Kill Will: Night Bird in Sunlight by Clouds of Magellan Publisher Gordon Thompson has been released 2026 from the lovely folk at Clan Destine Press. It is a fantasy thriller in which young Will Shakespeare falls through a portal into present day England. We had a launch event this week (25 March) at Readings Bookshop in Carlton. You can buy copies at Readings, from Clan Destine Press, or wherever you get your books. Yannick Thoraval generously launched the book.

More on Kill Will below …

Kill Will: Night Bird in Sunlight (Clan Destine Press, 2026)

‘If you love time travel, Shakespeare and brilliant fictional women, this book is absolute catnip…A fresh and lively tribute to the Bard but never too reverent. It’s clever, funny, intricate and gripping.’
~ Narrelle M Harris, author of The She-Wolf of Baker Street

‘An ingenious tale of time travel, a wild ride of witty and disruptive culture clash.’
~ Amanda Lohrey, author of The Labyrinth

View this post on Instagram

Buy from Clan Destine Press

2025. 84pp. paperback. ISBN: 9781763735675.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was a major English Romantic poet known for his radical politics, lyrical intensity, and visionary imagination. Expelled from Oxford for atheism and estranged from his family, he led a life of rebellion and exile. Known as a radical agitator, apostle of free love, and a brilliant poetic innovator, his works include Ozymandias, Prometheus Unbound, and The Mask of Anarchy.

This edition includes all the poems recommended by the VCAA for Year 12 VCE Literature.

Amazon.com.au ; Barnes & Noble

Shelley drowned in a storm off the coast of Italy in 1822 when his sailing boat sank during a voyage from Livorno to Lerici. The cover is taken from a painting by Louis Edouard Fournier, ‘The Funeral of Shelley’ that dramatizes the aftermath of his death.

Contents

The Mask of Anarchy
Mutability
To Wordsworth
Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Mont Blanc
Ozymandias
Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples
Song to the Men of England
A New National Anthem
Ode to the West Wind
Sonnet: England in 1819
The Indian Serenade
On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci …
Love’s Philosophy
To a Skylark
Ode to Liberty
To Night
The Question
The flower that smiles today …

Marcus O’Donnell is having an exhibition of prints, which appear in the book After This

The adjacent possible: an exhibition by Marcus O’Donnell

Print Council of Australia Gallery
Studio 2, 152 Sturt Street, Southbank
13-31 October, Tuesday – Friday 9am -4pm
Opening celebration: 16 October 5-7pm
@marcusod
#printcouncilofaustralia
#baldessinstudio

After This by Marcus O’Donnell

A man honeymoons before leaving to fight in the First World War, a literature class for prisoners, unexpected meetings with long-lost loves … short stories and poems by Garry Kinnane that take in early and mid 20th century Australia, and on into the trials of ageing in the 21st. Ten stories, twenty poems – thirty pieces in all.

Garry Kinnane is the author of George Johnston: A Biography (winner of The Age Book-of-the-Year 1986) Colin Colahan: A Portrait, and the memoir trilogy, Shadowed Days.

Published by Rainshadow, an imprint of Clouds of Magellan Press.

Find online at Booktopia.

Also by Garry Kinnane from Clouds of Magellan Press:

Here is a poem from craft by Pete Haydon, published by Rainshadow (an imprint of Clouds of Magellan). craft is a book of poems about the making of boats, the losing of boats … poems that circle around small craft and the sea, with occasional forays into the darker deeps.

Feeling the curve

Nothing is straight, nor will be straight;
Design abhors a straightened line.
Draw it straight and life will curve it
Till it’s true, a true line.
A true line is sweet;
A sweet line is curved.
Feel its flank, 
a living thing,
That slips its subtle way
Through water’s almost nonsense,
Intuiting some meaning,
Held a flashing second,
Lost, recombined a million times
In the time it takes to tell.

Pete Haydon is a writer and musician. He is the author of the play The Crime of the Modern Mariner and lives in Aireys Inlet, Victoria.

Buy craft from Blarney Books, Booktopia