The Opal Desert

From Australia's favourite storyteller with new novel Before the Storm out now. Kerrie, in her 40s, has just lost her famous sculptor husband who had been the centre of her existence and for whom she sacrificed her own art career. Now she needs to find the courage to rekindle her dreams. Shirley, approaching 80, believes she was betrayed by her lover many years ago and has retreated from the world, becoming a recluse living in an underground dugout. Her new friends cause her to reassess what she's done with her life. Anna, 20, has a promising athletic career but is torn between the commitment to her sport, which could carry her to the Olympics, and the other challenges in her life. Will running away solve her problems? The friendship that develops between these three women who meet in the strangely beautiful but desolate landscape of Opal Lake helps them deal with the next stage of their lives.

The opalescent deserts of the American Southwest have become romantic icons in the public imagination through the words of writers, the images of artists and photographers, and the visual storytelling of filmmakers. In this spirited, personal, beautifully written book, Peter Wild explores the lives and works of sixteen writers whose words have shaped our visions of the opal desert. Wild begins with Cabeza de Vaca, whose Relación of his desert wanderings sent treasure-hungry Spaniards searching for cities of gold. He goes on to discuss the works of both widely read and lesser-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, including such luminaries as Mary Austin, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Ann Zwinger, and Charles Bowden. He links all the writers as explorers of one kind or another, searching for tangible or intangible treasures, some finding and some losing their dreams in the opal desert.

A slow change in outlook dominates the book, as attitudes shift from viewing the desert as a place of sanctity, then a land to be despised or exploited, and back to an appreciation of it as a special place, an arena of highly complex natural communities, and a wild refuge for the human body and soul.

This study explores the ways in which the desert, as topographical space and cultural presence, shaped and reshaped concepts and images of America. Once a territory outside the geopolitical and cultural borders of the United States, the deserts of the West and Southwest have since emerged as canonical American landscapes. Drawing on the critical concepts of American studies and on questions and problems raised in recent debates on ecocriticism, The Poetics and Politics of the Desert investigates the spatial rhetoric of America as it developed in view of arid landscapes since the mid-nineteenth century. Gersdorf argues that the integration of the desert into America catered to the entire spectrum of ideological and political responses to the history and culture of the US, maintaining that the Americanization of this landscape was and continues to be staged within the idiomatic parameters and in reaction to the discursive authority of four spatial metaphors: garden, wilderness, Orient, and heterotopia.

A young Irishman's journey in the land of untold riches... The Opal Seekers is a rich and vibrant novel of triumph and loss, and the ambition of those who carved out an existence for themselves in the beautiful but unforgiving land of Australia. The perfect read for fans of Colleen McCullough and Tricia McGill. In 1898 poverty threatens to destroy Trella Court's beloved family. She is left with no choice: her brother-in-law, Brodie, must leave home so that there is one less mouth to feed. Bitter with resentment, Brodie travels to Dublin where he stumbles upon a wealthy employer who offers him passage to Australia, the land of untold riches. In Brisbane, Brodie is taken in by the owner of Fairlea cattle station. But before they leave he catches sight of a beautiful opal necklace glistening in a jeweller's window and vows that one day he will go in search of the dazzling stones and make his fortune. At Fairlea, Brodie finds favour when he saves the owner's life, but Vivien Holloway, the spoilt mistress, causes trouble when her harmless flirtation with Brodie turns into a passionate affair. Soon Brodie is looking for a way out of Fairlea and he finds his escape in the hunt for opals... What readers are saying about The Opal Seekers: 'A delightful tale of hard work and suffering, love and loss' 'An outstanding story and one I couldn't put down' 'Enthralling from start to finish'

Deep in the sun-drenched desert, priestess Ginger-Sun carries the power of shape mages. And whispers abound: Is she descended from the beloved Sunset Goddess, or are her nighttime rituals filled with wickedness? Ginger herself is uncertain, until a stranger is left for dead at her feet. Thence her magic begins to burn. Fate makes Ginger the stranger's wife and therefore a target for those who would murder this man to crown another—and force her magic into twisted ferocity. For unless Ginger masters her dark powers, violence will rein in Taka Mal—and in her soul.