Carmel Bird

'I was confined, locked into my library, tracing my heartbeats from way, way back.' In Telltale, Carmel Bird seizes on an enforced isolation to re-read a rich dispensary of books from her past. A rule she sets herself is that she can consult only the books in her house, even if some, such as the much-loved Thornton Wilder's The Bridge...

Following the unprecedented demand for the Report on the stolen children, which was published by The Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (HEROC) and retailed at $60.00, here are extracts from the Report that mostly comprise the actual stories told by the stolen generations of their experiences. These stories are deeply moving and compelling. HEROC will not be printing...

You clamber up, heading for the exit, the circle of faint light, as the radiance of the pre-dawn leads you on toward freedom. I follow. You spread your darling wings. You enter the net that awaits you. Bold, tender, and often fantastical, Love Letter to Lola enters the very pain of loss and grief while preserving a wise, sly, humorous,...

Longlisted for the 2020 Davitt Awards: Adult Crime Keen to escape the pressures of city life, Marsali Swift and her husband William are drawn to Listowel, a glorious historic mansion in the seemingly tranquil small town of Muckleton. There is time to read, garden, decorate, play chess and befriend the locals. Yet one night Listowel is robbed, and soon after...

There was a kind of grotesquerie to the dazzle and magnificence, a vicious underlay of thorns beneath the bed of roses, and a vast shadow floating, looming overhead. The kingdom was forever at war, and there was an eerie strangeness in the shining trio of the king, his wife, and the little princess from Savoy. It is 1696. Louis XIV,...