Readings.com.au: Tim Winton

Cloudstreet (TV Tie-In)

Could you share a haunted house with eight strangers and a talking pig? Well, sometimes you don't get a choice.

Australia's favourite novel is a funny, heartbreaking story of making-do and yearning to belong. Now a major television miniseries, Cloudstreet will live with you long after you've turned the final page.

If you have not read Cloudstreet, your life is diminished' Mem Fox

'Cloudstreet shows an exquisite feel for the language, the smell, the very pulse of Australia.' Andrew Denton

'I feel in love with book and have been the most extraordinary Tim Winton fan ever since.' Judith Lucy

'Reading it felt like coming home. It feels like looking through the plane window when you're flying back into the country. It really does.' Marieke Hardy

Cloudstreet Television Script

Author Tim Winton has worked with Ellen Fontana to translate this funny, sprawling saga into a brilliantly written TV mini-series. The show, like the Miles Franklin Award-winning book, is a celebration of people, places and rhythms, and will touch a new generation of readers.

Land's Edge: A Coastal Memoir

On childhood holidays to the beach the sun and surf kept Tim Winton outside in the mornings, in the water; the wind would drive him indoors in the afternoons, to books and reading. This ebb and flow of the day became a way of life.

In this beautifully delicate memoir, Tim Winton writes about his obsession with what happens where the water meets the shore – about diving, dunes, beachcombing – and the sense of being on the precarious, wondrous edge of things that haunts his novels.

Complemented by the breathtaking photographs of Narelle Autio, Land's Edge is a celebration of the coastal life and those who surrender themselves to it.

'Winton's homage to the ocean and his childhood... A book to return to again and again.' Matt Condon, Sun Herald

'A love letter to the beach, an enchanting celebration of life on the edge.' Sydney Morning Herald

Lockie Leonard Human Torpedo

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.

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 twelve-and-three-quarter years old? It can only mean trouble, worry, mega-embarrassment and some wild, wild times.

In The Winter Dark

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

Smalltown

In a perfect synergy of image and text, Smalltown shows us the bizarre, humorous and sometimes desolate aspects of our country towns, and challenges us to consider what Winton calls 'fugliness and the smalltown shambolic'.

Breath

Winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing.

In his first novel for seven years, Tim Winton has achieved a new level of mastery. Breath confirms him as one of the world's finest storytellers, a writer of novels that are at the smae time simple and profound, relentlessly gripping and deeply moving.

breath.timwinton.com.au

Cloudstreet

From separate catastrophes two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives again from scratch. For twenty years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts. Tim Winton's funny, sprawling saga is an epic novel of love and acceptance. Winner of the Miles Franklin and NBC Awards in Australia, Cloudstreet is a celebration of people, places and rhythms which has fuelled imaginations world-wide.

Dirt Music

Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, 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. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.

The Turning

In the 1980s Tim Winton made his mark with tough, spare stories about youth and promise, of early parenthood and the challenges of loyalty. Now, almost twenty years since his last collection, he returns to the form with seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia.

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've 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.

From the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of Dirt Music comes an outstanding work of fiction that will resonate with readers everywhere.

The Riders

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and seven-year-old 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 glass doors hiss open, and Scully's life begins to go down in flames. So begins an odyssey across Europe, a journey through the underworld of every lover's nightmare, as father and daughter, isolated from each other by terror and need, desperately search the wreckage of their lives for answers.
This is a story of a marriage in our time. Of a man who would go to the end of the earth for a woman and their tough little nut of a child - and of a woman who must let them pass blindly by. Written with the sort of grace and irresistible clarity we have come to expect from one of our best loved and most talented writers, The Riders is Tim Winton's first adult novel since Cloudstreet. AAA

Open Swimmer

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. An Open Swimmer is a remarkable first novel by one of Australia's most loved and respected writers.

Lockie Leonard Human Torpedo

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 class.

In The Winter Dark

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 verandah of the Stubbses' house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again.

The Bugalugs Bum Thief: Aussie Bite Edition

Skeeta Anderson woke up one morning to find that his bum was gone. And not only his bum, but the bum of every single person in the town of Bugalugs.

It's up to Skeeta to catch the thief . . .

In The Winter Dark (Unabridged Audio)

Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then, in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a shadow move between the trees. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. On the verandah of the Stubbses' house, a dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again, not least for Maurice Stubbs, left to recount the day that had been waiting for him all his life . . .

An Open Swimmer (Unabridged Audio)

Hoping it'll be like old times, Jerra and his best mate Sean set off in a beaten-up VW to go camping on the coast. Jerra's friends and family want him to finish uni, get a girl, get a job like Sean has. But what Jerra is searching for is more elusive. They don't understand about Sean's mother, or the bush, or the fish with the pearl. Only the sea, and perhaps the old man who lives in a shack beside it, can help.

Cloudstreet

Tim Winton's funny, sprawling saga is an epic novel of love and acceptance. Winner of the Miles Franklin and NBC awards in Australia, Cloudstreet is a celebration of people, places and rhythms which has fuelled imaginations world-wide.

Lockie Leonard Legend

SOON TO BE A MAJOR CHANNEL NINE TV SERIES!

Lockie Leonard's survived the worst year on record. His first year of high school, settling into a new town, his first mad love affair – it's all behind him. He's about to turn fourteen and things are looking up.

But the world of weirdness hasn't finished with him yet. His little brother's hormones have kicked in and that's not a pretty sight. His lino-munching baby sister refuses to walk or talk. His dad starts arresting farm animals for a hobby and his poor mum suddenly won't stop crying.

Right in the middle of this family shambles, an old flame comes scorching back into his life. Ouch!

Okay, what gives? Please explain.

As his whole world goes down the gurgler, Lockie discovers things are never as simple as they seem. Not even for grommets.

Blueback

Abel Jackson loves to dive. He's a natural in the water. He can't remember a time when he couldn't use a mask and snorkel to glide down into the clear deep.

Life is tough out at Longboat Bay. Every day the boy helps his mother earn their living from the sea and the land. It's hard work but Abel has the bush and the sky and the bay to himself. Until the day he meets Blueback, the fish that changes his life.

Blueback is a story about people learning from nature. About a boy and his life-long friend.

Breath

Winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award

breath.timwinton.com.au

Lockie Leonard Scumbuster

SOON TO BE A MAJOR CHANNEL NINE TV SERIES!

Nothing's simple for Lockie Leonard. Dumped by his girlfriend, he's back to being the loneliest kid in town until he makes friends with the weirdest human being he's ever met.

As if that isn't enough, Lockie decides to save the planet. In the middle of all this the inevitable happens. Yes, he falls in love: he drops like a ton of bricks for a girl who's not even out of primary school yet, and to make matters worse she surfs better than he ever will. TOTAL LIFE DISASTER. If it wasn't so ridiculous a kid would get depressed.

Can a thirteen-year-old surfrat have a headbanger for a best friend, stay in love with an eleven-year-old grommet and still save his town from industrial pollution?

SURE. AS IF!

Minimum Of Two And Other Stories

Tim Winton's characters are ordinary people who battle to maintain loyalty against all odds; women, children, men whose relationships strain under pressure and leave them bewildered, hoping, sometimes fleeing, but often finding strength in forgotten parts of themselves.

That Eye The Sky

Ort knows the sky is watching. He knows what it means to watch; he spends long hours listening at doors and peering through cracks. Things are terribly wrong. His father is withering away, his sister is consumed by hatred, his grandmother is all inside herself, and his mother, a flower-child of the 1960s, is brave but helpless. Then a strange man appears at their door. That Eye, the Sky is about love, about a boy's vision of the world beyond, about the blurry distinctions between the natural and the supernatural. All this, and more, begins at the moment the ute driven by Ort Flack's father ploughs into a roadside tree, throwing the whole world out of kilter.

Scission

Tim Winton's first collection of stories deals with men, women and children whose lives are coming apart and whose hearts are breaking. These spare, jagged stories, in which people struggle with change and disintegration, are vintage Winton.

Breath (Audio CD)

Winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award

A new novel by Tim Winton - this is his first in seven years. Narrated by award-winning Australian actor, Dan Wyllie.

A major international publishing event for 2008.

Winner of The Age Book of the Year (Fiction) 2008.

Breath is Tim Winton at his finest: a beautiful, gripping, deeply moving novel about our need for excitement and to push ourselves to the limits; about the power of the sea; and how ordinary people live with tragedy.

Cloudstreet (Audio CD)

Winner of the Miles Franklin and NBC Awards.

From seperate catastrophes 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 twenty years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts.

"Nothing short of magnificent ... a wonderful read." -Time Out.

"One of those rare novels that warm the heart, as well as spark the imagination." - Kirkus Reviews.

Minimum Of Two (Audio CD)

"Like Hemingway, Winton writes prose in which you can hear the thumping of the heart of the long-distance swimmer, or the rasping, heaving breath of the asthmatic ..." - Times on Sunday. "It's another beauty - a poignant collection of spare, understated tales about ordinary people battling to preserve the relationships they treasure in the face of many troubles ..." - Cleo. Tim Winton's characters are ordinary people who battle to maintain loyalty against all odds; women, children, men whose relationships strain under pressure and leave them bewildered, hoping, sometimes fleeing, but often finding strength in forgotten parts of themselves.

Shallows (Audio CD)

No.1 Australian Bestseller.

Author Published Internationally.

Whales have always been the life-force of Angelus, a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. Their annual passinig defines the rythms 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.

The Riders (Audio CD)

Shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize and the 1995 Victorian Premier's Literary Award.

"The curse of this haunting book is that you read it too fast." - New Yorker

Dirt Music (Audio CD)

Winner of the 2002 N.S.W. Premier’s Literary Award and the 2001 Book Data/ABA Book of the Year Award.

Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, 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. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself. In prose as haunting and beautiful as its western setting, Dirt Music confirms Tim Winton’s status as one of the finest novelists of his generation.

The Turning (Audio CD)

From the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of Dirt Music comes an outstanding work of fiction that will resonate with readers everywhere.

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've 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.

"As a collection of short stories [The Turning] is magnificent, but it also transcends its form and makes a breathtakingly beautiful and challenging novel." - Australian Bookseller & Publisher

"Plot and prose combine to create what might just come close to being the perfect Australian novel." - Herald Sun