Showing results by author "Tim Winton" in All Categories

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they're not alone.

Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they have made for themselves. Beautifully crafted, and as tender as they are confronting, these elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.

Georgie Jutland is a mess. At 40, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Leached of all confidence, she spends her days in isolated tedium and her nights in a blur of vodka self-recrimination. One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she sees a shadow drifting up the beach below - a loner called Luther Fox, with danger in his wake.

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and daughter. After two years in Europe, they are finally settling down. He sees a new life before them, a stable outlook again, a fresh start, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated by hand. He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be alone—he's that kind of man.The flight lands, the doors at the airport hiss open...Scully's life falls apart.

On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrill-seeking teenage boys fall under the spell of a veteran big-wave surfer named Sando. Their mentor urges them into a regiment of danger and challenge, and the boys test themselves and each other on storm swells and over shark-haunted reefs. The boys give no thought to what they could lose, or to the demons that drive their mentor on into ever-greater danger. Venturing beyond all caution—in sports, relationships, and sex—each character approaches a point from which none of them will return undamaged.

Jaxie dreads going home. His mum’s dead. The old man bashes him without mercy, and he wishes he was an orphan. And then, in one terrible moment, his life is stripped to little more than what he can carry and how he can keep himself alive. There’s just one person left in the world who understands him and what he still dares to hope for. But to reach her he’ll have to cross the vast saltlands on a trek that only a dreamer or a fugitive would attempt.

Two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives from scratch. For 20 years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts.

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. They’re exhausted, traumatized, desperate now, and this is a forsaken place, but as a refuge it’s the most promising they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they’re not alone . . . So begins a searing, epic journey through a life where the challenge is not only to survive; it’s keeping your humanity if you do.

Abel Jackson lives with his mother, Dora, at Longboat Bay, an isolated stretch of coast whose waters teem with fish. Theirs is a simple life. It’s tough. And at times it’s lonely. But Abel has friends in the sea, particularly the magnificent old groper he meets one day while diving for abalone. Abel learns that the sea and its treasures are precious. And as Longboat Bay is threatened by greedy developers and overfishing, Abel and his mum wonder how they can keep their homeplace safe.

Jaxie Clackton is a brutalized rural youth who flees from the scene of his father's violent death and strikes out for the vast wilds of Western Australia. All he carries with him is a rifle and a waterjug. All he wants is peace and freedom. But surviving in the harsh saltlands alone is a savage business. And once he discovers he's not alone out there, all Jaxie's plans go awry. He meets a fellow exile, the ruined priest Fintan MacGillis, a man he's never certain he can trust, but on whom his life will soon depend.

Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the veranda of the Stubbs place, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. And nothing will be quite the same again.

Jerra and his best mate Sean set off in a beaten-up old VW to go camping on the coast. Jerra's friends and family want to know when he will finish university, when he will find a girl. But they don't understand about Sean's mother, Jewel, or the bush or the fish with the pearl. They think he needs a job, but what Jerra is searching for is more elusive. Only the sea, and perhaps the old man who lives in a shack beside it, can help.

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and now a major film. When paramedic Bruce Pike is called out to deal with another teenage adventure gone wrong, he knows better than his colleague, better than the kid's parents, what happened and how. Thirty years before, that dead boy could have been him. A relentlessly gripping and deeply moving novel about the damage you do to yourself when you're young and think you're immortal.

Tom Keely's reputation is in ruins. And that's the upside. Divorced and unemployed, he's lost faith in everything precious to him. Holed up in a grim high-rise, cultivating his newfound isolation, Keely looks down at a society from which he's retired, hurt and angry. He's done fighting the good fight, and well past caring. But even in his seedy flat, ducking the neighbours, he's not safe from entanglement. All it takes is an awkward encounter in the lobby. A woman from his past, and a boy the likes of which he's never met before.

Whales have always been the life-force of Angelus, a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. Their annual passing defines the rhythms of a life where little changes, and the town depends on their carcasses. So when the battle begins on the beaches outside the town, and when Queenie Cookson, a local girl, joins the Greenies to make amends for the crimes of her whaling ancestors, it can only throw everything into chaos.

Ort knows the sky is watching. And he knows all about watching, because he spends half the night listening at doors and peering through cracks. Especially since his dad’s accident. Everything at home is falling apart. His father’s withering away, his sister is consumed by rage and fear, his grandmother is losing it entirely and his mother is brave but no longer coping. And then, out of nowhere, a stranger appears at their door. Has he come to rescue Ort and his family, or is he just another problem?

Lockie Leonard, hot surf-rat, is in love. The human torpedo is barely settled into his new school and already he's got a girl on his mind. And not just any girl: it has to be Vicki Streeton, the smartest, prettiest, richest girl in the class. But what chance have you got when your dad's a cop, your mum's a frighteningly understanding parent, your brother wets the bed and the teachers take an instant dislike to you and then you fall in love at 12-and-three-quarter years old? It can only mean trouble, worry, mega-embarrassment and some wild, wild times.

For years, Jaxie Clackton has dreaded going home. His beloved mum is dead, and he wishes his dad was too, until one terrible moment leaves his life stripped to nothing. No-one ever told Jaxie Clackton to be careful what he wishes for. And so Jaxie runs. There's just one person in the world who understands him, but to reach her he'll have to cross the vast saltlands of Western Australia. It is a place that harbours criminals and threatens to kill those who haven't reckoned with its hot, waterless vastness.

Nothing's easy for Lockie Leonard. Dumped by his girlfriend, he's back to being the loneliest kid in town and life looks bleak. That is until he meets Egg—who might be the weirdest human being he's ever met. On top of all that, Lockie decides to save the planet, at least the bit of it he lives on. Then he falls in love again, which would be okay except she's younger and surfs better. Can a 13-year-old surf rat have a headbanger for a best mate? Will he save the town from vile pollution? Will his love outlast the school term?

Lockie's survived his first year of high school, settling into a new town and his first mad love affair—it's all behind him; he made it! But the world of weirdness hasn't finished with him yet. His little brother's hormones have kicked in, his baby sister refuses to walk or talk—but eats anything in sight—his dad arrests a sheep and his mum seems to have checked out of the here and now. As Lockie's world turns upside down, he learns that life is never as simple as it seems and along the way finds out a lot more about himself than he ever realised was there.