Winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for 2001. A compelling, wild novel based on the true story of a young English woman who survives a shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia in 1835.WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN/VOGEL LITERARY AWARD FOR 2001'She had been left behind on an island with sealers, men who had their own rules. She felt as though she was on the edge of the world, or perhaps she had fallen off into some halfway place. It wasn't living and it wasn't quite hell.'Shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1835, Dorothea Newell is marooned on Middle Island with other survivors. Stranded, they seek shelter in a sealers' camp. The desolate environment of the island camp is a place where men from all corners of the globe struggle to trade seal skins, and the appearance of women-rare commodities in that place and time-opens a further form of trade. As a desperate means of survival, Dorothea is forced into an alliance with the camp's fierce leader,...

The compelling new novel of life, land and love in the Top End by Sarah Hay, winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for her first novel, Skins in 2001.When did it all start? This feeling of being beneath water; slow and cumbersome, every movement met with something thicker than air, some form of resistance she was unable to see.On a rundown station in the remote top end of Australia, life for Susannah is isolated and difficult. Susannah is left alone by her husband who is the manager of the station. She is forced to cope with their young twins, the hard physical work of running the homestead, and the frustration that these things now mark the boundaries of her life. Nothing is as she expected it to be; a dark history seeps through the land and the air shimmers with heat and an intangible menace. And then a young English girl, Laura, hired by her husband, arrives on the property to work as a jillaroo. Laura falls in love with Texas, the...