'Quietly transformational' The Times 'A tour de force... I can't recommend this too highly' Patrick Gale 'Innovative... an original, at-a-sitting read' Daily Mail 'A potent meditation on the intensity of women's lives' Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend 'A miracle... Engaging and evocative' Washington Post 'I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable' Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters 'Lively and intimate... The way Thomas plays with the reader is a sort of genius' Guardian 'Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed' Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold. The house lights lower. The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness. As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play. Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone. As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.

'Quietly transformational' The Times 'A tour de force... I can't recommend this too highly' Patrick Gale 'Innovative... an original, at-a-sitting read' Daily Mail 'A potent meditation on the intensity of women's lives' Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend 'A miracle... Engaging and evocative' Washington Post 'I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable' Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters 'Lively and intimate... The way Thomas plays with the reader is a sort of genius' Guardian 'Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed' Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold. The house lights lower. The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness. As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play. Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone. As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.

'Quietly transformational' The Times 'A tour de force... I can't recommend this too highly' Patrick Gale 'Innovative... an original, at-a-sitting read' Daily Mail 'A potent meditation on the intensity of women's lives' Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend 'A miracle... Engaging and evocative' Washington Post 'I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable' Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters 'Lively and intimate... The way Thomas plays with the reader is a sort of genius' Guardian 'Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed' Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold. The house lights lower. The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness. As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play. Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone. As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.

I am not writing this to be sentimental. I am just trying to find an answer to a story... An artistic girl in Renaissance Venice, quietly rebelling against the constraints of her gender. A young milordi on a European Grand Tour, recognising the world and his secret sexuality. A ballerina in nineteenth-century Paris, choosing between suitors. A Greek mother, beginning a new life with her family in a migrant reception centre in regional Australia. And, finally, a paintings conservator in contemporary Melbourne, breaking her own heart. A single, small artwork - subversive, hidden, and oddly blue - somehow survives for five hundred years, linking the lives of these characters. An intricate tale of grief and discovery, of watery destruction and earthly love.

If you think having the devil snapping at your heels is scary, it's nothing compared to finding God's calm presence at your back every time you stop to draw breath in your race to escape-particularly for a determined agnostic like Claire. Indeed, His presence is so unnerving and unwelcome that it's not until her world crumbles to ashes that she fi nds the courage to stop running and turn toward Him. Moderately psychic and a most earthbound mystic, Claire has heard the voice of Thomas from the days of earliest childhood, but has worked tirelessly for most of her adult life to shut it out or shout it down-until she made that fateful decision.

Entanglement is the result of that choice. It describes the pain of surviving the traumatic deaths of four beloved people, fi nding the courage to walk away from abuse and oppression, and facing the fear of being utterly alone in the world. It also explains how confronting fear, accepting loss, and embracing the unknown and the mystical can create a life of enormous joy and enrichment. It focuses on how having the courage to stay in the "not-knowing" can be gloriously life-affirming and on how human life on earth is vastly more mysterious than most of us dare to imagine.

A unique new insight into multilingual families, this book views multilingual childhoods from the point of the child and is based on over 50 interviews with adults who grew up in multilingual settings. The book charts their recollections of their childhoods and includes many different types of families, discusses many of the common issues that arise in multilingual families, and draws examples from all over the world. The book fills a significant gap in the literature and resources available to multilingual parents. It was researched and written by a self-help group of multilingual parents and thus the book remains very practical and gives clear and realistic advice to multilingual parents facing choices or dilemmas. However, because of its unique viewpoint, this book also includes much new material that will be of interest to researchers and students of bilingualism.