2012 Spineless Wonders Catalogue

SPECIALISING IN SHORT AUSTRALIAN STORIES

Fault Lines

by Pierz Newton-John

‘A startling collection…sly humour and memorable characters.’

CHRIS WOMERSLEY

What does it take to make a man?

The short stories of Pierz Newton John move through the full range of masculine experience, with an openness, not afraid to show men at their most lonely, sexual, loving, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes abusive. Tender moments between father and son, first sexual experiences and what men feel and think about women.

Released February, 2012 PB, 182 pp 203 x 133 $22.99 9780987089762 Illustrated by Paden Hunter

‘Fault Lines returns the grit to the Australian literary landscape.’ MATTHEW CONDON

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IT comes as no surprise to learn that Melbourne writer Pierz Newton-John, author of the appropriately titled Fault Lines, a debut collection of short stories, was once a psychotherapist.

As an observer of the human condition he is compassionate, curious and insightful: these beautifully written stories about lives in trauma and transition might well have come straight from the couch.

Newton-John seems particularly occupied with the question of what it means to be male. There are stories here about men on the make, men suffering the disappointment of broken dreams, men passionately loving their children, small boys being cruel to other small boys, teenage boys and violence, teenage boys and sex, teenage boys and love.

There is tenderness, there is humour and there is barely contained rage. There is a lot of selfmedication.

There is also a fantastically memorable scene in which a full-sized crocodile is freed from a glass tank in a suburban back yard in Melbourne, a classic sting-in-the-tail at the end of a remarkable piece of short writing. In this story, Croc, NewtonJohn executes an act of great empathy, writing from the point of view of a runaway girl (it’s not an entirely male-oriented collection) whose rebellion takes her to a frightening place. The quiet terror of a girl-woman being so far in over

her head is perfectly, heartbreakingly captured.

Elsewhere is the crushing banality of suburban life, students going off the rails, teenagers alienated from their families, relationships going wrong.

Only one story is a surprise in this landscape of Australian suburban stories: Comrade Vasilii Goes to War encapsulates the absurd futility of war on the border between the fictional Ozakhstan and Uzekhstan, and the soldiers who command the outposts there.

As with the best short stories, indelible images are left on the brain: a teenage boy, convinced he his dying from melanoma, falls crying to the bathroom floor in the arms of a girl he barely knows; two Jewish boys and a Alsatian defend themselves against a racial attack; a little boy who loves birds is forced to kill a baby magpie; a father takes his young son on a holiday to break the news of divorce.

Newton-John treads along these fault lines like a guide, showing us the points where one may fall through the cracks. He does so with a professional listener’s ear for dialogue and with a big heart.

If nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors in suburbia, then in this collection of stories Newton-John unflinchingly throws the doors open.

The scenes he finds and describes are not always pretty, but they are startlingly illuminated by a promising new talent in Australian literature.

In addition to being a writer, Pierz Newton-John is a former psychotherapist and father. His stories have appeared extensively in Australian literary journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Overland, New Australian Stories, KillYour Darlings andThe Sleepers Almanac. He won the Alan Marshall Award in 2008. pierznj.blogspot.com.au

The Rattler & other stories

by A.S. Patrić

‘Spare and taut, sometimes shocking, yet always deeply and satisfyingly tender. A great collection.’

P.A. O’REILLY, The Colour of Rust

This entertaining collection includes a romp of a novella called The Rattler, as well as short stories and micro fictions all set in and around contemporary Melbourne.

Includes narrative experiments such as BOMBS, an oblique look at terrorism, to more playful pieces such as ‘Ducks’, which imagines Anais Nin and June Miller living in Elwood.

Sometimes serious, sometimes seriously playful– always written in breathtakingly beautiful prose– these stories uncover the heartbreaking tragedies, slow-burning emotions and serendipity of ordinary lives.

Released October 2011 PB, 160 pp 203 x 133 $22.99 9780987089724 Illustrated by Miles Allinson

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Distributors: Dennis Jones & Associates 97629100

Alec Patric, co-editor of the increasingly influential online literary journal, Verity La, is a St Kilda writer and bookseller and his home city of Melbourne features strongly in this collection, especially in the title story. The Rattler is a about a rogue tram driver who wants to be a writer.

In these stories, Patric specializes in taking the familiar and making it strange, often through the eyes of a

character who is somehow alienated. The stories are not exactly metafictions, nor are they magic realism; but they have qualities of both. The characters are the wives and husbands, the drifters and workers, the lovers and immigrants and children of Melbourne that John Morrison and other social realists wrote about so movingly and Patric retains the tenderness and empathy of that era in stories wit a sharp contemporary edge of uncertainty and strangeness.

Kerryn Goldsworthy, SMH

‘Enough gems among the 17 stories to impress any short-fiction enthusiast seeking a fresh and vibrant new voice.’ David Cohen, writer and bookseller.

Alec Patric is a St Kilda bookseller and writer whose short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals. He co-edits Verity La, described as ‘the increasingly influential online literary journal’ by SMH critic, Kerryn Goldsworthy .

In 2011, he won the Ned Kelly’s SD Harvey Award for his crime story, ‘Las Vegas for Vegans’ and The Booranga Prize for Short Fiction. aspatricink.blogspot.com.au

PERMISSION TO LIE

by Julie Chevalier

A new voice in Australian fiction, wry, gritty, knowing and true.’

FIONA MCGREGOR Indelible Ink A collection of short stories set in places as diverse as a nudist colony, the corporate world and prison. Beneath her quirky humour and snappy style, Chevalier brings insight and empathy to her depiction of contemporary Australian life and to growing up in America.

One woman’s holiday flight is intruded upon by an unaccompanied child, another is left with her dead husband’s elderly father to care for. How far will a wealthy, manipulative couple go to compensate for a childless marriage? Who can be trusted in the prison world?

Whether in McCarthy’s America or in comtemporary Sydney, Chevalier’s characters are drawn with honesty, humour and compassion.

Released April 2011 PB, 160 pp 203 x 133 $22.99 9780987089700 Illustrated by Paden Hunter

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Australian short stories with global reach “The incidents that serve as catalysts for the stories in Julie Chevalier’s debut collection Permission to Lie are steeped in unflinching realism rather than fable, but are nonetheless compelling and complex in equal measure.

A young writer living as a developer’s mistress in the opening story accuses the narrator of the second story, a 40-something executive who uses her vocational counselling diary to chronicle the real and imaginary lives of her fellow bus passengers, of stealing “her” characters.

Seven of the stories are loosely gathered around themes of imprisonment and freedom, beginning with a boy’s home on the NSW central coast, and ending with one foot on the road to re-addiction for a newly released inmate of Sydney’s Long Bay jail.

In between, through shifting narrators, perspectives and prose styles, we meet Kynon,

a recent graduate from boys’ home to adult prison, Wanda the prison psychologist, Cathie the education officer and Gav the inmate clerk.

These stories, and Chevalier’s detailed portraits of her cast of wary yet surprisingly open characters, highlight the ways in which relationships of power and vulnerability operate in a state of flux, and how suddenly we can become needful – of shelter, of privacy, of understanding, of real human connections.

When this switch is flicked, Chevalier’s characters, just like the rest of us, occasionally need permission to lie, to themselves and to others. I look forward to meeting whichever characters Chevalier might next introduce me to.”

Reviewed by Josh Mei-Ling Dubrau Weekend Australian Review, Aug 13-14, 2011

UTS IN PRINT

Chevalier’s stories are terse, angular and intense as they work their way past your defences. Some characters reappear from different points of view. The prison stories are particularly poignant. This collection details the yearning, the loneliness and the small hopes of our modern lives.

Mark Rossiter, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Julie Chevalier has worked as a prison educator, home school liaison officer, librarian and waitress. She grew up in New Jersey and has spent her adult life in England and Australia. She currently lives in Sydney where she is an artist, poet and writer.

Her award-winning short fiction has appeared in Antipodes, Southerly and has been broadcast on ABC Radio. In 2011, one of the jail stories from Permission To Lie, ‘That Awful Brew’, was included in Best Australian Stories. juliechevalier.net

Escape

an anthology of short Australian stories ed Bronwyn Mehan The thinking person’s escapist reading.

ESCAPE has unexpected tales of contemporary life, comedy, tragedy, mystery, romance, sci fi, dystopian fantasy, a homage to David Foster Wallace and lots more. All served with a good dose of quirky and a fine turn of phrase.

If you like your genres with a bit of edge, you’ll love this diverse collection of stories from Spineless Wonders.

Features award-winning writers such as Ryan O’Neill, Jen Mills, Andy Kissane, Louise Swinn, Julie Chevalier, A.S. Patrić and Kim Westwood as well as stories chosen by Sophie Cunningham in the inaugural Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award.

Released December 2011 PB, 294 pp 203 x 133 $27.99 9780987089748 Illustrated by Paden Hunter

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Distributors: Dennis Jones & Associates 03 97629100

Small Wonder

an anthology of prose poems & microfiction ed Linda Godfrey, Julie Chevalier ‘A treasure trove.’

READINGS MONTHLY

Here are short and clever pieces by 30 contemporary Australian writers on topics ranging from the eroticism of mash potato, parenting as magic realism and a tongue-incheek history of the Cyclops bicycle.

Each one is a creative blast straight from ‘brain stem to pen’ with ideas and insights that will blow your mind.

Includes award-winning writers Michael Farrell, Keri Glastonbury, Judith Beveridge and Peter Boyle.

Features prose poems and microfiction selected by competition judge, joanne burns.

Released May 2012 PB, 128 pp 203 x 133 $22.99 9780987089786 Illustrated by Paden Hunter

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Distributors: Dennis Jones & Associates 03 97629100

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ISBN TITLE 9780987089762 Fault Lines

AUTHOR Newton�John

RRP $22.99

9780987089724 The Rattler & other Stories 9780987089700 Permission to Lie 9780987089748 Escape: An Anthology of Short Stories 9780987089786 Small Wonder

Patric

$22.99

Chevalier

$22.99

Ed, Mehan

$27.99

Ed, Godfrey & Chevalier

$22.99

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