer. While their families perceive constant danger in the outside world, they are blind to the destruction and devastation within their own circle.

Increasingly Ruth takes refuge in the harsh beauty of the natural world, escaping her own disturbing reality by focusing on the landscape and wildlife around her. The young girls’ prayer for deliverance is finally answered, but only with more blood. A story of lost innocence and the quest for absolution, Sufficient Grace reveals the tragedy that can result when family, faith, and sin are inextricably bound together.

Sufficient GraceAmy Espeseth


AMY ESPESETH lives in Melbourne, having immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s. A writer, publisher and academic, she is the recipient of the Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature, the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, the 2010 QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize, and the 2012 CAL/Scribe Fiction Prize. Her fiction has appeared in various journals including Wet Ink, antithesis, and The Death Mook.

Amy Espeseth

Trouble Telling the Weather

Winner, 2012 Scribe Fiction Prize

Trouble Telling the Weather is a novel in stories that unfolds through the voices of rural folk sharing a hash present and difficult past in Siren, Wisconsin. There’s Charlie and Scott Carpenter, a small-town couple with big-city problems. Then there’s Charlie’s dad, Pete Kowalski, an ex-cop whose retirement hopes of fishing and hunting might be sunk by a horrible mistake. Charlie’s mom, Trudie, can’t seem to move forward, away from the faith of her family; Reverend Vern Skogen, her brother, won’t — or can’t — let her escape. The Downwinds, Sheila and her son Adam, are also stuck: trapped by poverty, prejudice and misplaced trust. Lavonne Lillesand, Sheila’s closest confidante, proves that some friends are worse than enemies. And there’s no faith, trust, or even love wasted inside Myron Snowbank’s family either, as his daughter Myrna well knows.

The pastoral beauty of the town is undermined by racial, economic, and social inequalities that refuse to remain buried beneath the snow. The modern world has come, and reconciling dreams, hopes, memories, and nightmare realities is an almost impossible task for the people of Siren.

Material: manuscript available July 2012 (app 60,000 words)

AMY ESPESETH lives in Melbourne, having immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s. A writer, publisher and academic, she is the recipient of the Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature, the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, the 2010 QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize, and the 2012 CAL/Scribe Fiction Prize. Her fiction has appeared in various journals including Wet Ink, antithesis, and The Death Mook.

FICTION SEPTEMBER 2012

FICTION AUGUST 2013

18

A richly observed novel about mothers and daughters, family and faith, in the tradition of Marilynne Robinson.

At forty-nine, Celeste has left behind the religion of her childhood, but her mother, Patricia, remains a devout Catholic. When Patricia is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Celeste reluctantly agrees to accompany her mother and sister to a pilgrimage site in a Romanian village — where Patricia believes a miracle will occur.

As the three women travel across Transylvania, the foundations of their relationships are tested. Secrets come to light, along with lies and regrets that have haunted them for many years. Celeste must reassess her feelings towards the two women she loves the most, as well as her misgivings about her marriage.

Pilgrimage is a novel about the beliefs that sustain us, and the things that bring us hope. With grace and warmth, it portrays the complexities of family relationships, examining what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a sister.

PilgrimageJacinta Halloran


JACINTA HALLORAN lives in Melbourne where she works as a GP. She has written on medical science for The Sunday Age. Her first book, Dissection, was published by Scribe in 2008.

Cate Kennedy Like a House on Fire

A collection of poignant short stories that reveal the beauty and tragedy of everyday life.

From prizewinning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies and injustices with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In ‘Laminex and Mirrors’, a cleaner at a nursing home helps a patient to escape, if only temporarily. In ‘Cross Country’, a jilted lover manages to completely misinterpret her ex’s new life. And in ‘Whirlpool’, two sisters bond in the face of their mother’s resentment at the life she’s been given.

Rights held: World EnglishMaterial: manuscript available

CATE KENNEDY is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has been published widely. Her collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Cate is also the author of the travel memoir Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River Water.

FICTION AUGUST 2012

FICTION NOVEMBER 2012

19

‘Peggy Frew’s crystalline eye observes the shoreline of domestic life … Helen Garner meets Henry James in this suburban gothic, where innocence can turn to menace in a moment, love to resentment, and trust to prickling suspicion.’ — Kate Veitch

Bonnie has given up her life as a musician to become a stay-at-home mum. She tells herself she has no regrets, but sometimes the isolation and the relentless demands of three small children threaten to swamp the love between Bonnie and her partner, Pete.

Then an old mate of Pete’s arrives. Doug is eccentric and intrusive, and his unsettling presence disrupts Bonnie’s world further. Yet as the cracks really start to show in the life that Bonnie and Pete have built together, it seems the dangers might also come from within.

House of Sticks is a revealing portrait of contemporary family life, its joys and compromises, and how quickly things can unravel. It’s about trying to stay connected in our disconnected society; a story of identity and community, loyalty and love.

House of SticksPeggy Frew


PEGGY FREW’s debut novel, House of Sticks, won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her story ‘Home Visit’ won The Age short story competition in 2008. She has been published in New Australian Stories 2, Kill Your Darlings, and Meanjin. Peggy is also a member of the critically acclaimed and award-winning Melbourne band Art of Fighting.

Melanie Joosten

Berlin Syndrome

Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist 2012

‘In language that’s hypnotic and sparse, Joosten’s remarkable first novel demands to be guzzled in one sitting.’ — The Courier-Mail

2006, Berlin: the once-divided city still holds its share of secrets. One afternoon, near the tourist trap of Checkpoint Charlie, Clare meets Andi. There is an instant mutual attraction, and when Andi invites her to stay, Clare thinks she may finally have found somewhere to call home. But as the days pass and she finds herself continually prevented from leaving Andi’s locked apartment, Clare realises she has become his prisoner.

What follows is a closely observed and absolutely gripping psychological thriller that shifts astutely between Andi’s and Clare’s perspectives. Berlin Syndrome reveals the power of obsession, the fluidity of truth, and the kaleidoscopic nature of human relationships. It is a startling debut novel from a talented new writer.

Rights Sold: Film option (Aquarius Films)Material: book available (256pp, trade pb)

MELANIE JOOSTEN was born in 1981, and lives and works in Melbourne. She has an honours degree in creative arts and a Master of Arts (editing) from the University of Melbourne.

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – SEPTEMBER 2011

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – JULY 2011

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Winner, People’s Choice Award, 2010 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards

Once, Rich and Sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, twenty-five years later, they have both settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age — although they’ve gone about it in very different ways. The only thing they have in common these days is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie.

When Rich decides to take Sophie, whom he hardly knows, on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, his overconfidence and her growing disillusion with him set off a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Instead of respect, Rich finds antagonism in his relationship with Sophie; and in the vast landscape he once felt an affinity with, he encounters nothing but disorientation and fear.

Ultimately, all three characters will learn that if they are to survive, each must traverse not only the secret territories that lie between them but also those within themselves.

The World BeneathCate Kennedy

Rights sold: North America (Grove Atlantic); UK & Cw, excl ANZ (Atlantic Books); ANZ & North America audio (Bolinda Audio); Complex Chinese (Morning Star)Material: book available (352pp, B-format pb)

CATE KENNEDY is an award-winning short-story writer who has twice won The Age short-story competition. Her short-story collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Cate is also the author of the travel memoir Sing and Don’t Cry: a Mexican journal, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires, and The Taste of River Water.

Fiona McGregor

Indelible Ink

Winner, 2011 The Age Book of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year

‘Indelible Ink is a stunning book, a novel that addresses our world and our time with an acute and ferocious acumen.’ — Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap

Marie King is fifty-nine, recently divorced, and has lived a rather conventional life on Sydney’s affluent north shore. Now that her three children have moved out, the family home is to be sold, and with it will go her beloved garden.

On a drunken whim, Marie gets a tattoo — an act that gives way to an unexpected friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys. Before long, Rhys has introduced Marie to a side of the city that clashes with her staid north-shore milieu. Her children are mortified by their mother’s transformation, but have their own challenges to deal with: workplace politics; love affairs old and new; and, of course, the real-estate market.

Written with Fiona McGregor’s customary savage wit and keen eye, Indelible Ink uses one family as a microcosm for the changes occurring in society at large. In its piercing examination of the way we live now, it is truly a novel for our times.

Rights held: North AmericaRights sold: UK & Cw excl. ANZ (Atlantic Books)Translation rights: Curtis Brown AustraliaMaterial: book available (464pp, B-format pb)

FIONA MCGREGOR is the author of four works of fiction: Au Pair; Suck My Toes; chemical palace, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award for fiction; and, most recently, Indelible Ink. She has also written a travel memoir, Strange Museums. She was voted one of the inaugural Best Young Novelists by the Sydney Morning Herald in 1997. Fiona is also known as a performance artist and has performed live across Australia and Europe.

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – B-format edn August 2010; original tpb edn September 2009

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – June 2010; B-format edn June 2011; original tpb edn June 2010

Australian bestseller:

over 15,000 copies sold

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Highly commended for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2012Shortlisted for the Aurealis Award 2011 for Best Science Fiction Novel and YA Novel

‘Brooding, surreal and unsettlingly vulnerable, Black Glass marks the arrival of a striking new voice. A brilliant debut.’ — James Bradley

Tally and Grace are teenage sisters living on the outskirts of society, dragged from one no-hope town to the next by their fugitive father. When an explosion rips their lives apart, they flee separately to the city.

The girls had always imagined that beyond the remote regions lay another, brighter world: glamorous, promising, full of luck. But as each soon discovers, if you arrive there broke, homeless, and alone, the city is a dangerous place — a place where commerce and surveillance rule, and undocumented people like themselves are confined to life’s shady margins. Now Tally and Grace must struggle to find each other — or just to survive.

Narrated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Black Glass is the work of an exceptional new talent.

Black GlassMeg Mundell


MEG MUNDELL was born in New Zealand and is based in Melbourne. She has been published widely in Australian newspapers, journals and magazines, including The Age, The Monthly, Meanjin, The Best Australian Stories 2010, The Sleepers Almanac, harvest and The Big Issue. Black Glass won the 2007 D.J. (Dinny) O’Hearn Memorial Fellowship and was shortlisted for the 2010 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize. She is now completing a memoir on trucking culture, Braking Distance.

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – MARCH 2011

‘Deliberately and delightfully over-the-top. A story of big ideas, of tenderness and honour, and of dastardly deeds and ideas, its colour and life leap off the page.’ — Adelaide Advertiser

When Mary Ann, an impoverished governess, rescues a child from the Yarra River, she sets in motion a train of events that she could never have foreseen. It is not a child she has saved but General Tom Thumb, star of a celebrated troupe of midgets on their 1870 tour of Australia.

From the enchanting Queen of Beauty Lavinia Stratton to the brilliant pianist Franz Richardson, it seems that Mary Ann has fallen in among friends. She soon discovers, however, that relationships within the troupe and its entourage are far from harmonious, and that she may be a pawn in a more dangerous game than she imagined …

A fantastical tale of intrigue and show-time glamour, Little People will charm and beguile you.

Little Peoplea novel

Jane Sullivan

Rights sold: UK & Cw excl. ANZ (Allen & Unwin UK)Material: book available (352pp, trade pb)

JANE SULLIVAN came to Australia from England in 1979 and worked for The Age as a reporter, feature writer, and editor of various sections, including the books pages. At present she writes a Saturday column, ‘Turning Pages’, for The Age, as well as features about books and writing.

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – APRIL 2011

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Winner, 2008 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction

‘As unflinching as Cormac McCarthy and as perverse as Ian McEwan, The Low Road blazes too with the lyricism of T.C. Boyle. It is a surprising and stunning debut.’

— Simon Hughes, ‘The Year’s Best Book’, Australian Financial Review Magazine

A young petty criminal, Lee, wakes in a seedy motel with a bullet in his side and a suitcase of stolen money, his memory hazy as to how he got there. Soon he meets Wild, a doctor with a heroin habit who is escaping his own disastrous life. Yoked together by circumstance and necessity, the two men set out for what they hope will be the safety of the countryside. But what starts badly ends worse — much worse.

Part noir thriller, part modern tale of alienation and despair, The Low Road seduces the reader into a story that unfolds and deepens hypnotically. It is a brilliant debut novel.

The Low RoadChris Womersley

Rights sold: UK & Cw excl. ANZ (Quercus); North America (SilverOak); Vietnamese (Le Chi Culture & Communications); ANZ audio (Louis Braille Audio) Material: book available (288pp, B-format pb)

CHRIS WOMERSLEY’s fiction and reviews have appeared in Granta, The Best Australian Stories 2006, 2010 and 2011, Griffith REVIEW, Meanjin and The Age. His second novel, Bereft, won the Australian Book Industry Award for Literary Fiction and the Indie Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, The Age fiction prize and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal

FICTION/CRIME PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – B-format edn December 2011; original tpb edn September 2007

Chris Womersley

Bereft

Winner, 2011 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the YearWinner, 2011 Indie Book Award for FictionShortlisted, 2011 Miles Franklin Literary AwardShortlisted, 2011 The Age Fiction Book of the Year

‘This is an outstanding work of Australian fiction. Read it next.’ — Peter Pierce, The Sydney Morning Herald

It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world.

In the town of Flint, Quinn Walker returns to the home he fled ten years earlier when he was accused of an unspeakable crime. Aware that his father and uncle would surely hang him, Quinn hides in the hills surrounding Flint. There, he meets the orphan Sadie Fox — a mysterious young girl who seems to know more about the crime than she should.

A searing gothic novel of love, longing, and justice, Bereft is about the suffering endured by those who go to war and those who are forever left behind.

Rights sold: UK & Cw excl. ANZ (Quercus); North America (SilverOak); French (Albin Michel); German (DVA), Croatian (Fraktura), unabridged audio (Bolinda) Material: book available (272pp, B-format pb)

CHRIS WOMERSLEY’s fiction and reviews have appeared in Granta, The Best Australian Stories 2006, 2010 and 2011, Griffith REVIEW, Meanjin and The Age. His debut novel, The Low Road, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction.

FICTION PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED – B-format edn March 2011; original edn September 2010

Australian bestseller:

over 12,000 copies sold

Scribe Publications Pty Ltd18–20 Edward StreetBrunswick 3056Victoria Australia

T: +61 3 9388 8780F: +61 3 9388 [email protected]

Documents

World rights in each title are held by Scribe,Recursive Mind: the origins of human language, thought, and civilization (2011). Reviewers internationally have hailed Corballis for telling