Brenda Walker for 'Reading by Moonlight'

Synopsis
The first time Brenda Walker packed her bag to go into hospital, she wondered which book to take with her. As a novelist and professor of literature, her life had been built around reading and writing. Now she was also a patient, being treated for breast cancer, fighting for her life and afraid for herself and her family. But turning to medicine didn't mean she turned away from fiction. Books had always been her solace and sustenance, and now choosing the right one was the most important thing she could do for herself.

In Reading by Moonlight, Brenda describes the five stages of her treatment and how different books and authors helped her through the tumultuous process of recovery. As well as offering wonderful introductions and insights into the work of writers like Dante, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Beckett and Dickens, Brenda shows how the very process of reading - surrendering and then regathering yourself - echoes the process of healing.

Reading by Moonlight guides, reassures, throws light on dark places, and finds beauty in the stories that come to us in times of jeopardy. It affirms that reading can be essential to life itself.

Biography
Brenda Walker is the author of the novels Crush, One More River, Poe's Cat and The Wing of Night. The latter won the 2006 Kibble Award and the 2007 Asher Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the 2006 Miles Franklin Award. Reading by Moonlight was the winner of the 2010 Victorian Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction. Brenda Walker is also a critic, essayist and editor, and teaches at the University of Western Australia, where she is Professor of the English Department.

Delia Falconer for 'Sydney'

Synopsis
Sydney has always been the sexiest and gaudiest of our cities. In this book, the third in a series in which leading Australian authors write about their hometowns, novelist Delia Falconer conjures up its sandstone, humidity and jacarandas. But she goes beyond them to find a more complex city: beautiful, violent, half-wild, and at times deeply spiritual.

Beginning with her childhood in a decaying '70s Sydney, caught between a faded Art Deco age and brash development, Falconer intertwines her own stories with the city's historical and literary past to understand how it has become the twenty-first-century city it is today.

Most of all, 'Sydney' - by turns melancholic, moving, and funny - is about its people: mad clergymen, amateur astronomers, Indigenous weather experts, crims and victims, photographers and artists, thinkers and dreamers.

Falconer's 'Sydney' is an intensely atmospheric memoir of a fickle, ever-changing city.

Biography
Delia Falconer was born in Sydney. She is the author of two novels, The Service of Clouds and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers, both of which were shortlisted for major Australian and international awards, including the Miles Franklin and Commonwealth Prize. Her short stories and essays have been widely anthologised at home and abroad, including in The Best Australian Essays, The Penguin Century of Australian Stories and The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.

Annette Stewart for 'Barbara Hanrahan: A Biography'

Synopsis
This authoritative biography illuminates the life of a great Australian writer and artist. The story starts with Barbara Hanrahan's childhood in Adelaide, travels with her to 'swinging London' of the 1960s, and recounts her remarkable achievements in Britain and Australia in succeeding decades. Like the artists she most admired - among them, William Blake, Frida Kahlo and D.H. Lawrence - Barbara Hanrahan dedicated herself uncompromisingly to the life of the mind and spirit, producing a body of work that remains as challenging and rewarding as any from this creative time.

Annette Stewart has drawn on a wealth of unpublished material, including the artist's letters, photographs, prints and diaries, as well as interviews with her friends and partner, the sculptor Jo Steele.

Barbara Hanrahan is beautifully illustrated with a number of Hanrahan's artworks, some of which have not been published before, and many photographs from her life.

Biography
Annette Stewart has lectured in English and Australian Literature at the universities of New England, New South Wales, Sydney, Western Sydney, Macquarie and, most recently, Anhui University, in China. She also teaches English as a Second Language at Macquarie University. Annette has published a large number of articles and reviews in the field of Australian Literature, and is working on her memoirs, based on her visits to China.

Kristel Thornell for 'Night Street'

Synopsis
Night Street is the passionate story of a young painter, Clarice Beckett, who defies society's strict conventions and indifferent art critics alike and leads an intense private and professional life. With her extraordinary talent for making simple city and seascapes haunting and mysteriously revelatory, Clarice paints prolifically and lives largely, overcoming the seemingly confined existence as the spinster daughter in the parental home.

Night Street began with Thornell's first encounter with the paintings of Melbourne artist Clarice Beckett (1887-1935) at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The subtle power of Clarice's highly atmospheric, enigmatic landscapes enabled her to imagine Clarice's inner life and shape an extraordinary novel.

Biography
Kristel Thornell was born in Sydney. During the last decade, she has lived in Italy, Mexico, Canada, Finland and the US, where she is now based. She received a Mentorship for Young Writers from the Australian Society of Authors, and she has published stories, poems, reviews and essays in Meanjin, Overland, Southerly, Island, The Fiddlehead, Mosaic and other journals. Her first novel, Night Street, was a co-winner of the 2009 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award. She is completing a PhD with the University of Western Sydney.

Lara Fergus for 'My Sister Chaos'

Synopsis
An obsessive-compulsive cartographer trapped in the mapping of her own house. A painter turned codebreaker trying to find the lover she lost in the war. Two sisters on a collision course.

In My Sister Chaos two sisters escape an unnamed war-torn country into separate lives of exile. The cartographer is obsessed with keeping the world in order, but finds it unravelling under her own demands. Her sister, an artist, arrives unexpectedly. Her very presence is a sign of chaos for the cartographer. But in spite of this, the sister has a firm grip on the real world, and a greater connection to the past.

Chaos and order in tension provide the scaffolding for this compelling work of fiction. Presented within a world of obsession and trauma it asks whether any of us is immune to the forces of destruction.

Biography
Lara Fergus grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney and gave up a science degree to become a contemporary dancer. Some years and an ankle injury later she gave that up to see the world and wash dishes. She spent seven years living overseas and in that time, completed degrees in writing, women's studies and international law, and worked with various advocacy organisations.

She has now worked as a researcher and writer on human rights - particularly violence against women - for over a decade, with organisations such as Amnesty International, White Ribbon, VicHealth and most recently the United Nations. She currently works for the Victorian Government on policy to prevent violence against women. She lives in Melbourne with her partner Maryse, writes before work and dances on the weekends.

G. L. Osborne for 'Come Inside'

Synopsis
A ship is wrecked in 1887 near the small country town of Colego. The sea throws up one troubled survivor who claims to know only her name. Come Inside traces the impact of the loss of the Lucy on the town of Colego and how the tidal pull of this event shapes and disturbs those who come after.

Biography
Glenys Osborne lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and their young son. She writes, edits and teaches, and has won numerous awards for her short fiction. Come Inside is her first published novel. It won the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award and was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year 2010 (fiction) and also for Best First Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2010.