Showing results by author "Steven Carroll" in All Categories

Since its inception in the 19th Century photography has been a trusted source capturing both truth and reality. It cannot lie. Our eyes may deceive us, but the camera cannot. In this volume whilst our classic authors are at the early edge of photography’s development, they use it in ways that are both innovative and atmospheric as very often the camera and the photographer become a central part in many fascinating stories.

It's a cold, Monday morning. Mid-winter. No swimmers in sight. A deserted beach. And there on the sand, a neat pile of clothes. Almost like a coded message waiting to be deciphered. Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, an Austrian-born, Cockney Jew, always destined to be an outsider, takes up the case.

On a hot summer's night in the 1950s, the old and the new, diesel and steam, and town and country all collide - and nobody will be left unaffected. As a passenger train leaves Spencer Street Station on its haul to Sydney, a family of three - Vic, Rita, and their son, Michael - are off to a party. George Bedser has invited the whole neighborhood to celebrate the engagement of his daughter. Vic is an engine driver, with dreams of being like his hero Paddy Ryan and becoming the master of the smooth ride.

A sleek high-speed train glides silently through the French countryside, bearing Michael, an Australian writer, and his travelling world of memory and speculation. Melbourne, 1946, calls to him: the pressure cooker of the city during World War II has produced a small creative miracle, and at this pivotal moment the lives of his newly married parents, a group of restless artists, a proud old woman with a tent for a home, a journalist, a gallery owner, a farmer and a factory developer irrevocably intersect.

As a teenager, Lucy McBride, is woken by the sound of classical music, and from that moment she devotes herself to the study of the cello. Her fascination later leads her to Venice, and to Fortuny, the master cellist. They begin an intense, ill-fated affair, but as emotions and desires tangle with hopes and dreams, they must struggle to decide how their symphony must end.

Martin Friedrich, a German philosopher, is cycling through an intersection on his way to give a lecture when a speeding car strikes and kills him. Shortly afterwards, Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter - an Austrian-born cockney Jew, whose parents were interned during the war as enemy aliens - stands over the body of Friedrich, contemplating the age-old question: who did it?