Dead Red Heart

When faced with a sudden and unexpected crisis, when faced with a death of a child, where your whole life is changed forever, where interacting with life is a huge challenge, where everyday matters are difficult to cope with and life seems insurmountable, how does one go on? How does one gather the strength and the courage to pick up the pieces of a shattered life? This book is the story of a mother's journey in a sudden and dramatic crisis-a descent into darkness and the journey back into the light. It is a journey of hope, love, survival, self-empowerment, and healing. It is a journey she hopes will inspire and uplift all who have lost a child or a loved one. She discovers that her children are still "alive" in their spiritual bodies-dead to this world but alive as shining lights in the evening sky.

In the vein of This is Where It Ends, this exploration of grief and tragedy in the aftermath of a bomb explosion at a high school is sadly topical and powerfully heartrending. At 7:45 a.m. a bomb goes off at Edison High. Nine people die instantly. Fifteen are critically wounded. Twenty-two are injured. One is blinded. In the aftermath of the violent tragedy, survive struggle to cope and heal as a result of something they may never understand. Told in alternating points of view, Red Heart Tattoo deals with issues of violence, death, and trauma in the lives of five teens.

The Slocum family of Northeastern Pennsylvania are the best of the white settlers, peace-loving Quakers who believe that the Indians hold the Light of God inside. It is from this good-hearted family that Frances is abducted during the Revolutionary war. As the child's terror subsides, she is slowly drawn into the sacred work and beliefs of her adoptive mother and of all the women of these Eastern tribes. Frances becomes Maconakwa, the Little Bear Woman of the Miami Indians. Then, long after the Indians are beaten and their last hope, Tecumseh, is killed, the Slocums hear word of their long-lost daughter and head out to Indiana to meet their beloved Frances. But for Maconakwa, it is a moment of truth, the test of whether her heart is truly a red one.

This entertaining book is the most up-to-date single-volume Australian history available.

Writers of great horror don’t hold back when it comes to subject matter: nothing is off limits. Their stories go to places that make readers shudder, sweat, squirm. In these columns, Lisa L. Hannett – the award-winning author behind Bluegrass Symphony, Lament for the Afterlife, and Song For Dark Seasons — turns her attention to the topics of writing, horror, and her adopted country of Australia. Drawn from her popular Southern Dark column, Wide Open Fear collects Hannett’s advice on selecting new monsters for horror literature, capturing the Australian gothic, embracing the I in horror, avoiding the overuse of literary techniques across the breadth of your career, and more. Whether you’re an aspiring author looking advice, an established horror scribbler looking to hone your technique, or simply a fan Hannett’s work seeking a glimpse behind the scenes, Wide Open Fear offers insights into the practice and philosophy of an extraordinary writer of horror and weird fiction.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE Mrs Death tells her intoxicating story in this life-affirming fire-starter of a novel Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted by her job and now seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. She meets Wolf, a troubled young writer, who – enthralled by her stories – begins to write Mrs Death’s memoirs. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced (or facilitated), their friendship flourishes. All the while, despite her world-weariness, Death must continue to hold humans’ fates in her hands, appearing in our lives when we least expect her . . .

Stories and phrases can powerfully shape the ways we experience and manage our environment. What languages have been used to characterise Australian landscapes and how have they influenced the way we see and treat our environment? How do stories take root in particular places? How do we find the right words for those parts of the country that matter to us? "Words for Country" answers these questions while exploring the inter-relationship between Australia's landscape and language. Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths have brought together a collection of essays whose subjects range from the Ord River in the far north-west to Antarctica in the south, from the centre to the coast, the prehistoric to the present. Their terrain is environmental and cultural, political and poetic. Words for Country reveals not just how language grows out of the landscape but how words and stories shape the places in which we live.