Simon Williams

Set in 1960s Sydney, this is the story of an Australian gangster whose booming business, buoyed by the influx of U.S. soldiers in town for R&R during their tours in Vietnam, attracts the attention of first the Chicago mafia, and then their East Coast competitors.

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.

A champion high school rugby player has a secret desire to be a ballet dancer, having spent 11 years in ballet school. Seizing an opportunity to audition for a local company's presentation of "Romeo and Juliet", he nonetheless fears what will happen to his reputation if the other kids in his school find out. Adding the practices to his already burgeoning schedule quickly starts to create problems with his friends, his teachers, his coach, his play director, and his ballet partner. Of course, it all comes together on the stage of the Sydney Opera House.

Two anthropologists married to each other go to an island off of Papua New Guinea for field research in pre-World War II. Eventually the war breaks out and many lives are disrupted and complicated.

Passion concentrates on Grainger's unusual relationship with his mother and his sexual peculiarities (especially his obsessive self-flagellation, though homosexuality is also hinted at) which affect his relationship with a woman who comes to love him. It is set mainly in London in 1914, when Grainger's mother Rose was ill (she would later jump to her death in New York, upset by ill-founded rumours of incest with her son).

Fear of an unidentified livestock predator unites an Australian couple, an outcast, and an abandoned woman.