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Liz Smith Thinks she is boring. She knows her life is deadly dull. She is middle aged. She is a spinster. She has just been sacked. What else is left but being boring and leading a dull life?

Her life is about to become very, very different. Deadly, perhaps. Dull, never. Boring? She could only wish.

It starts with a simple redecoration job. A mirror. It starts with friends. It continues with ants and notes and far too many problems. If Liz isn't careful, it may well end with the boss who sacked her, haunting her from a very particular hell.

Mountains of the Mind -- A Polack Retrospective contains never before published early work from Dr Polack, prizewinning published pieces and brand new short stories written especially for this book. It will surprise and delight fans of her previous 6 novels and non fiction publications, and introduce new readers to the complexities and subtleties of Dr Polack's short stories. Traversing the mountains and valleys, and following the twists and turns in time and place you will return again and again to the stories in this book. The paths to the top of these mountains are many, and the views from there are spectacular.

Renowned artist Grania, famed as a painter of light, arrives in a sleek space ship from Lost Earth, ready to embrace New Ceres and its New Enlightenment in its entirety - its 18th century set up, its coffee houses, its gossipy salons, and its obsession with a low-level approach to tech... But is she really ready for its cutthroat society, its strange food issues or for Livia? Livia who toys with lives on a whim, and will stop at nothing to realize her dream society.

When Grania marries Dal and sets up her own political salons, the stage is set for a battle of wills and poisonous chaos ensues.

Humankind is in danger.

The Year of the Fruitcake tells of the Earth-based life of a mostly-mindwiped alien anthropologist inhabiting a human perimenopausal body instead of her own more rational body with its capacity to change gender. This alien has definitely shaken a great intergalactic empire by sitting in cafés with her new best friends. Chocolate may or may not have played a part. Will humanity survive?

Polack describes her novel as, Bleak. It's political. It's angry. It's also sarcastic, cynical and funny.

Ghosts trail after us. They are our fears and the shape of our hates. We bring them into our lives and into our homes.

Poltergeists and the spirits of drowned girls; malicious presences and portents; cat vampires and roaming bushrangers. These ghosts haunt Canberra - these ghosts can kill.

Lil is elegant and troubled. Ann has just retired and is about to divorce: she sees vistas of nothingness in her future. Mabel is wedded to her garden. Kat is fifteen and has tried hard to drop out of life.

It takes these four women, one cup of tea at a time, to face the ghosts and other supernatural beings in Canberra. But can they face down the darkness and keep Canberra's streets clear of danger?

Pink tutus, magic, sarcasm, amulets and bushfires: this is suburban fantasy in Australia.

Life is never quite what it seems, even without the lost family heritage delivered to Judith and Belinda. Judith wants an ordinary life... mostly. If Belinda weren't Judith's sister, and if it wasn't for bushfires and bigots, Belinda's life would be perfectly ordinary. Judith will tell you so; you don't even have to ask.

Belinda's friend Rhonda has a superpower. Each time she sees the future or reveals deep secrets, seekers for the 'New Nostradamus' come closer to destroying her life. Her hold on normalcy is very fragile; so is her hold on safety.

Judith and Rhonda are haunted, Judith by her past and Rhonda by her gift. Will they ever come into the sunshine and find happiness?

Fay invented a world of fantasy where she could dwell in happiness. Her friends in this perfect world were Belle and Persa, Enlai and Flor. She visited them on the edge of sleep, shaping their lives to suit herself.

"I dream better than other people. More efficiently and effectively," she explained to herself. Her dreams were a flicker away from reality.

After Gilbert turns up in her refuge, undesigned, unheralded, and disturbing, Fay's dream world shatters. But are her dreams really dreams, and should she leave her friends behind and live in the real world?