Item category 2: Newmarket - Aussie authors

Beat is given a chance to shine when she is appointed dean of Turalong Music School, but her role is not what it seems. Fine tuning this institution is like playing a cracked violin with broken strings. She's determined to revive the school's reputation despite gender bias, staff conflict, fraud,...

In a not-too-distant future Australia, the eastern states have become the world's newest autocracy: a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy, nationalism trumps all, and moral indecency is punishable by indefinite detention. When Julian Ferryman, bass player for the Acceptables...

Himalayas: Unknown Year. 'Ten thousand strands of trouble,' is what Bird's father says, watching as Bird's sister braids her hair. On the eve of her fourteenth year, that trouble finds Bird. Fleeing her home to escape an arranged marriage, she attempts to vanish into a crowd of pilgrims not knowi...

Beth doesn't feel like she belongs in her rambunctious, bohemian family. Apart from the special relationship she shares with her grandma, Elise. When Beth wins the lottery (on a ticket she bought to prove she could be spontaneous), she decides to spend it on treating Elise. But instead of anythin...

James Larwood's life is perfect - until a single mistake sees him lose everything. When James is released from prison, he is penniless and potentially homeless. Enter James' tradie brother, Larry, who employs him as a cleaner and starts a factory Book Club to try and get his brother back on his f...

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is a warm, life-affirming debut about a bizarre case of mistaken identity that allows a lonely old man one last chance to be part of a family. 'A sincere, heartfelt and laugh-out-loud debut . . . a genuinely delightful read.' The Australian 'Would you mind te...

January 1997: In the small town of Jericho, New South Wales, Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness until she meets Theo St John, the discoverer of a rare comet so...

Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy's mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will o...

What happens when a quirky Australian town faces the imminent arrival of a huge fiery comet? Do the residents embrace all possibilities or run like hell? WARNING, WARNING, WARNING. Cactus Bob, a grizzled pensioner in a red beanie, thought surviving a death-roll by a monster saltwater crocodile wa...

It's 1851 and Joe is a policeman in Sydney. He doesn't mind cutting corners and through the theft of a locket, attempts to compromise a police sergeant into the same way of thinking. The sergeant has problems of his own and what starts out as a random opportunity ends with tragic results. As a re...

Edinburgh, 1916: Thomas Wrenfether, a rich Scottish industrialist, is offered the opportunity to take on a startling project: to build a paddle steamer from European cherrywood on the other side of the world, in booming Melbourne, Australia. But nothing goes according to plan. Melbourne, 1993: Ma...

Abraham Quin is in his mid-seventies, a migrant, thrice-divorced, a one-time postman and professor, a writer now living alone in the Adelaide Hills. In The Chinese Postman he reflects on his life with what he calls 'the mannered and meditative inaction of age', offering up memories and anxieties,...

It's 1921, and after years of working for Cadbury's at Bournville, Dorothy Adwell is on her way to a new adventure in the colonies, helping to establish the Firm's new Australian factory. A promotion and a fresh start are just what she needs after the horrors of the Great War and the loss of her ...

Things have not been going well for Zoe Ann Weiss. Once a young novelist full of promise, now she has a failed debut under her belt, a mountain of debt, a dead-end job, and an agent who's about to drop her if she doesn't write something new and brilliant soon. Worst of all, she's blocked. Can't-w...

"Set between the wars, A Cold Season is rich in voice, character and landscape. It follows the story of fourteen-year-old Beth, who is also the narrator. Beth's brother Sam and her father Owens have gone missing in a freak winter storm. In a small house in the foothills of Mount Kosciusko, Beth i...

"Steels Creek is an idyllic retreat in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It’s a place where everyone knows their neighbours and no one locks their doors. Investigative journalist Lars Nilsson has moved to the settlement for a quiet life, leaving behind a public fall from grace and the crime reportin...

The Christmas Contract by Pamela Cook: No-nonsense lawyer turned farmer Bridie Grainger is determined to make a go of her organic produce business, but life is conspiring against her. Her father is calling time on the loan he gave her to set up the farm. Her ex is demanding more time with their f...

In ZigZag Lane, in the heart of Sydney's rag-trade district, tea ladies Hazel, Betty and Irene find themselves in hot water. Having already solved a murder, kidnapping and arson case, and outwitting an arch criminal, they have proved themselves a useful resource and earned the respect of a local ...

Paul Cutler is a former undercover operative, now working off the books for his handler, Malik Khalil. When Cutler is tasked with investigating the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, Cutler realises that the apparent murder he' s investiga...

It's 1975 and at the threshold of his writing career Andy McPherson is navigating how to be fully present both for his partner Jo and their young daughter. When forced to take a part-time teaching job, Andy meets Lang Tzu, a charismatic and intriguing man. Andy is drawn deeper into a dangerous re...

"Tom Edwards is dying, and cranky. He's made his peace with the dying part. But he'd bet his property - the whole ten thousand acres of it - that there'd be no wailing at his funeral. His kids wouldn't be able to chop down a tree, let alone build a coffin to bury him in. Then Tom has an idea ... ...

Miinaa was a young girl when the white ghosts first arrived. She remembers the day they raised a piece of cloth and renamed her homeland 'Bathurst'. Now she lives at Cloverdale and works for a white family who have settled there. The Nugents are kind, but Miinaa misses her miyagan. Her brother, W...

'Islanders must do everything together. We painted ngatu together. We crossed the ocean together. We settled on isles together. We took up Christianity together. We entered into new citizenships together. We became wage workers together. We lived with generations upon generations stacked in fibro...

For years, Leila Whittaker has been the mediator in her family. She smooths ruffled feathers between her sons; endures the volatile moods of their father, the acclaimed Australian artist Ken Black; and even swallows the bitter pill of Ken's endless affairs. All this, for the quiet hum of creative...

Alice Montgomery goes missing in 2015. Seven years later, her best friend Hannah is bouncing from job to job, city to city, forever feeling the need to outrun something, but unsure what. With the niggling need to move nipping at her heels, Hannah decides to return home - a small coastal town in W...

Lismore resident Rob, a happily married empty-nester, enjoying his late middle age, has always defined himself by the quality of the roof over his head and the state of his family life. Solid. Safe. Stable. But when the 2022 flood hits, he and his wife Sal find themselves homeless, their lives no...

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they...

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hanna...

Marnie is sixty-three and downwardly mobile. Her middle-class marriage is long gone, her only child more or less estranged. She's living in a granny flat behind a stranger's house. Still, things could be worse. She likes her new boss, Trinh, and her flat has a leadlight window depicting a galleon...

A debut novel from one of Australia's most internationally celebrated playwrights, The End and Everything Before It is a kaleidoscopic story about the way love and loss shape a community. Emma watched her mother's kayak disappear among icebergs in the Arctic Sea. Six years later, her brother, who...