Item category 2: Newmarket - Aussie authors

Stasya lives in an isolated farming village on the edge of the mysterious Heartwood Forest with her unusual dog for company. Thought odd by the locals, she is tolerated for her rare gift with animals. Engaging with her fellow humans is difficult, with one exception: goatherd Lukas, who shares her...

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...

An abandoned resort seems the perfect place to hide, but is Barren Cape a refuge or a trap? Former housemates Mac and Erika are homeless. Well, Erika is fine, she just has to live with her parents until she can find another rental. Mac's situation is much worse - family isn't an option and she's ...

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 ...

Twenty years ago, Grace wanted nothing more than to be with Trent - a boy with a guitar and a lot of promises. Twenty years ago, Dorothy wanted nothing more than for her daughter to fulfil her potential. In a moment of heartbreak and fury, Grace makes a split-second decision to board a plane to L...

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...

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. ...

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...

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...

It's 1863, and Melbourne is transitioning from a fledgling colony to a thriving, gold-fuelled metropolis. But behind its shiny new faade, the real Melbourne can be found in the notorious red-light district of Little Lon, full of brothels where rich and poor alike can revel all night. The most gla...

Peak District, Mercia, AD 910: a young girl, Freda works hard to avoid her father's temper, while longing for his approval. She loves foraging in the woods and hearthside stories of heroes. Secretly she thinks in poetry and dreams of one day being able to write; her quills are grass stalks and st...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Exiled to Canada due to his radical preaching on human right, Father Frank Docherty is now a psychologist and monk. On a visit to Australia he is unwittingly drawn into the stories of two people who claim to have been sexually abused by an eminent Sydney monsignor. As a man of character and consc...

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...

Sarah Willis longs to free herself from the expectations of a privileged upbringing, while Winston Keller can't afford the luxury of a dream. Despite their differences, the pair are drawn together in a whirlwind romance that defies the boundaries of class. But when a dark family secret pulls the ...

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...

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...

When a rare and highly endangered bird flies into Lucy’s bedroom window, she feels it’s a sign. Of what, she’s not exactly sure, but maybe it means she’ll get her life back on track after the sudden death of her brother a year ago. Maybe she’ll find some meaning in the randomness of existence and...

Botanical artist Jane Saville is devastated when her manipulative mother banishes her to the countryside to protect someone else's honour. Isolated far from home, she is forced to live an impoverished, secretive life to save the family from public shame. Guy Attwood is heir to a fortune, but pref...

Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland. When they ignore his request, Stephen's corpse makes the nocturnal pilgrimage alone. But what is compelling him and what will he find there? His journey, as a k...

Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa is on a quest to describe how she became an all-round performer after a childhood in a quiet and undramatic migrant family. Where did it all go wrong? Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa knows a thing or two about telling a story. From her experience on stages and in front of live and televis...

The story of a woman who changes the world that wants to change her. Geraldine is born with an adventurer's heart. Whether it is sneaking out of home in Yorkshire, escaping from boarding school in Rhodesia, or buying hormones from the local speed dealer in Weston-super-Mare, Geraldine is wide ope...

It's the height of summer in Australia, 1979, and on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac in Canberra a housewife is scrubbing the yellow and white chequered tiles of the bathroom floor. But all is not as it seems. For one thing, it's 3 am. For another, she is trying desperately to remove all traces of bl...

Riverina 1974: When nineteen-year-old farmgirl Adelaide Hoffman applies for a cadetship at the Gunnawah Gazette, she sees it as her ticket out of a life too small for her. Its owner, Valdene Bullark, sees something of the girl she once was in young Adelaide. Val puts Adelaide straight to work. Wh...