The Lost Wines Degustation Society,
Book One, A Postcard from Madiera.
ETT IMPRINT, 2022, 50 pages
The postcard from Madiera was written in sparkling gold “texta” and was posted to Mathew & Flinders Wine Merchants, Fairhaven, Victoria by Georgia Best (attorney at law.) Thus beginning the private joke which would become the less than private “Lost Wines Degustation Society.”
The book, the Lost Wines Degustation Society features the customers, staff, family and friends of the shop, Mathew & Flinders Wine Merchants. Wine folk all with tales to tell. Tales of places sun drenched in wine, beach side cafe’s and Languedoc hills. A novel about friendship, love and longing. Exploring the concept of belonging in this country, in this town and in the “Lost Wines Degustation Society.”
The adventures of “Top Hat that magic hat, who can change his look, his style, his brim, with just a wink, a flick, a grin. He has been a turban, beret, fez, even a crown on the head (I can’t say whose). Told by ace reporter Minnie Joan Briggs-Kent for the magazine “Hat & Cap”. Hat-napping, thieves, pirates and Holymen, this adventure has it all. I am telling you, you really should, “READ ALL ABOUT IT.”
The Adventures of Top Hat, ETT IMPRINT, 2022, 50 pages
Read all About it!
The adventures of “Top Hat that magic hat, who can change his look, his style, his brim, with just a wink, a flick, a grin. He has been a turban, beret, fez, even a crown on the head (I can’t say whose). Told by ace reporter Minnie Joan Briggs-Kent for the magazine “Hat & Cap”. Hat-napping, thieves, pirates and Holymen, this adventure has it all. I am telling you, you really should, “READ ALL ABOUT IT.”
Solero, “A Parrot’s Tale.” ETT IMPRINT 277 pages, 2020,
Available from ettimprint@hotmail.com
Solero “A Parrot’s Tale”
“In the dark of river bends, in the slow meander of deceit, in the closed still autumn mist, Freddy and Joyce with poles in hand, propel the craft into the stream.
The parrot chirps, he chews a nut then begins to chew upon the mast.”
The squawking parrot knows it all, the secret keeper of this land, of wine and river, war and love, and dreams men brought to riverbanks; alas they tried to build them. Part family saga, part love story, told over three generations by an unreliable parrot.
Thirty years in the writing, thirty years in the living, it is a book about wine written by a winemaker from the Mornington Peninsula. Solero encompasses the stories told around the headland posts by the old men who went to war, who grew up in the depression shanty towns (Bagtown), stood guard over the prisoners of war (Italian), witnessed the Afghan camel trains and paddle steamers. Men and women who watched the great waves of history crash over their lives. This book has river mud on its boots, wears a battered Akubra hat, has a pair of (Rycut) secateurs in its hand and sap in its bloodstream.
“A marvelous tale, well crafted, wonderful characters, the landscape envelops and molds the people, compelling, believable and enjoyable.”
Tiger-Wolf, ETT IMPRINT, 2019, 136 pages
Available from; ettimprint@hotmail.com
“Tiger-Wolf.”
Nothing is quite what it seems in this tall tale; dubious science meets equally dubious myth making. The myth of the Tiger-wolf (Thylacine alpina) is it, as they say, a fraud? The fantastic adventures of the “Green Avenger” cartoon hero, drawn by Nat Klein, just one of his inventions of improbable worth. Welcome to the Society of the Wolf, the re-creation of Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers within a vast snow-jar constructed in the Victorian Museum (old museum building). A tale of love and redemption, deep ecology and the dreams we live by. Join Nat and Rosslyn, Eugene, Nadia, Mary and the Green Adventure on this romp through the snow bound world of the Tiers.
“It is an intriguing narrative which is thematically ambitious, seductively engaging and structurally very sound. The way in which Cole can interweave the different layers of action, place and ideas is the work of an assured writer.”
“That the South-West wing of Melbourne’s museum should be stacked high with unopened boxes of well, junk, should surprise no one. What if however, in one of them, could be found proof that a long debunked notion of a Tasmanian wolf, a Thylacine alpina, would be proved true?
Nat Klein, grandson of the only man to have seen the animal, haunts these dusty rooms where he is obsessed with his hero, a film strip creation called the Green Avenger. A chance meeting with would be scientist Rosalind Son-Lee changes everything.
Brien Cole’s fantastical novel weaves boyhood heroes, adolescent romance and cynical commercial pragmatism into a compelling escapade through history, fantasy and all the magic that happens inside uncle Eugene’s snow dome.” Rob Clarke, Mornington Peninsula Writers
Still Life With Allen Keys, ETT IMPRINT, 2018, 125 pages
Available from ettimprint@hotmail.com
“The best of Brien Cole’s work is the story “Morning Parrot Trees”, and it is superb. The concreteness and fantasy of Fisher’s search for the parrot flowers are perfectly poised. This is imaginative writing of a high order…. Perhaps his most impressive characteristic is that he does know what matters and resists wasting words on unnecessary detail. The best of these stories are mulled over and mature, every detail lovingly placed.”
Rodney Hall, Sydney Morning Herald.
“Brien Cole has the rare ability of handling flamboyant metaphors with credible panache, and rhythm avoiding the ponderous…. We experience the casual interchange between fantasy and reality that distinguishes the best of Peter Carey’s work…..A fascinating collection both of characters and of stories.”
Bill Turner, Imprint.
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