Firehead

Venero Armanno

Sep 2012 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Random House Australia

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Love, blood and pasta over three decades in Brisbane.

She used to sell her kisses for caramels; her lips went for long licks of liquorice and her touch for tangerines and tutti frutti. She looked as Irish as rain out of a sunny blue day and as English as green meadows where wildflowers grow, and her name was Gabriella Maria Santuzza Zazo. When Gabriella moves in next door to 14-year-old Sam with her parents and her ageing grandfather - a man who carries the secrets of their Mediterranean island inside his slowly darkening mind - Sam knows that his life will never be the same.

Set in Brisbane's Sicilian community over three decades, from 1975 to 1995, Firehead is an eerie story of generations of love, of police corruption and a city's changing terrain, and of searching for one place in the world you can finally say is home. This is sensuous, compelling storytelling with an aching mystery at its heart.

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Venero (Veny) Armanno the author of two short story collections, Jumping at the Moon and Travel Under Any Star, and nine critically acclaimed novels. These include Black Mountain, The Dirty Beat, Romeo of the Underworld and Candle Life. His novel Firehead was shortlisted in the 1999 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award; in 2002 The Volcano won the award with Best Fiction Book of the year. His works have been published in the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Israel and South Korea. Veny is a trained screenwriter and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Queensland.