Ballad of Banjo Crossing (16pt Large Print Edition)


Book Description

A tender, heartwarming and utterly appealing novel about the power of community, love, loss and second chances. Jack McPhail is a man on the run from his past, a drifter who lands by accident in a sleepy outback Australian town called Banjo Crossing. Jack - almost despite himself - becomes slowly drawn into the town, its community, its characters and its concerns.He's on the brink of falling in love with Mardi, a young widow and owner of the local coffee shop, when the community is confronted and divided by an unexpected development. A coal mining company has come to town, intent on buying up the local properties to build an open cut mine. The town of Banjo Crossing rallies together to fight off the threat. Jack wants to help out his new friends, but if he does, he's at risk of his past being exposed. Having his secret out there could change everything for him. Will he help them out, even if it costs him his second chance at happiness?




The Ballad of Banjo Crossing


Book Description

A tender, heartwarming and utterly appealing novel about the power of community, love, loss and second chances. Jack McPhail is a man on the run from his past, a drifter who lands by accident in a sleepy outback Australian town called Banjo Crossing. Jack -- almost despite himself -- becomes slowly drawn into the town, its community, its characters and its concerns. He's on the brink of falling in love with Mardi, a young widow and owner of the local coffee shop, when the community is confronted and divided by an unexpected development. A coal mining company has come to town, intent on buying up the local properties to build an open cut mine. The town of Banjo Crossing rallies together to fight off the threat. Jack wants to help out his new friends, but if he does, he's at risk of his past being exposed. Having his secret out there could change everything for him. Will he help them out, even if it costs him his second chance at happiness? 'Highly topical and engaging ... incubating a mystery which must not be revealed until the exact psychological moment ... entertaining and charismatic' Adelaide Advertiser




Ballad of Banjo Crossing


Book Description

A tender, heartwarming and utterly appealing novel about the power of community, love, loss and second chances. Jack McPhail is a man on the run from his past, a drifter who lands by accident in a sleepy outback Australian town called Banjo Crossing. Jack - almost despite himself - becomes slowly drawn into the town, its community, its characters and its concerns.He's on the brink of falling in love with Mardi, a young widow and owner of the local coffee shop, when the community is confronted and divided by an unexpected development. A coal mining company has come to town, intent on buying up the local properties to build an open cut mine. The town of Banjo Crossing rallies together to fight off the threat. Jack wants to help out his new friends, but if he does, he's at risk of his past being exposed. Having his secret out there could change everything for him. Will he help them out, even if it costs him his second chance at happiness?







Book of Lost Threads


Book Description

In the small town of Opportunity, four mismatched people discover the unexpected power of kindness.




Picking the Ballad's Bones


Book Description

The ancient ballads of England, Scotland and Ireland are great stories to visit but nobody in their right mind would want to live there. There s a high body count for every ballad and a happy ending usually involves boy meets girl and they end up sharing a grave. The musicians who go to retrieve the songs, with the help of the magic banjo, Lazarus, know this, but the fact is, the songs also contain a great deal of magic useful in defeating the devils who are out to dehumanize humanity by stealing the music. The Queen of the Fairies, aka the Debauchery Demon, Torchy Burns, makes them a deal they can t refuse and the reluctant heroes find themselves thrust into the lives and deaths of ballad people they know are going to end badly. It s enough to make a picker take up accounting!




The Memory Tree


Book Description

Written with the same humour, sensitivity and compassion that won the hearts of readers of Book of Lost Threads, The Memory Tree is one family's journey of love and forgiveness.




The Yalda Crossing


Book Description

What action would be best for me?' I asked. We waited together. I thought for a while that he meant not to reply. 'James,' he said at last, 'that's something no-one can decide but you.' New South Wales, 1832 Captain James Beckett and his lover, Harriette, leave behind the proprieties of Sydney society and pioneer far west of the Blue Mountains to the Morrombidgee River, and deep into the lands of the Wiradjuri. Harriette's daughter, Emily, and The Captain's son, Young James, have no choice but to join their parents' struggle to establish a life and holding in alien country. When new settlers destroy sacred sites and hunting grounds, the hard-won understanding between the Becketts and the Wiradjuri is shattered. The shocking events that follow will torment Young James for the rest of his life. Praise for Noel Beddoe's Autumn 'I was moved by those limpid visions of landscape and the characters who move so sadly and haltingly through it.' Tim Winton 'Beddoe excels at lyrical, glassy prose that splendidly evokes the land.' Nicholas Jose




Complete Clawhammer Banjo Book


Book Description

With this volume, the reader is pleasantly surprised with two books in one- Section One by Alec Slater, and Section Two by Lisa Schmitz. Alec's portion is intended as a guide for the clawhammer or frailing banjo player with some previous experience in this style. He stresses the fact that this style of music can be fully learned only from within the oral tradition in which it grew. the instruction included here is meant to provide a review, and not to take the place of qualified teacher. Alec recommends that ...anyone wanting to get this playing right, should find someone in your area who plays and have him/her teach you. Listen to it, watch it, and make it your own. In Section Two, Lisa Schmits presents an extensive collection of 163 jigs, reels, polkas, hornpipes, strathspeys, waltzes, and songs from Ireland, Scotland, the Shetland Islands, Cape Breton, New England and Southern Appalachia for banjo solo. the national origin of each tune is indicated. Lisa offers personal, authoritative settings of a great variety of tunes at an intermediate level. Written in tablature only.




Wayfaring Strangers


Book Description

From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, a steady stream of Scots migrated to Ulster and eventually onward across the Atlantic to resettle in the United States. Many of these Scots-Irish immigrants made their way into the mountains of the southern Appalachian region. They brought with them a wealth of traditional ballads and tunes from the British Isles and Ireland, a carrying stream that merged with sounds and songs of English, German, Welsh, African American, French, and Cherokee origin. Their enduring legacy of music flows today from Appalachia back to Ireland and Scotland and around the globe. Ritchie and Orr guide readers on a musical voyage across oceans, linking people and songs through centuries of adaptation and change.




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