to an ancient system of memory recall, or Mnemonics, in which a building, such as a cathedral, is constructed in the mind as a container for imagined objects - which are deliberately connected to particular memories. The building can later be mentally navigated to re-encounter those objects and retrieve the memories with which they are associated. Da Vinci's memory cathedral functions in the narrative as a device through which he reviews his experiences as death approaches. It was first published by Bantam Books in December 1995 and has been published in ten languages to date. It won the Australian Aurealis Award in 1997, was #1 on The Age bestseller list, and in 1996, a novella based on the novel, "Da Vinci Rising," was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Novella. The Memory Cathedral was also shortlisted for the Audio Book of the Year, which was part of the 1998 Braille & Talking Book Library Awards. The Silent (1998) Dann's second historical novel adopts a first person perspective, and is written in the form of a journal produced by Edmund "Mundy" McDowell, a teenager in 1862 during the American Civil War, who writes as a form of therapy later in life - or possibly as a restless spirit. After his home is razed, and his mother raped and murdered by looters, he embarks upon a journey across wartime Virginia. The trauma of his experiences has rendered him mute, hence the title of the piece. It also colours his journey - which depicts the battlefield horrors of the American Civil War and its impact graphically - with visions of ghosts, spirits and an omnipresent "spirit dog" with symbolic resonances of the essence of warfare. Bad Medicine (2000; also known as Counting Coup) This road trip novel relates the juvenile but revelatory antics of two men in their 60s, Charlie Sarris, an apartment supervisor and John Stone, a Native American medicine man, who meets Charlie when he moves into his apartment block. Both characters are deeply flawed, lamenting their lost youth and first discover kinship in their copious consumption of alcohol. After Charlie discovers that his teenage daughter is pregnant, and can little cope with the parental responsibilities this implies, he accompanies John on a trip to Florida, where John intends to confront his shamanistic rival, Whiteshirt. The journey is marked by indulgent, illegal and destructive behavior on the part of both men,