Reed Independent: 30 books

Seven years after King Billy’s death, Truganinni stood alone, arguably the most important living relic of her Tasmanian race. She would walk the streets of Hobart Town, resembling Queen Victoria in her voluminous skirts and headdress. She quite enjoyed the curiosity and finger pointing wherever...

Blurb (Act I) PARSONS: I’m beginning to feel what his friends must have gone through when they were really seeing him off. The longer they wait, the more improbably it is that the bloody plane will ever leave. They mouth platitudes to each other about every man having the unimpeachable right to...

An ensemble of actors who are about to start rehearsing a play about the Moree race riots visit Endeavour Lane in Moree to get a feel of the lie of the land. This is where the young Aboriginal 'Cheeky' McIntosh was shot and killed during the infamous 1982 rumble between local whites and blacks. The...

Bill and Billy are having marital problems but these pall when compared to the problems they have to face from their next door neighbour. If that wasn’t enough, there is the general alarm put out to be on the alert for a serial murderer thought to be in the district. In the heavy night of...

You would have to wonder why a Rhodes Scholar, a VC winner and a Commissioner of Police named his son Frank E. R. Stein by way of a ha-ha ‘monstrous joke’… or why he cackled derision every time his eyes lit upon the boy; or why he showered more affection on his adopted son, Costas, the otherwise...

Extinction is foreverwhen it puts the bite on you--------------Almost before the current book/film/TV boost to closeted vampires, there was Ihe, the vampire-wolfman. Almost before the current book/film/TV boost to closeted werewolves, there was Ihe, the wolfman-vampire. And this goes to show extinction...

Extinction is forever, give or take a day.. And there’s always Redemption trying to take up that one precious minute of your time.------------------------------------This is a collection of mainly nationally award-winning or highly-commended short stories.-------------------------------------Bill...

‘Don’t let them cut me up! Bury me behind the mountains!’ Fear, violence and race prejudice are themes with which we are all sadly familiar. Bill Reed’s three plays-on-a-theme, based on the life and times of Truganinni -- the supposed last Tasmanian Aborigine and, at the end, so socially visible...

John Tasker is a divided, but enjoined, man. Physically he is running from the law while hunting down his own father, just as his father used to track down the wild tuskers in Sri Lanka. At the same time, mentally, he is tracking down his murderous brother’s enemies, imaginably or not, with a deadly...

You’d think that if he had the nerve to despoil Charles Dickens, he’d get the spelling of The Pickwick Papers right. It’s not even about The Pickwick Papers but the great man’s Great Expectations. He couldn’t even get that right. The unidentified Editor of The Pipwink Papers writes...

You know I’d never lie to you. How could I? It’s the Talls campfire and these are the oral-lit smoke trails that swirl about you, never to dribble drivel upon you. You can be sure you’ll only get what’s inner-heard. I embellish you not.Surely you remember Wi, a name especially chosen to fit...

Smith, and then his son Terry, found they were just as snagged on Hindu’s damning wheel as their forebears had been for over 170 years, until the family finally managed to carry on to Australia. The two of them thought they could ride belatedly to the rescue of Terry’s once little-she twin...

Here are the award-winning or noted short-form plays whose productions range from a few minutes to lengthy one-acters. Each inclusion in this collection has been selected by the Australian Script Centre to be listed for viewing or purchase on its website Australianplays.org.These twelve plays...

‘I f you are a famous-enough author long presumed dead and you keep sending notes to your Publisher through some far-off precocious teenage girl who says she’s never heard of you – and the frightening predictions in those notes keep coming true -- then you can’t be dead. Can you? For...