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OCTOBER PRIZES

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submitted by Liv Hambrett — last modified 2008-10-02 16:05

Respond to any of this month's WOWs and you could win ...

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Fiction

Deception by Michael Meehan

From the blood-soaked streets of 1870s Paris, to the student riots of the 1960s; from the barren, Australian desert to the penal colonies of 19th Century New Caledonia - magnificent epic novel of revolution, obsession and buried secrets.

Description

'I felt always that the crumbling paper must hold something that was more like speaking flesh and blood that somewhere amid these shreds I would learn something of this family lost to silence; something about a house that was quickly abandoned and a family divided, and then all gates shut on the past.'

From the blood-soaked streets of the 1870 siege of Paris, to the tear-gas and chaos of its student riots of 1968; from the desolate, windswept Australian desert to the appalling dank prisons of 19th Century New Caledonia, Deception tells an epic, dramatic story of a search for truth, spanning continents and generations.

A young Australian man arrives in riot-ravaged Paris, armed with an ancient manuscript written in French and an obsessive desire to piece together the fragments of a mystery that has haunted him since childhood. His journey takes him back and forth in time, over the ruins of desert and city, and through the wrecks and mirages of history and memory.

Michael Meehan is the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Salt of Broken Tears and Stormy Weather. Deception, his long-awaited third novel, is a triumph of storytelling, imagery and language, a powerful, haunting work from a writer with 'an imagination of another order' (The Australian).


About Michael Meehan

Michael Meehan grew up in the Mallee region of north-west Victoria. He studied law at the University of Adelaide, and literature at Monash and Cambridge Universities. He has taught in universities in many countries in Europe and Asia, and is a professor and former Head of the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. His novels have been published in Australia, the UK and the US, and he won the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction in 2000 with his first novel, The Salt of Broken Tears. He lives in Melbourne.

Poetry

Red Dress Walking by Sarah Jones

When Will gave Emily a stunning, deeply sexy red dress, somehow everything in changes ... a playful, modern, engrossing novel of ideas, books, love, relationships, breakdowns and break-ups.

Description

The dress haunts my steps. Flashes of red on the street mesmerise me. I am alive to red cars, red shoes and the red of Suella's lipstick. It is silken laudanum that has thrown a distorting film over everything. The dress flutters through my dream life like a taunting red banner. Dreams innocuous and surreal are sure to be punctuated by a crimson flash. Sometimes there is just the barest hint of it so I am not even certain that it flared at all.

This is the story of an intimate circle of friends and one couple, Will and Emily, who are very much in love with each other. But one day Will gives Emily a stunning, deeply sexy red dress, and somehow everything changes.

A thought-provoking novel of beauty, books, love and desire, Red Dress Walking is a playful, clever and sexy novel about men and women, breakdowns and break-ups, the fierce friendships that women have, and what certain books mean to us.

About Sarah Jones

S. A. Jones is a compulsive reader and writer and her first novel, Red Dress Walking, is in many ways homage to both pursuits. Her eclectic career includes stints as an academic, shadow Ministerial staffer, management consultant and confectionary vendor. S. A. Jones ('Sarah' to her parents and 'Serje' to her friends) is 34 and lives in Inglewood, Western Australia. Her pursuits include running (at which she is not naturally gifted), champagne with her girlfriends (at which she is remarkably adept), book group, cooking and eating.



*** Book prizes are courtesy of our lovely friends at Allen & Unwin ***