Adopted as babies by two different families, Simone and Hannah have never known they are identical twins. Simone has been raised as a dancer, but she hates performing. Hannah loves nothing more than dance, but her parents see it as just a hobby. When the two girls meet for the first time at the age of fifteen, they decide to swap places to change the role dance plays in their lives. Yet fooling their friends and family is more challenging than either girl expected, and they're both burdened by the weight of their lies.
How long can Hannah and Simone keep pretending? What will happen when the truth is revealed?
Robyn's first novel, Dancing in the Dark was published by Penguin Booksin February 2010 and in the USA by Flux in February 2013.
Tom Cho’s collection of fictions, Look Who’s Morphing will be published in North America and Europe by Canadian publisher Arsenal Pulp Press in April 2014. Tom finished an extensive North American reading tour earlier this year and plans to return in 2014.
Look Who’s Morphing was originally published to acclaim in Australia by Giramondo in 2009. It was short listed for The Age Book of the Year Award (Fiction) 2009 and was a finalist in The Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award 2009. It is a collection of funny, playful, often outlandish ficitons in which, along with his extended family, the central character undergoes a series of transformations, shape-shifting through figures drawn from film and television, music and books, porn flicks and comics. He is Godzilla, a Muppet, and Witney Housten's bodyguard; the Fonz, a robot, a Ford Bronco 4x4 – and as a climax, a fifty-five metre tall guitar-wielding cock rock star, who performs for the people of Tokyo, and an adoring troupe of sexy fans. Within these fantasies there is a deep intellectual and emotional engagement, a fundamental questioning of the nature of identity, and the way it is constructed in a world filled with the images of popular culture.
’Tom Cho is a rare and original voice in the Australian literary landscape. His stories are eccentric, witty deceptive, and immensely pleasurable. I read this book in one sitting and wanted more.‘
~ TONY AYRES
UWA Publishing (University of Western Australia) have bought the rights to Doris Brett’s next book, The Twelfth Raven which will be published in 2014. The Twelfth Raven is a literary journey through a series of life-threatening health crises involving two of the leading causes of death and disability in Australia - heart disease and stroke. The Age reported on 3 November 2012 that there are about 350,000 Australians living with stroke. Most of the book is written from the point of view of the carer (Doris' husband, Martin was the patient), but to round things off, in the final section, Doris becomes the patient again as she is diagnosed with the faulty BrCa gene (which gives a lifetime 87% chance of developing breast cancer and a 40% chance of ovarian cancer) and opts to have a preventative mastectomy and reconstruction. This section as well as resonating with the many thousands of women having mastectomies in Australia also opens up the area which a growing number of people are having to address - medical science's increased ability to detect faulty genes and the difficult issues of what to do about them.