Item category 2: Newmarket - Aussie authors

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 ...

The conversion was Nick's idea. Nick -- so persuasive, ever the optimist, still boyishly handsome. Always on a quest to design the perfect environment, convinced it could heal a wounded soul. The conversion was Nick's idea, but it's Zoe who's here now, in a valley of old coalmines and new vineyar...

When Yael Silver's world comes crashing down, she looks to the past for answers and finds solace in surprising places. An unconventional new friendship, a seaside safe space and an unsettling amount of dairy help her to heal, as she wrestles with her demons and some truly terrible erotic literatu...

Black sheep - there's one in every family. Orphaned at sixteen, James Wakefield was determined to be a gun shearer like his father. Now he's killed twice, changed his name, and is on the run from the law. He had his reasons for both murders, and he felt no joy in taking life. Or did he? Ben McKin...

When William Dobell paints a portrait of lover and fellow artist Joshua Smith, he is awarded Australia's most prestigious art prize. However, Dobell's celebration is cut short after a protest is lodged by his competitors, who claim the painting is a caricature. Both artist and sitter soon find th...

A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story? A detect...

Melbourne, 1945. Born into a well-to-do family, Maggie Johnson wants freedom from her parents' strict conservative beliefs and their unbending desire for her to marry the right sort of man. Instead, Maggie longs to forge her own path in life. Lil Kelly, who lives in the slums, works tirelessly to...

Sabine returned carrying a bag containing an effortless pair of Christian Wijnants fringed trousers and Ann Demeulemeeter Crinkle Nero boots. The sales assistant had agreed that the combination made Sabine looks exactly like an artist. 'A conceptual artist?' Sabine asked, and the sales assistant ...

For Ava, heading to university in Sydney is her escape from a poverty-stricken upbringing. Her mother is long gone, her father able to provide love but little else. On the other side of the world, Laurie tolerates university only at the insistence of her father, a Marxist professor. Her mother di...

Anaesthetist Clare Carpenter has just lost her husband and her memory in a single-vehicle accident. So why is a stranger following her? After questioning patients about their dreams, she becomes convinced that an anaesthetic drug might help her access missing memories. But there's no way to be ce...

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...

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...

Signora Loretta Bianchi, the world famous cook at Venice's Hotel Il Cuore, is forced to choose between once-in-a-lifetime passion and her devoted husband. Sophie, on assignment in Venice as a food writer, finds a lot more than Signora Bianchi's secret recipes to love, but what is the charming Roc...

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...

The arrival of a hotshot New York composer brings a rare touch of glamour and excitement to the peaceful country town of Fig Tree River. For Leonie, Madison, Sarita and Chrissie, four women involved in the local musical theatre, it's a welcome distraction from the pressures of daily life. Then a ...

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...

As a terrible pandemic rages through the small medieval hamlet of Villingraz, a young girl, Estie, accompanied by her goat Isabel, sets off into the forest, in search of a cure for her sister who is infected with the pox. Her father Merdocai has surrendered himself to the evil Marquis to be exper...

For Broome detective Dan Clement, it seems that crime is as plentiful as wet season rain. When his sergeant is beaten up, and a woman is brutally assaulted, it seems like the same two suspects are behind both incidents. But when a woman's hand is discovered in crocodile-infested waters, things ta...

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...

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further, into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into...

Focused on pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor in suburban Sydney, Taylor doesn't have time for love-yet it seems life has other plans when she catches the eye of charismatic Zac. However, betrayal and the financial implications of her parents' impending divorce could destroy both her plans a...

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...

Margot and her sister Roslyn have lived side by side in a little town in the Adelaide Hills most of their lives, supporting each other through thick and thin. Then their neighbour Gunter dies. Surprisingly, his will asks that his house and vineyard be sold and that Roslyn donate the money to a ch...

They spent one magical night together, but when he woke up she was gone… Eight years later, Gabriela Jimenez is hoping a couple of weeks in Bunyip Bay with the Grand Jimenez Family Circus will give her and Luna, her daughter, the chance to reconnect after the tragic death of Luna's father. The la...

At seventeen, Maeve is naively single-minded about pursuing a life in the theatre. After a rigorous audition process, she secures a position at one of the most competitive drama schools in the country. Leaving behind the security of her childhood home in Queensland, Maeve moves to Melbourne and d...

A wartime hero refuses to pick up his weapon. Koalas begin a mass exodus. A writer finds her voice again. New Australian Fiction showcases the strength and diversity of Australian short fiction at its best. Now in its sixth year, these stories will move, entertain and enlighten you. Featuring awa...

The story of Taws, an Australian town about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. But one man is not about to celebrate. Returning from 15 years exile, he is intent on reminding the town of the brutal acts they perpetrated during their early years of settlement.

Handywoman Barb Young has lived in the sleepy coastal town of Bullford Point for over fifty years and frankly, in that time, not much has happened, unless you count that business where a bush turkey managed to board the ferry a couple of years ago. When Joe Griffiths returns from Sydney after six...

When Briony first meets Ren, he is standing in the freezing sea at the edge of their tiny town. Ren hasn't been home for a decade but has returned to be with his dying father. Briony won't leave, hoping that Sarah, her missing sister, will one day reappear. But Sarah and her friend Aria have been...

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...