Laurie Brady is a poet of the everyday, writing of life in the suburbs, walking the dog, visiting aged relatives. Often however, the everyday is made strange: lust and guilt are put out with the garbage, infidelities bloom behind brick veneers but whether comic or serious, his poems present human experience in a contemporary voice. - Elizabeth Webby Professor of English, University of Sydney
Enter Others is a sequel to Enter Spice. The endearing characters of the novel are Toby (an Irish Wolfhound), Roxy (a Boxer), Princess (a Labrador), and Curly (a Poodle). Their ‘coming out’, or revealing their talents, is through a television interview with an annoying interviewer who doesn’t like dogs, but the four dogs ‘get the better of him’. They receive great praise from preventing the robbery attempts of two criminals, from rescuing trapped miners in a collapsed shaft in a coal mine, and from proving themselves to be extraordinary at a number of sports. When Princess is injured by bullies, Toby and Roxy seek revenge, but at the last moment they decide that doing so would make them no better than the bullies themselves. They begin to help people who are not as fortunate as others (the old, the disabled and prisoners), and learn an important lesson from Private, a homeless man who is not what he appears to be. They are approached to be superheroes in an action movie, but the venture has a comical result, and teaches the dogs another lesson. The conclusion to the ‘dog trilogy’ is a heart-warming ending to the growing status of dogs.
Enter Donegal is a highly entertaining story of a mischievous Irish Setter who becomes part of the Ellis family, and who, after several years of being the family pet, reveals that he can not only walk upright, but that he can read, write, and is a master of most sports. The story traces the powerful relationship he forms with each family member, and his adventures in helping Tom’s children, capturing burglars, confronting bullies, freeing other dogs from the council pound, and performing a rescue from a near-death experience. His hilarious ‘coming-out’ or making his talents known beyond the family, proves a sensation, but poses new challenges for the family. After a few remarkable years, Donegal makes another startling revelation to Tom with even greater challenges. The story shows the bond between people and dogs, the value of all living creatures, the short-lived and changing nature of fame, the idea that every life leaves an imprint, and the triumph of goodness.
With help from her mother's special charm, as well as understanding teachers and classmates, a third-grader who has muscular dystrophy gets over her anxiety over moving from a special education school to a general classroom.
Enter Spice is a sequel to Enter Donegal. Spice, a charming Cocker Spaniel arrives at the Ellis home after Donegal has gone, and obviously at his request. She is readily accepted and loved by all family members. With the gifts of walking upright, speaking, reading, writing and singing, she helps Scott and Lara in their ‘love’ relationships, frustrates the attempt of a work colleague of Beth’s to prevent her promotion, and rescues children lost in mountainous bushland. Her hilarious ‘coming out’, or revealing her talents, causes a sensation on ‘Australia’s Got Talent’ and results in her kidnapping from which she manages to escape in a surprising and unusual manner. Her own brush with near-death leads her to devote herself to helping the seriously ill in hospitals. Like Donegal, she makes a very different announcement that has implications for the whole Ellis family. This heart-warming novel underlines the significance of animals (dogs in particular), demonstrates the value of all living things, indicates ways in which we can help one another, and asserts the triumph of goodness over evil.
As the title suggests, this collection of short stories focuses on a variety of unusual but not atypical emotional and life-style reactions people experience as a result of guilt, compassion, indiscretion, abuse, jealousy, fantasy, loss, sense of mission, and impending death. It provides insight into the strange nature of what it means to be human.
Rummy is a book of poems with immediate emotional impact. Focusing on the gamut of interpersonal relationships and their nuances, the poems span many of life's universal concerns: friendship, love, ageing, memory, separation, loss, dying and death. Some of the poems are quietly contemplative, and others are charged with emotion, but collectively they offer wisdom and insight that will challenge the reader.
Recollecting school escapades, ridding a house of lust, a practical joke misfiring, dealing with a boy's swearing, a talking dog, a woman's take on the Odysseus legend, dogged self-centredness, a suspect solution to the world's problems, bizarre seductions, an afterlife wish granted, a jinxed lover pursuing his beloved... These are some of the themes of the seventeen humorous short stories in Pursuit involving a variety of comic expressions: situational, satirical, burlesque and even the ridiculous. While the impact of humour in the stories is largely attributable to incongruity, or some departure from the 'normal', the stories have more than just entertainment value. They make telling and sometimes poignant observations about the nature of the human condition.
Swords and Kisses is the story of two young friends who battle to manage two very different obsessions that threaten to change the course of their lives. Both encounter highs and lows as they attempt to resolve their challenges, which they do in very different ways. It is also a story about friendship and empathy that is told with an economy of prose, and an insight into the human condition.
Don't start reading these poems late at night unless you want to be up to see the dawn. Privet Moon is a poetic page-turner in the best possible sense as each poem, stark, haunting and beautiful, ventures into a key stage of human life. Sex, death, love, laughter and loss fill this book with energy and insight, which encourages and rewards reflection.
Slices, a title taken from Zola's description of good drama as 'a slice of life', contains sixteen stories that explore a range of often capricious and sometimes predictable responses to the challenges life presents. The stories explore the nature of memory and imagination, friendship and love, decline and loss, searching and fulfilment, and even the ridiculous. Collectively, they offer insight into the human condition, and pose challenging questions for the reader.
Arguably there has never been a greater emphasis on the importance of assessment in Australian schools. This book provides a timely analysis of assessment and reporting, examining a wide range of strategies. Laurie Brady from UTS.
Laurie McBain's classic bestselling Dominick saga "Now you can see how easily an ill-spoken word can cast doubt on or even destroy the feelings we thought inviolate," Dante warned her. "Never let anyone turn you against me, Rhea. Promise me that." Newly-wed, Lady Rhea Claire and Dante Leighton must return to England, where their reception is anything but warm. Now armed with wealth and power, Dante is a target for the murderous smugglers who despoiled his family home, while Rhea's father, the powerful Duke of Camareigh, vehemently rejects their marriage. The two lovers thought themselves invincible together. But in the riveting conclusion of McBain's epic trilogy, Dante's determination to reclaim his family seat and Rhea's desperation to win over her father threaten to cause an insurmountable rift that could break them apart forever. Praise for Laurie McBain: "Well-crafted and wonderfully romantic."—Romantic Times "Lush and evocative."—Publishers Weekly Dominick Trilogy: Moonstruck Madness Chance the Winds of Fortune Dark Before the Rising Storm
How did the penitentiary get its name? Why did the English impose long prison sentences? Did class and economic conflict really lie at the heart of their correctional system? In a groundbreaking study that challenges the assumptions of modern criminal justice scholarship, Laurie Throness answers many questions like these by exposing the deep theological roots of the judicial institutions of eighteenth-century Britain. The book offers a scholarly account of the passage of the Penitentiary Act of 1779, combining meticulous attention to detail with a sweeping theological overview of the century prior to the Act. But it is not just an intellectual history. It tells a fascinating story of a broader religious movement, and the people and beliefs that motivated them to create a new institution. The work is original because it relies so completely on original sources. It is mystical because it mingles heavenly with earthly justice. It is authoritative because of its explanatory power. Its anecdotes and insights, poetry and song, provide intriguing glimpses into another era strangely familiar to our own. Of special interest to social and legal historians, criminologists, and theologians, this work will also appeal to a wider audience of those who are interested in Christianity's impact on Western culture and institutions.
Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandell, authors with nearly thirty years of experience teaching college writing, know what works in the classroom and have a knack for picking just the right readings. In Patterns for College Writing, they provide students with exemplary rhetorical models and instructors with class-tested selections that balance classic and contemporary essays. Along with more examples of student writing than any other reader, Patterns has the most comprehensive coverage of active reading, research, and the writing process, with a five-chapter mini-rhetoric; the clearest explanations of the patterns of development; and the most thorough apparatus of any rhetorical reader, all reasons why Patterns for College Writing is the best-selling reader in the country. And the new edition includes exciting new readings and expanded coverage of critical reading, working with sources, and research. It is now available as an interactive Bedford e-book and in a variety of other e-book formats that can be downloaded to a computer, tablet, or e-reader. Read the preface.
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