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The lights go out just before dark. There is a blackout in the city and people blame lightning. There are many different ways to tell this story. This is one of them.

In the violent and despairing years of Australia's Great Depression, Judith Larsen grows up on a coaling hulk in the Port Adelaide River. The Australian political landscape is changing and unemployment, hunger, protests and police reprisals spawn new radical ideas for managing society.

In August 1914 war broke out across Europe. Within months hundreds of men - 'enemy aliens' - were interned on Torrens Island, in the Port River estuary near Adelaide. Sailors taken off enemy ships, foreign nationals living in South Australia, and even some naturalised British subjects found themselves behind barbed wire.

Is your phone smarter than you are? Why does the weather map turn purple, and how do you protect your tomatoes when it does? And just what do you do with a lesbian grandmother?

Three years ago photographer Alex Frayne set about reshaping the way South Australians see their state. Adelaide Noir was born.

Tadpoles in the Torrens is alive with people, places and creatures from our everyday lives and from the quirky imaginations of poets. There are talking dogs, migrating spiders, old horses, twisted fairy tales, riddles, bike races and adventures in the country and city. Here are poems by some of South Australia's best children's writers. Take a dip in - let your eyes swim like tadpoles over the pages. You might just catch yourself writing your own poem!

Geoff Goodfellow has performed his poetry to prisoners and primary-school children, in tiny pubs and at international literary festivals. Opening the Windows to Catch the Sea Breeze showcases Geoff's personal favourites, poems that audiences have requested time and again.

This is the classic account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1914-16, told by Frank Worsley, captain of the expedition ship Endurance. First trapped then crushed by ice, the Endurance drifted in an ice floe for five months before reaching the barren and inhospitable Elephant Island. Certain that no rescue party would ever find them, Shackleton, Worsley and four others set off in a small boat for South Georgia, the nearest inhabited island, leaving behind 22 men...

The Yuendumu Doors are among the freshest, most remarkable documents of Aboriginal art. Painted thirty years ago at a remote desert school by artists steeped in ritual knowledge, the Doors survived against the odds. ...

Not all interventions in Aboriginal Australia are inspired by external agents, politics or ideology. Some arise from simple, pragmatic responses to community needs where people and their aspirations are central. Historian Alan Mayne unravels a story of people, place and relationships. At once both personal and intensely political, this is a journey of ideas into action; intervention through innovation.

Siblings tells what it is like to grow up with a brother or sister with a disability or illness. The siblings of children with a disability are often the overlooked ones in families struggling to cope. Kate Strohm, a sibling herself, bravely shares the story of her journey from isolation and confusion to greater understanding and acceptance. She provides a forum for other siblings to describe their challenges and provides them with strategies to make sense of their experiences. ...

The Sentimental Bloke and Doreen are famous characters in Australian popular culture, but their creator deserves to be better known. C.J. Dennis transformed the larrikin from a street thug into a respectable image of Australian identity, and helped shape the Anzac legend. ...

Sally van Gent wonders how to utilise the beautiful land of Clay Gully. Goats? A vineyard? Remembering the sweet fruit she ate as a child she decides to establish a heritage apple orchard. ...

This book records the change in public discourse over issues of homosexuality - from morality to state security and then civil liberties. Don Dunstan worked as a member of parliament for more than twenty-five years, and then throughout the remainder of his life, to realise his vision of full equality for same-sex attracted citizens. He focused on both legislative and cultural reforms, and introduced changes to the Police Force that were unprecedented and strongly resisted. ...