Item category 2: Newmarket - Aussie authors

Ilene, a working class mother, is struggling to survive and desperate to reconnect with her children, Jack and Lonnie, in the aftermath of a near-fatal tragedy. But her children vanish, setting off a chain reaction within the community. Suspended detective Omar helps out with the investigation, u...

In 2027, Angela Monahan is grappling with the decision of whether to take advantage of a new health service that promises a healthier, stronger baby through gene editing. With a semi-famous mother who has a substance abuse problem and a husband ravaged by the pandemic, there's plenty in her famil...

A missing maid. A murder most foul. A highly imprudent adventure. Only her fine eyes can uncover the truth. Two years after the events of Pride and Prejudice, Miss Caroline Bingley is staying at her brother's country estate close to Pemberley, wondering if there's more to life than cribbage and p...

Lillian was born in 1892, the same year Henry Lawson wrote 'The Drover's Wife' and cemented his place in Australia's literary canon. When Lillian reads the short story as a teenager, she is convinced that it is based upon her own family and becomes more prolematic, and Lillian must decide what is...

Students from an elite girls' school go on a camping trip into the Australian bush. Four of them - a girl gang, a group of best friends dubbed 'The Cins' by the teachers - become separated from the main group. A male teacher volunteers to look for them. None of the five come back. A major searc...

What brings six very different people together? Fiona is a millennial media writer; Sidney a failed poet; Tomas a thirty-something factory worker and father; Lexi a fading activist icon; Govita a non-binary visual artist; Henry a Vietnam veteran ageing out in rural isolation. On the face of it, t...

The end of the affair is just the beginning. Mardi McKee, prodigal daughter, arrives at her father’s home in Lithgow, Australia, after drifting overseas for eighteen months. Her previous life is a memory. Her mother has died, she is divorced and is estranged from her former lover, Ian. Mardi had ...

To most of Regency high society, forty-two-year-old Lady Augusta Colebrook, or Gus, and her twin sister, Julia, are just unmarried ladies of a certain age -- hardly worth a second glance. But the Colebrook twins are far from useless old maids. They are secretly protecting women and children ignor...

Stan Grant is talking to his country in a new way. In his most poetic and inspiring work yet, the Wiradjuri writer offers us a means of moving beyond the binaries and embracing a path to peace and forgiveness rooted in the Wiradjuri spiritual practice of Yindyamarra - deep silence and respect. Mu...

Mornington Peninsula, 1999: Wife and now grandmother Joan has checked into the grand old Duchess Hotel to find herself again, having spent thirty-five years being who her husband and family have wanted her to be. Peninsula local and soon-to-be octogenarian Frances is distracting herself from gett...

Noosa Heads, 1987: Newly divorced Cynthia has returned to her home town from Los Angeles to reconnect with her 19-year-old daughter, who is pregnant and determined not to listen to her mother's advice. Cynthia's former best friend, Lorraine, has been stuck mowing lawns as part of a business she s...

In the early morning, Elena woke as Orla pulled back the doona and climbed into their bed. She unfolded Elena's fingers and pressed a tiny model penguin into her hand. Still half asleep, Elena rolled over. Outside the window, black cockatoos were dropping wattle galls onto the street. The room wa...

Audrey Sweetman wakes up one morning, excited for the promotion she's been working towards for years. But by nightfall, both her advertising career and her marriage are in tatters. Audrey escapes to the seaside village of Whitehaven Bay, but her plan to hide is derailed by meddlesome neighbours. ...

"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...

It is 1954, but not the same way the history books would have it. Events and characters swirl in a vortex of fragments and chance connections. Brisbane celebrates the young Queen Elizabeth II's arrival on her first royal tour of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile the future is being shaped behind closed...

It's 1914 and Molly Dunnage wants to see change: at home, at work and in underwear.Her burgeoning corsetry business is starting to take off, thanks to some high-profile supporters. She's marching with Melbourne's suffragists for better conditions for women everywhere. And her family - her eccentr...

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 ...

Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers' retreat. Plagued by memories she can't unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers. As the retreat's director uses te...

Best mates Teddy and Alice are hired hands with flexible moral boundaries. Whatever the mess, they can be relied upon to fix it with no questions asked. But sometimes it's not as simple as cleaning up. Teddy is searching the suburbs for a missing teenager with her occasional sidekick Art, while A...

Sisters separated by hundreds of years. Voices that can't be drowned out. Lucy is running from what she's done, attacking that boy in her sleep. Pursued by nightmares, she makes for her big sister's house. But when she arrives, Jess is nowhere to be found. The clifftop town is strange and full of...

Three couples, friends since high school, rent a luxurious house in the mountains for an unplugged weekend of drinking and bushwalking. No internet, no phones, no stress. On the first night, the topic of partner-swapping comes up. It's a joke - at first. Not everyone is keen, but an agreement is ...

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...

Told from five different points of view, each one revealing something different, "On a bright hillside in Paradise," tells the story of a family of convict descendants in the back-blocks of Tasmania, on a farm in a place called Paradise. They lead hard-scrabble lives. The drama begins when strang...

Rose knows that she should be happy. She has a thoughtful son, a kind boss and a dream box full of savings for a rainy day. But sometimes the brick in her chest gets so heavy that it's all she can do to simply watch the minutes tick by on the oven clock. Things change when a stranger arrives. Ros...

"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...

Mari and Elisabeth have been at the centre of each other's lives for years. Close friends since university, they're now drifting through their mid-twenties, working casual jobs and living in run-down share houses. When they meet Jack, a charming academic historian twenty years their senior, they'...

The Studio Girls is a sumptuous, nostalgic journey back to the glamorous Golden Age of cinema and the intoxicating world of Tinseltown, where nothing is quite what it seems . . . 'Fans of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo will love Lisa Ireland's cinematic new novel. Set in the Golden Age of Hol...

When Rachel qualifies as nurse, she does so because she wants to help others and make a difference. But she is also running from a past life that must stay hidden forever. Completing her training, Rachel moves to London but misses home desperately, so when she hears about an opportunity to train ...

Livia Blake has lost her husband far too soon and faces a crossroads. It's her friend Pearl Grayson, head of Bristol's nursing school, who suggests she would make an excellent district nurse. With training completed and no ties left, a job offer to join the team in rural Eastby End feels just lik...

BRONTE NEEDS A PLACE TO LIE LOW. She posted a drunken rant that went horrifically viral. Now - jobless, friendless and broke - she's forced to volunteer as a carer on an isolated rural property. She won't be paid for looking after dementia sufferer Nell, but at least she'll have a place to stay. ...