Gillian Polack

Professor Luke Mann is the leader of a team heading back to the Languedoc, year 1305. Their goal? To study the environment, refine delta T and, in Luke's words, "to change the universe". With him is Artemisia Wormwood: a Medieval historian who needs the money to save the life of her dying sister. But time travel is untested, and dangerous. Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, a village in Languedoc, is a desert of souls. Monastery, pilgrimage path, and legend; that's all there is. Perfect for scientists who have promised their work will not interfere with history. They have nine months, and they're not telling Artemisia about their research. Who needs a historian when the village looks like a gamer's dream? Prepare for a bumpy ride with bad coffee.

Professor Luke Mann is the leader of a team heading back to the Languedoc, year 1305. Their goal? To study the environment, refine delta T and, in Luke's words, "to change the universe". With him is Artemisia Wormwood: a Medieval historian who needs the money to save the life of her dying sister. But time travel is untested, and dangerous. Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, a village in Languedoc, is a desert of souls. Monastery, pilgrimage path, and legend; that's all there is. Perfect for scientists who have promised their work will not interfere with history. They have nine months, and they're not telling Artemisia about their research. Who needs a historian when the village looks like a gamer's dream? Prepare for a bumpy ride with bad coffee.

Some keys open doors to strange worlds... Melissa has a happy marriage but her everyday life is a constant battle against pain. She discovers that her artwork can produce magic, prompting her to apply for an artist's retreat to a mysterious country house. Her old schoolfriends Bettina and Zelda are also at the same retreat. But neither the house nor their friendship is what they think. A mystical library, rapacious shadows, and keys to otherworldly rooms are the links to saving the house from destruction. A unique fantasy about people whose stories, with all their oddity and excitement, seldom make their way into novels.

Shortlisted for the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review Fiction plays a vital role in describing history and transmitting culture. How writers understand and use history can play an equally important role in how they navigate a novel. This book explores the nature of the author’s relationship with history and fiction – often using writers’ own words – as well as the role history plays in fiction. Focusing on genre fiction, this study considers key issues in the relationship between history and fiction, such as how writers contextualise the history they use in their fiction and how they incorporate historical research. The book also addresses the related topic of world building using history, discussing the connections between the science fiction writers’ notion of world building and the scholarly understanding of story space and explaining the mechanics of constructing the world of the novel. This book places the writing of fiction into a wider framework of history and writing and encourages dialogue between writers and historians.

Renowned artist Grania, famed as a painter of light, arrives in a sleek space ship from Lost Earth, ready to embrace New Ceres and its New Enlightenment in its entirety - its 18th century set up, its coffee houses, its gossipy salons, and its obsession with a low-level approach to tech . . . But is she really ready for its cutthroat society, its strange food issues or for Livia? Livia who toys with lives on a whim, and will stop at nothing to realize her dream society. When Grania marries Dal and sets up her own political salons the stage is set for a battle of wills and poisonous chaos ensues on a brand new world where everything old is new again.

Humankind is in danger. The Year of the Fruitcake tells of the Earth-based life of a mostly-mindwiped alien anthropologist inhabiting a human perimenopausal body instead of her own more rational body with its capacity to change gender. This alien has definitely shaken a great intergalactic empire by sitting in caf s with her new best friends. Chocolate may or may not have played a part. Will humanity survive? Polack describes her novel as, "Bleak. It's political. It's angry. It's also sarcastic, cynical and funny."

*The pleasure of your company is requested.* Graceful feet tracing courtly steps. Eyes behind jeweled masks meeting across a room of twirling dancers. Gloved hands touching fleetingly-or gripping swords... Anything can happen at a ball. You are invited to enjoy these stories of fancy and fantasy from thirteen authors, framed in the splendor and elegance of a ballroom. Be it at a house party for diplomats and thieves, or Almacks in a side-universe in which the Patronesses have magic, or a medieval festival just after the plague years ... *Prepare to be swept into the enchantment of the dance *

Ghosts trail after us. They are our fears and the shape of our hates. We bring them into our lives and into our homes. Some years our fears and hates are so strong our ghosts turn tangible and fracture our landscape. Poltergeists and the spirits of drowned girls; malicious presences and portents; cat vampires and roaming bushrangers. These ghosts haunt Canberra. Four women - three venerable, and one tender in years - decide that someone has to deal with the problems. One dinner party at a time, one cup of tea at a time, one excursion at a time, Lil, Mabel, Ann and Kat send the beings back to places they should never have left. This is the women's superhero year. But each of them has secrets, and three of them face problems only aging can bring. They never expected werewolves.

To our modern minds, the Middle Ages seem to mix the well-known and familiar with wildly alien concepts and circumstances. The Middle Ages Unlocked provides an invaluable introduction to this complex and dynamic period in England. Exploring a wide range of topics from law, religion and education to landscape, art and magic, between the eleventh and early fourteenth centuries, the structures, institutions and circumstances that formed the basis for daily life and society are revealed. Drawing on their expertise in history and archaeology, Dr Gillian Polack and Dr Katrin Kania look at the tangible aspects of daily life – ranging from the raw materials used for crafts, clothing and jewellery to housing and food – in order to bring the Middle Ages to life. The Middle Ages Unlocked dispels modern assumptions about this period to uncover the complex tapestry of medieval England and the people who lived there.