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...

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 ...

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. ...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Welcome to Green River. Five families on an annual camping trip, a mothers group of fourteen years, children starting to look like adults, a father with his own mysterious agenda... He Would Never is about the bonds we forge in the furnace of early motherhood, the trust we place in other adults, ...

Based on the true story of Tasma Walton's ancestor, a powerful, heart-wrenching novel about maternal love that endures against pitiless odds. Kidnapped by sealers and enslaved far from her homeland, Nannertgarrook has a spirit that refuses to bow... From her idyllic life in sea country in Nerrm (...

When an ambitious young writer stumbles across Brenda at a Melbourne pool, he realises the scoop of a lifetime is floating in front of him: the truth behind why she vanished without a trace. Theonly problem? He must pretend to be someone he's not to trick the story out of her.One innocent lie lea...

The thing about friendships formed in childhood ... is that they're like an invisible tattoo. They mark you and mould you. They're under your skin. When a last collection of songs by British musical icon, James Bennett, is discovered in an old Somerset house, rumours about his mysterious death du...

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...

In an already swamped city, a disastrous weather system looms, making the search to find a missing child urgent. A missing child. A city on edge. Time is running out. The world is in the grip of climate catastrophe. Sydney has been transformed by rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and rocket...

Jett Randall has never felt at home anywhere. By his own rules, he should have left his job driving for the Barbarani family years ago, but something – or someone – has kept him there. Nella Barbarani believes she doesn't deserve a happily ever after. Since her family fell apart, she's avoided an...

From prizewinning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies and injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In 'Laminex and ...

In the summer of 1944 returning soldiers Canning Christie and his father Michael arrive in South Australia from the desert sands of North Africa. Canning carries the trauma of war and a fractured memory of a terrible event, while charismatic Michael resumes his womanising ways, intent on conceali...

Matilda and Lara are half-sisters who share an unreliable mother and a chaotic past. In every other way, though, they are very different from each other. Lara, ten years younger than Matilda, is a model, living and working in Paris - for her, life is expansive, carefree, beautiful, careless. Mati...

In a world of monsters, falling in love requires sacrifice. River. As VP of Devils MC, every decision I make is to protect the Club. I'm the one they call when things go south. That means getting my hands dirty - a lot. Outsiders think I'm a monster. I agreed. Until Bella. She was able to look p...

Jessica looked around uneasily. The bush that had seemed so benign and beautiful only minutes before now seemed sinister. Twenty years ago, ornithology student Jessica Weston filmed a lyrebird mimicking the dying screams of a woman in the Barrington Tops National Park. Terrified, she took her rec...

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...