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 the beginning is the whatsitsname. The woman in the car park. She wears a nightgown and lies on her back, looking up at the sky. The nightgown is white and embroidered at the neck with blue . . . what do you call them? Forget-me-nots. A small crowd is gathered around her. All in their unicorns...

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...

1842, Hunter Valley: Lucy Stewart's life turns chaotic when she finds herself caught up in a murder investigation in order to save her brother-in-law, Joe, from the hangman's noose. Constable Sam Donovan believes the accusations levelled at Joe Stewart are suspicious at best and feels compelled t...

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...

Everything in this world has a price. A great work of art is no exception. And what fortune was ever built without a little subterfuge? Oli Darling is a queer artist from the country - it says so right at the top of every press release. His art has brought him fame, money, fashionable substance a...

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...

Beat Zen and the art of Dave is the latest travel memoir by Australian author, David McNamara. His new book expands on the world of independent global travel, to capture how the wonderment of an outbound adventure conspires towards an equally profound inner journey. It is a personal account that ...

'Mothers are experts at overflow. You may forget the words or kisses or gifts they give but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. We don't need to remember all the love poured into us. We need to be thankful that it makes us. When it comes to love, it's all about being. Not remembering so much.' ...

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,...

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...

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...

Leah has a good life. She lives on the Drove, an inner-city cul-de-sac, with her husband, Moses, and their two children. She and her neighbours - the Drovers - look out for each other. Theirs is a safe, community-oriented enclave and that's the way it's going to stay. When itinerants set up camp ...

In the serene setting of Vanuatu's Santo Island, tranquillity shatters when the lifeless body of a French farmer, Guy Simeon, is discovered on the pristine white sands of Champagne Beach. As they delve deeper, a labyrinth of secrets, coercion, and lies emerges. Simeon's missing wife and strained ...

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,...

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...

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...

The only door in the room was now closed and sitting before me was a murderer, a rapist, an armed robber and a guy serving six years for grievous bodily harm. Each of them had a sharpened pencil in their hands; a potential weapon. I had been forewarned yet I had handed them out willingly. I looke...

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...

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...

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...

In the dying town of Drylands, Janet Deakin sells papers to lonely locals. At night, in her flat above the newsagency, she attempts to write a novel for a world in which no one reads -- 'full of people, she envisaged, glaring at a screen that glared glassily back.' Drylands is the story of the to...