The Signature of all things

The signature of all things is the name of the 16th century theory...that god had imprinted a message on every plant on earth about what that plant was for. –Elizabeth Gilbert.

Born in the 'Age of Wonder', Alma Whittaker is the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer who had traveled on Captain Cook's voyages. She has access to one of the greatest libraries in the New World and has spent her life studying mosses. Alma has an unquenchable curiosity and is driven to try to understand the master clockwork behind every (living) thing. The quest leads her to eminence in science but to disappointment in the realm of romance. The central episode of the novel begins in the 1850s when Alma meets and marries a botanical artist, Ambrose Pike. When intimacy between them fails she sends him to the island of Tahiti. A little more than 3 years later she receives word that Ambrose has died. In her father's footsteps, she travels to Tahiti to unravel the mystery of Ambrose's death where she finally finds some answers, and an understanding of the nature of survival. 

CITATION: Gilbert, Elizabeth, The signature of all things. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

  I know there are few greater pleasures in life than to be completely subsumed by the work you are obsessed with.                                                                     –Elizabeth Gilbert.  

Eat, Pray, Love was a bestseller in 2006...but maybe if you weren't a fan of that book - you might like this one - because its a big, smart and beautifully written novel...an absolute highlight of the year. –Michael Cathcart, ABC radio.

Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle (USA).

Also available in an illustrated edition, large print, audiobook, kindle ebook.

Viking reader’s  book club notes, including interview with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Go to the Elizabeth Gilbert official author website for interviews, videos, and a TED talk on thinking creatively.

 

Listen to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert by Michael Cathcart on ABC radio.

Promotional video - Signature of all things:

Mr Pip

On worn torn Bougainville Island, a teacher (the only white man in the village) – begins to read at school each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. He becomes known as ‘Mr Pip’ and inspires his students especially the young Matilda. Bougainville is no longer an island paradise – it’s a ravaged, murderous place where children are forced to live by their wits. After a series of tragic events Matilda begins to lose her will to live, but is revived by the memory of Pip and the power of literature to offer escape and solace in the worst of times.

A little Gauguin, a bit of Lord Jim, the novel's lyricism evokes great beauty and great pain.
– Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2007.

In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.   –Fantastic Fiction website.

Citation:  Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. Melbourne : Text Publishing, 2008.  220 pages.

Official website for Mr Pip:  http://www.randomhouse.com/book/88486/mister-pip-by-lloyd-jones

The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.  It won the 2007 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for best book in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific and the 2007 American Library Association Literary Awards. 

Also available in large print, audiobook and movie.

Click here to watch the Mr Pip movie trailer.

All the birds, Singing

A Miles Franklin award winner (2014), this is a story of stubborn hopes and unexpected beauty.  Jake Whyte is a hard working, hard headed young woman living alone and tending sheep on a remote British island. Her wayward dog is her only companion.  This wild, windswept island is isolated, although past emotional scars mean that's the way she wants it.

Suspense builds as her sheep go missing at night. Could it be foxes in the woods, a strange boy, or rumours of a mysterious beast? And there are demons of Jake's Australian past, intruding into the present...

CITATION: Wyld, Evie. All the birds singing. North Sydney, NSW:  Random House Australia, 2013.

 

Swift and assured and emotionally wrenching. You won’t only root for Jake, you’ll see the world, hard facts and all, more clearly through her telling.       
                                                     - The New York Times.


 

Readers feedback, a free chapter and notes about the author plus a video interview with Evie Wyld at the official publisher's  website.

Listen to the ABC radio interview with Evie Wyld.   
This title is also available in Large print, CD audiobook & kindle ebook.

 

 

The secret fate of Mary Watson

Based on historical diaries, this fictional 'true story' is set in 1879 on remote Lizard Island in far north Queensland.

Fleeing her family home, 19-year-old Mary Oxnam has few prospects and no connections. Plain and penniless, she must rely on her wit and intelligence to survive. Mary soon finds work as a pianist in a Cooktown brothel. The job serves as a front for her more lucrative side career as a spy in various smuggling operations. 
Within a year she has moved to Lizard Island, locked into a marriage of convenience with a fisherman. It's a rough, isolated place, rife with hidden enemies - and unexpected temptation.

A suspenseful story of peril and intrigue, with a heady combination of wild beauty and foreboding. – HarperCollinsPublishers.


CITATION: Johnson, Judy. The secret fate of Mary Watson. Pymble, N.S.W. : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2011.

By the winner of a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, 2007 (for Jack).

Available in CD audiobook, braille & kindle ebook.