Out of Print

Gladys Fawcett, a 38-year-old war widow and journalist, is sent by the Sydney Morning Times to Newcastle, NSW, where she investigates the fractious world of Trade Union politics. She stumbles across a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth during her 1954 Royal Visit to Australia.

Nick Hawes, an ex-bomber pilot, wounded soul, poet, and ASIO operative, is also on the case. They bond over Schopenhauer and, surprisingly, fall in love.

Written in sixteen 5,000-word episodes that mimic the serial novels of the times, Out of Print captures the Zeitgeist of Cold War Australia with its fierce politics and personal lives whose intended trajectories have been fractured by the Second World War.

Julian Croft was born in Newcastle in 1941. His first poems were published by Max Harris in 1962, and he has been publishing poems, fiction, and literary criticism since. He has produced five books of poems, one novel, and a co-authored music drama, as well as books of literary criticism and biography, and editorial and bibliographic works. He lives in Armidale, NSW.