In a gripping stand-alone fantasy from the acclaimed Alison Croggon, a pickpocket steals the cursed Stone Heart and is propelled into a power struggle, woven with witchcraft, that will change the kingdom forever. Pip lives by his wits in the city of Clarel. But when he picks the wrong pocket, Pip finds himself in possession of a strange dried heart in a silver casket—and those who lost it will stop at nothing to get it back. With assassins on his trail and the ominous heart beginning to whisper to him, Pip and his childlike older sister El are drawn deeper into the forbidden world of magic. Now they must seek the help of the secret witches of Clarel and Princess Georgette—who is sick of being a pawn in everyone else’s game—to wage revolution against a chilling king, a power-hungry church cardinal, and an ancient evil they don’t truly understand. A beautifully written adventure full of courage and kindness, The Threads of Magic transports readers to a magical city of airy palaces and rotten slums, of agents of the Office of Witchcraft Examination and midsummer dancing in the Weavers’ Quarter, of dangerous fathers and chosen family.
As this enthralling epic nears its climax, the young heroine’s brother discovers his own hidden gift — and the role he must play in battling the Dark. Hem is a weary orphan whose struggle for survival ends when he is reunited with his lost sister, Maerad. But Maerad has a destiny to fulfill, and Hem is sent to the golden city of Turbansk, where he learns the ways of the Bards and befriends a mysterious white crow. When the forces of the Dark threaten, Hem flees with his protector, Saliman, and an orphan girl named Zelika to join the Light’s resistance forces. It is there that Hem has a vision and learns that he, too, has a part to play in Maerad’s quest to solve the Riddle of the Treesong. As The Crow continues the epic tale begun with The Naming and The Riddle, Alison Croggon creates a world of astounding beauty overshadowed by a terrifying darkness, a world where Maerad and Hem must prepare to wage their final battle for the Light.
Young Damek promises revenge when Lina, the daughter of a village lord and the object of his affections, is forced into servitude for being a witch--a class of people who are not tolerated in their brutally patriarchal society.
The bard Maerad and her brother Hem hold the key to the mysterious Singing, and each of them must overcome terrible obstacles before they can unite and together unlock the Tree of Song, release the music of the Elidhu, and defeat the Nameless One.
A hybrid of memoir and essay from award-winning writer and critic Alison Croggon. 'This figure I see in the foreground, this me. How monstrous am I? What does it mean to be a monster? From Latin monstrum, meaning an abomination...grotesque, hideous, ugly, ghastly, gruesome, horrible... 'I was born as part of a monstrous structure--the grotesque, hideous, ugly, ghastly, gruesome, horrible relations of power that constituted colonial Britain. A structure that shaped me, that shapes the very language that I speak and use and love. I am the daughter of an empire that declared itself the natural order of the world.' From award-winning writer and critic Alison Croggon, Monsters is a hybrid of memoir and essay that takes as its point of departure the painful breakdown of a relationship between two sisters. It explores how our attitudes are shaped by the persisting myths that underpin colonialism and patriarchy, how the structures we are raised within splinter and distort the possibilities of our lives and the lives of others. Monsters asks how we maintain the fictions that we create about ourselves, what we will sacrifice to maintain these fictions--and what we have to gain by confronting them.
Orphaned Hem is sent to Turbansk for safety but, as the armies of the Dark overrun the city, he flees with his mentor Saliman, his white crow Irc, and the orphan girl Zelika to join the resistance forces of the Light.
Simbala is a Keeper, the latest in a long line of women who can read the Book to find answers to people's questions. When developers begin to poison the River on which Simbala's village relies, the Book predicts change. But this does not come in the form they expect; it is the sympathetic foreigner who comes to stay who inflicts the greatest damage of all.
Sonorous motifs and resonant archetypes form the backbone of this series conclusion... [the] prose is aesthetically romantic without romanticizing anything; scars of sadness are shown unflinchingly, but when Maerad registers a celebratory evening at the end as 'rich and vivid and luminous with joy snatched back from the dark,' she could be describing this series." -- KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review) In an increasingly battle-ravaged land, Maerad, Cadvan, and Hem desperately search for one another as they make their separate journeys. The Black Army is advancing north, and even as Maerad faces a mighty confrontation with the Landrost to save Innail, all of the Seven Kingdoms are threatened with bitter and devastating defeat. Yet in Maerad and Hem lives the secret to the mysterious Singing, and legend holds that if they release the music of Elidhu together, they have the power to defeat the Nameless One. Can brother and sister find each other in time to fight this all-powerful enemy, and are they strong enough -- even reunited -- to defeat him before all is lost?
Maerad’s tale continues, luminous, desperate, and bold. . . . Brimming with archetypal motifs but freshly splendorous in its own right." – Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Maerad is a girl with a tragic past, but her powers grow stronger by the day. Now she and her mentor, Cadvan, hunted by both the Light and the Dark, must unravel the Riddle of the Treesong before their kingdom erupts in chaos. The quest leads Maerad over terrifying seas and glacial wilderness, until she is trapped in the icy realm of the seductive Winterking. There, Maerad must confront what she has suspected all along: that she is the greatest riddle of all.
The volume contains the first collections of two poets: Alison Croggon (TThis is the Stone'), holder of the Victorian Council for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1989; and Fiona Perry (TPharaohs Returning').
In 2010, the Guardian named Melbourne critic Alison Croggon as a must read critic. She was the first online critic to be awarded the Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year, in 2009. Her blog Theatre Notes was the first theatre blog in Australia and, over its eight years of existence, made Croggon the most influential critical voice in Australian performance, with a wide international readership. This long-awaited collection of 25 years of Croggons writing shows why. Ranging from early reviews to wide-focus essays of cultural criticism, from playful meditations on the critical form to searching interrogations of the role of the critic in the volatile digital age, Theatre Notes demonstrates the evolution of a crucial critical voice. It includes the best of the essays and reviews published in a variety of daily papers and literary magazines, but at its centre is an eye witness account of the 2004-2012 Australian theatre renaissance, written as it occurred. Searching, challenging and always entertaining, Croggon grapples with the contradictions and delights of writing about performance, an ephemeral artform central to our cultural memory.
Collection of poems by the author of 'This Is the Stone', which won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmour prizes in 1991. The author was a founding editor of 'Modern Writing'. Her other publications include the opera 'The Burrow' and the play 'Lenz'.
The Tale of Maerad coming into her gift as a bard, and her meeting and continuing partnership with Brad Cadran. A wonderful new fantasy, in the tradition of Isobelle Carmody. For ages 14 and over.
The sampler includes chapters from Alison Croggon’s Black Spring, Deborah Noyes’s Plague in the Mirror, and Brian Yansky’s Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments. Black Spring Inspired by the gothic classic Wuthering Heights, this stunning new fantasy from the author ofthe Books of Pellinor is a fiercely romantic tale of betrayal and vengeance. Plague in the Mirror In a sensual paranormal romance, a teen girl’s doppelgänger from 1348 Florence lures her into the past in hopes of exacting a deadly trade. Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments The reluctant hero from Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences is back in all his droll glory — and this time the fate of humankind is on the line.
This is a poetry of changes, dissolvings, transformations, fluidity between inside and out, between people and nature. Other starting points are the poetic tradition and musical forms.
Ranging from early reviews to wide-focus essays of cultural criticism, from playful meditations on the critical form to searching interrogations of the role of the critic in the volatile digital age, Alison Croggon's Theatre Notes charts the evolution of a crucial critical voice. It includes the best of the essays and reviews published in a variety of daily papers and literary magazines, but at its centre is an eye witness account of the 2004-2012 Australian theatre renaissance, written as it occurred.
A manuscript from the lost civilization of Edil-Amarandah chronicles the experiences of sixteen-year-old Maerad, an orphan gifted in the magic and power of the Bards, as she escapes from slavery and begins to learn how to use her Gift to stave off the evil Darkness that threatens to consume her world. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
A manuscript from the lost civilization of Edil-Amarandah chronicles the experiences of sixteen-year-old Maerad, an orphan gifted in the magic and power of the Bards, as she escapes from slavery and begins to learn how to use her Gift to stave off the evil Darkness that threatens to consume her world.
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