Item category 2: Newmarket - Aussie authors

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

Alice is only nine years old in 1910 when she is sent to the feared Coast Hospital Lazaret at Little Bay in Sydney, a veritable prison where more patients are admitted than will ever leave. She is told that she's visiting her mother, who disappeared one day when Alice was two years old. Once ther...

"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 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...

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...

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...

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...

When a high-profile murder lands literally at her feet, Detective Emilia Hart sees a chance to expand her caseload beyond the endless succession of domestic violence she is forced to investigate. But this is no simple investigation. Another body, turns up, then another. Then more, a lot more. All...

When someone is taken away, what is left behind? All her life, Till has lived in the shadow of the abduction of a childhood friend and her tormented wondering about whether she could have stopped it. When Till, now twenty-three, senses danger approaching again, she flees her past and the hovering...

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...

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 ...

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...

Saskia Wyle spent one sultry European summer on Ile de Re when she was nineteen. The bright salt flats and sun-soaked beaches are now a distant memory, and one she made herself forget after an unspeakable tragedy. But the French heiress she befriended over twenty years ago has left half of her ma...

The body of a local teenage boy is found on the beach of a sleepy northern New South Wales town. David went for an evening swim and got into trouble. At least, that's what it looks like. Three weeks before, Leila, a young backpacker, didn't turn up for her shift at the local cafe. Benny, the owne...

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...