Cosmo Cosmolino: Text Classics

Winner, Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1956. Introduction by Sonya Hartnett.

'Nearly everyone between the ages of eighteen and thirty turns against his family and wants to escape from it. When he is sixty he wants to creep back to the nursery fireside, but it is no longer there.'

Handsome, proud, reprehensible, misunderstood. Dominic Langton is the dark heart of A Difficult Young Man. His brother Guy can scarcely understand where he fits into the pattern of things or what he might do next.

Martin Boyd's much loved novel is an elegant, witty and compelling family tale about the contradictions of growing up.

Martin Boyd was born in Switzerland in 1893 into a family that was to achieve fame in the Australian arts. His first novel, Love Gods, was published in 1925. Three years later The Montforts appeared, under the pseudonym Martin Mills. International success came with Lucinda Brayford, followed by the Langton Quartet: The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love, When Blackbirds Sing. In 1957 he went to Rome, where he lived and continued to write until his death in 1972.

Sonya Hartnett is the author of many books for children and adults, including Of a Boy and The Midnight Zoo. Her most recent novel is The Children of the King. She lives in Melbourne.

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'Few writers, it could be argued, have ever cannibalised life for their art as ruthlessly and consistently as did Martin Boyd; and few are born into situations which lend themselves so readily to art...By the time he wrote A Difficult Young Man, focusing the cool spotlight of his attention on his brother Merric as well as more sharply on himself, Boyd had form as a writer whose true gift lay not in the power of his imagination, but in the brilliance of his ancestral inheritance.' Sonya Hartnett

'Urbane, witty and eminently civilised...a subtle and beautifully observed social comedy.' Times Literary Supplement

Practice Makes Perfect helps you put your English vocabulary and grammar skills together!

You may have all the vocabulary down pat and every grammar point nailed--but without the skill of knowing how to put these elements together, communicating in your second language would be nearly impossible. Practice Makes Perfect: English Sentence Builders picks up from where other grammar books leave off, showing you the variety of structures and how to combine them to make solid sentences. And like every Practice Makes Perfect title, these books feature crystal-clear explanations, numerous realistic examples, and dozens of opportunities to practice, practice, practice!

Meet Cliff Hardy. Smoker, drinker, ex-boxer. And private investigator. When the wealthy Bryn Gutteridge hires Hardy to help his sister, it looks as if blackmail is the problem.

Until the case becomes more brutal, twisted and shocking than even Hardy could have guessed.

'A quintessentially Australian literary icon.' Age

Introduction by Charles Waterstreet.

Peter Corris's first Cliff Hardy novel, The Dying Trade, was published in 1980. It not only introduced a sleuth who was to become an enduring legend, but was also a long love letter to the seamy side of Sydney itself. Over more than three decades Corris has now written thirty-eight Cliff Hardy books, and the city of Sydney is as significant a presence in the books as the figure of Hardy. The third in the series, The Empty Beach, was made into a film starring Bryan Brown. In 1999 Corris was presented with a Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.

Charles Waterstreet is author of the memoirs Precious Bodily Fluids and Repeating the Leaving. He was co-creator of Rake, the award-winning ABC series. He is currently writing the third volume of his memoirs.

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