Books

Absolution Creek will be published October 2012

A Changing Land – The National Top Ten Bestseller 2011

by Nicole Alexander (March 2011 Random House)

Past and present interweave in A Changing Land, the continuing legacy of the Gordon family. It’s the early 19th Century and Hamish Gordon has a massive rural holding built on stock theft and is determined to ensure that his son and heir, Angus will inherit an enlarged property. Embarking on a final stage of land acquisition, a ruthless plan to buy out his neighbours, Hamish’s actions nearly destroy Wangallon and have serious repercussions for generations to come.

Luke, Hamish’s eldest surviving son from his first marriage is a wild man, at odds with civilised society. Deeply affected by the untimely deaths of his siblings and mother some thirty years earlier he feels deserted. His unrequited love for his young step-mother leads him to choose a life as Wangallon’s Boss drover, an existence which keeps him away from the property most of the year. When Luke learns that his father has engineered events to keep him on the property he must choose between a chance at a new life and the protection of the only home he has ever known.

In 1989 two years after the death of family patriarch Angus Gordon, Sarah Gordon now runs Wangallon with the assistance of her fiancé, Anthony. Their relationship begins to deteriorate when a power struggle develops between them. Sarah’s problems escalate with the arrival of her Scottish half-brother, Jim Macken who is intent on receiving the inheritance bequeathed to him by Angus Gordon. Unable to buy Jim out and with the possibility of losing one third of Wangallon, Sarah finds herself fighting the law, her half-brother and Anthony.

She has the same unescapable Gordon qualities that will ensure both and her Wangallon’s survival but will it be at the expense of her happiness?

Outback Magazine says: “A must read”.

 The Bark Cutters – Shortlisted for the ABIA (Aust. Book Industry Awards) Newcomer Award 2011

by Nicole Alexander (April 2010 Random House)

Sarah Gordon knows what she wants: the family homestead, Wangallon. When it comes to working the land she’s a natural but, as a woman, it’s not her birthright. Even when her beloved older brother is killed in a tragic accident, nobody looks to Sarah to inherit. Instead her grandfather passes management to Anthony Carrington, once Wangallon’s jackeroo.

Feeling betrayed, Sarah escapes to Sydney to try and put Wangallon behind her, but her heart is pulled in two directions: Sydney with its Cafe`s and social life, her blossoming career as a photographer and her accountant boyfriend Jeremy, or Wangallon, which has been in the family for over 120 years, with its floods, its droughts, the ghosts of generations past, and Anthony who is becoming as much a part of Wangallon and its future as she is.

The Bark Cutters is a gripping Australian family saga that centres around a family property. Past and present interweave in a story that traces the Gordon’s from the arrival of Scottish immigrant Hamish Gordon in the 1850’s to the life of his great granddaughter, Sarah.

Woman’s Day says: “An engrossing family saga”.

Divertissements – Love • War • Society  Selected Poems

by Nicole Alexander
(2008 Kre8 Publishing) Printed with the assistance of a literary grant from The Poet’s Network

Excerpt from, Divertissements by Nicole Alexander released by Kre8 Publishing 2008.

EXODUS

Whispers, it does
through a baby’s breath sky
omitting carefully cooling steel
the finger print void of humanity.
An unfriendly, under-miner of a city
conscious of its own kind.

Unjaded by self-confessed infallibility,
whispers, it does
through the pink mattress of smog,
above the mechanical springs below,
along the frozen edge of curb and gutter.
To the adventurer, exhausted by the

long hungry stagger of the day,
the perpetual climb of the night, the cold
whispers, it does.
With the turning of the moon, hopeful of
coercing into cosmopolitan ways
the uninitiated, a scrap is carelessly thrown,

‘noses pressed hard against dreamy glass.’

Replete in sweet knowledge, the city
whispers, it does and watches new additions,
the abattoir spectacle of workers.
Bitumen reality greets the collapse of night,
the queue remains steadfast.
The whisper fades.