Brian Nicholls
Brian Nicholls

The Books
Wanderlust

Tess is experienced and erotic.
Gretl wilful and illusive.
Vicky perverse, vulgar and wounded.
Julie a tantalising trickster...

A provocative and disarmingly honest memoir of a young Australian’s romantic misadventures in 1960s London at the beginning of the Permissive Age. A beguiling and powerful story of love, infatuation, folly, despair and guilt.
A Saucepan in the Sky

‘The most you can expect,’ Uncle Stan said, ‘is for things to almost make sense.’

A Saucepan in the Sky is the story of a boy who thinks anything can be explained if you have the right word − hence his quest for a really big dictionary. But through his family he gets an inkling that a thing called paradox plays a great part in the workings of the world.
A Suitcase in the Desert

Two lost children
A man in search of himself
An unforgiving land
An unlikely romance
A murder...

Matt Hudson is an emotionally damaged homicide detective who has dented his code of honour and lost a clear purpose in life.
Darkling

A Journey Among Heroes in Search of Final Things.

On a plane bound for London George Brent reveals to a stranger-confidant a plan that is calculated and rational yet filled with poetic imagination. He becomes a knight-errant believing his death is the last remarkable thing that will happen to him.

What readers say

What a mixture! An awkward Aussie, a few screwball mates and four fascinating women. I don't think I've ever read a book before that so revealingly describes the influence a woman can have on a man - for better and for worse!

J.P Murrumbeena, Vic
Wanderlust

Your book has helped me understand the men in my life so much more… and recognise the enormous value of parenting and mentoring the unique nature of boys.

C.S. Pymble, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Dry, witty, sad, funny and amazingly frank.

E.M. Rozelle, NSW
Wanderlust

Never a dull moment.

50 something
A Saucepan in the Sky

Some of the book was comfortably close to home for me: some uncomfortably so.

Bookchat
A Saucepan in the Sky

I reluctantly read the last page and immediately wished for more.

J. D. Paddington, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Simple experiences imbued with charm… dilemmas presented clearly in a way that should strike chords of recognition…this is worth reading.

Canberra Times
A Saucepan in the Sky

Comic and loving…the reader is hooked from the beginning. You’ll want to raise your glass to Brian and his gang of relatives.

Geelong Advertiser
A Saucepan in the Sky

Nostalgic as well as immediate… and thoroughly engrossing.

A.T. Glebe, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

Brian Nicholls creates an array of memorable characters. A lack of sentimentality is a strength of both McCourt’s (Angela’s Ashes) and Nicholls' memoir, but the national humour and idioms of A Saucepan in the Sky stand out as unmistakably Australian.

Independent Scholars Association of Australia Review
A Saucepan in the Sky

Many of us have memories of our own innocence abroad.

E.B. Roseville, NSW
Wanderlust

Your book is an affirmation of something or other that is probably too big to put a label on.

P.J. Paddington, NSW.
A Saucepan in the Sky

About ClarrieMay Publishing

The ClarrieMay Publishing photo-logo shows Brian’s father Clarence George Nicholls (1915-2004) and mother Eileen May Nicholls (nee Hudson) (1919-1989) on their honeymoon at Luna Park, Sydney in 1935.

They were married for over fifty years. They survived many set-backs and difficult years including the Great Depression of 1929-1933, and long separations during the Second World War.

They are major influences in Brian’s childhood memoir A Saucepan in the Sky.