AustLit

'The ninth novel from Wendy James is a classic page-turning mystery that is both psychologically complex and authentically Australian.'

'Truth is not a destination – it’s a magical ride.

'Addy Loest is harbouring a secret – several, in fact. Dedicated overthinker, frockaholic and hard-partyer, she’s been doing all she can to avoid the truth for quite some time.

'A working-class girl raised between the Port Kembla Steelworks and the surf of the Illawarra coast, Addy is a fish out of water at the prestigious University of Sydney. She’s also the child of German immigrants, and her broken-hearted widower dad won’t tell her anything about her family’s tragic past.

'But it’s 1985, a time of all kinds of excess, from big hair to big misogyny, and distractions are easy. Distractions, indeed, are Addy’s best skill – until one hangover too many leads her to meet a particular frock and a particular man, each of whom will bring all her truths hurtling home.

'Told with Kim Kelly’s incomparable warmth and wit, The Truth & Addy Loest is a magical trip through shabby-chic inner-city Sydney, a tale of music and moonlight, literature and love – and of discovering the only story that really matters is the one you write for yourself.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A murder. A missing manuscript. An undying love.

'Thisbe Chisholm wants to be a writer. It’s 2007, a time of digital revolution and skyrocketing property prices, but she’s an old-fashioned girl. She doesn’t even own a mobile phone. She has no stars-in-her-eyes desire for fame, to see her name on the cover of a book, either. She longs only to tell of the stories written on her heart.

'While her best friends, Penny and Jane, and her darling boyfriend, John, seem set for stellar careers in their chosen fields, Thisbe works nights as a hostess at a glitzy harbourside Sydney club – a job she despises but it’s paid the rent for the last three years since university graduation.

'Just as she completes her novel, though, she is brutally killed at the end of John’s street.

'Who murdered Thisbe? What will become of her novel?

'From the gritty glamour of Bondi Beach to the cold streets of London, here is a tale of tragedy and literary betrayal, of a publishing industry grappling with change and a great love drowning in guilt-wracked grief. Haunting, whimsical and sharply observed, Her Last Words lays bare the truth that, while some crimes might go unpunished among the privileged, words themselves have a way of enduring – and exacting a justice all their own.' (Publication summary)

'The fifth novel from Australian author Alison Booth, The Philosopher’s Daughters is an intriguing and energetic historical fiction that takes us from the genteel world of 1890s London parlour-chat to the sun-crisped, trackless outback of the Northern Territory.' (Introduction)

'The author of Palace of Tears and The Opal Dragonfly returns with a new historical novel that encompasses murder and an exotic all-female club in 1930s Kings Cross.' (Introduction)

'Set across two devastating wars and two great romances, Walking is inspired by a true story of medical genius and betrayal. A crisply told tale of bigotry and obsession, love and loss, that charts the path of a young woman finding her feet in the world, and the power of kindness that drives her own ambition.' (Publication summary)

'The True Story of Maddie Bright captures the challenges of the writing life with wit and romance.' (Article summary)

'Kelly Rimmer’s fifth novel ranges from family stresses in present-day Florida to uncovering secrets from the darkness of Poland during World War II.'

'A tale of longing, loss and growing love under the bright Australian sun.

'It's 1921 and the Great War has left in its wake untold tragedy, not only in lives lost, but in the guilt of survivors, the deep-set scars of old wounds and the sting of redoubled bigotries.

'In the tiny hamlet of Sunshine, on the far-flung desert's edge, three very different ex-servicemen - Jack Bell, an Aboriginal horseman; Snow McGlynn, a laconic, curmudgeonly farmer; and Art Lovelee, an eccentric engineer - find themselves sharing a finger of farmland along the Darling River, and not much else. That is, until Art's wife Grace, a battle-hardened nurse, gets to work on them all with her no-nonsense wisdom.

'Told with Kim Kelly's inimitable wit and warmth, Sunshine is a very Australian tale of home, hope and healing, of the power of growing life and love, and discovering that we are each other's greatest gifts.'   (Publication summary)

'Through the lens of friendship and romance The Jade Lily traces the way war smashes and transforms identity and truth.

'Sometimes the secrets we keep are gifts of love, and it’s this kind of refreshingly unvarnished love that sits at the heart of Kirsty Manning’s sweeping historical epic, The Jade Lily.' (Introduction)

No conviction, no reward.

'It's 1868 and the gold rush is spreading across the wild west of New South Wales, bringing with it a new breed of colonial rogue - bushrangers. A world far removed from hardworking farm girl, Annie Bird, and her sleepy village on the outskirts of Sydney.

'But when a cruel stroke of fortune sees Annie orphaned and outcast, she is forced to head for the goldfields in search of her grandfather, a legendary tracker. Determined and dangerously naive, she sets off with little but a swag full of hope - and is promptly robbed of it on the road.

'Her cries for help attract another sort of rogue: Jem Fox, the waster son of a wealthy silversmith, who's already in trouble with the law - up to his neatly trimmed eyebrows in gambling debts. And now he does something much worse. He 'borrows' a horse and rides after the thieves, throwing Annie over the saddle as he goes.

'What follows is a breakneck gallop through the Australian bush, a tale of mistaken identity and blind bigotry, of two headstrong opposites tossed together by fate, their lives entwined by a quest to get back home - and the irresistible forces of love.'  (Publication summary)

'A slim volume but vast in scope, The Day They Shot Edward is a novel that asks who the grownups really are.' 

'The whole of the harbour was touched with gold - the tops of the quiet waves, warehouse roofs, the bulging folds of sails at rest, the tips of seagull wings - giving him one sweeping glimpse of beauty just as he was leaving, a vision of things as they ought always to be just as they were not...

'March, 1912. A sultry Indian summer hangs over the west coast of Australia and aboard the luxury steamship SS Koombana, three tales entwine.

'Irene Everley longs to leave her first-class fishbowl existence, secretly penning a gossip column as her life spirals out of control into soulless liaisons and alcohol, the long shadow of a tragedy clouding her view.

'James Sinclair, an investor on his way to Broome is not the man he says he is but can he be trusted?

'Abraham Davis, a wealthy dealer whose scandalous divorce is being dragged through the press, prepares to take the gamble of his life: to purchase an infamous, stolen pearl along the journey north.

'Perfectly round, perfectly pink, this pearl comes with a curse and with a warning - destroying all who keep it from returning to the sea.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Wild Chicory is the story of a journey from Ireland to Australia in the early 1900s, along threads of love, family, war and peace. It's a slice of ordinary life rich in history, folklore and fairy tale, and a portrait of the precious bond between a granddaughter, Brigid, and her grandmother, Nell.

'From the windswept, emerald coast of County Kerry, to the slums of Sydney's Surry Hills; and from the bitter sectarian violence of Ulster, to tranquillity of rural New South Wales, Brigid weaves her grandmother's tales into a small but beautiful epic of romance and tragedy, of laughter and the cold reality of loss. It's Nell's tales, tall and true, that spur Brigid to write her own, too.

'Ultimately, it's a story of finding your feet in a new land - be that a new country, or a new emotional space - and the wonderful trove of narrative we carry with us wherever we might go.

'In many ways Brigid and Nell are Kim and her grandmother Lillian Kelly, and many snippets of story in this work belong especially to them. It is primarily a work of fiction, but while the Kennedys and the O'Halligans in Wild Chicory are not the Kellys and O'Reillys of Kim's own family history, they have sprung direct from her heart, and show readers just how it is she came to be a writer of stories herself.' (Publication summary)

'It's December, 1900, and Berylda Jones is heading home to Bathurst for Christmas. Tragically, 'home' is where she and her beloved sister Greta live in terror, under the control of their sadistic Uncle Alec.

'But Berylda has a plan, borne out of desperation, to free herself and Greta from Alec for good - if she can only find the courage to execute it.

'Then, on New Year's Eve, just as Alec tightens his grip on the sisters, a stranger arrives at their gate - Ben Wilberry, a botanist in search of a particular native wildflower, with his friend, the artist Cosmo Thompson.

'Ben is oblivious to what depravity lies beyond this threshold and what follows is a journey that will take him and Berylda, and Greta and Cosmo, out to the old gold rush town of Hill End in search of a means to cure evil and a solution to what seems an impossible situation.

'Against the tumultuous backdrop of Australian Federation and the coming of the Women's Vote, Paper Daisiesis a story of what it means to find moral courage, of a crime that must be committed to see justice done and a sweet love that flourishes against the odds.' (Publication summary)

'The week before Christmas, 1929, Eoghan O'Keenan loses his factory job, and has to flee the slums of Chippendale with his seven-year-old sister Agnes.

'On the north side of Sydney at Lavender Bay, Olivia Greene is working on her latest millinery creations and dreaming of becoming the next Coco Chanel.

'A job on the Harbour Bridge for Eoghan, designing couture for the Governor's wife for Olivia, and a chance meeting in the Botanic Gardens sees the beginning of an unconventional romance. From vastly different backgrounds, with absolutely nothing in common - from faith to wealth and class - it seems that the blue mile of harbour between Olivia and Eoghan will be the least of the obstacles ahead.

'By mid-1932, as the construction of the Bridge is completed, the city is in chaos as the Great Depression begins to bite hard and the unemployed edge ever closer to a violent revolt.

'And then Eoghan disappears.

'Set against the spectacular backdrop of Sydney Harbour, The Blue Mile is a tale of the both wild and calculated risks a city took to build a wonder of the world, and of those taken by ordinary people to save a great love, against all of the odds. ' (Publication summary)

'It's 1939, another war in Europe. And Bernie Cooper is wondering what's ahead for her.

'She knows Gordon Brock is about to propose. An honest country boy and graduating geologist, he's a good catch. And she's going to say no.

'But the harsh realities of war have other plans for Bernie, and once her father is commissioned to serve again, she accepts Gordon's proposal mostly to please her adored dad.

'And with Gordon off to New Guinea she'll be glad of the reprieve from walking down the aisle, won't she? As Gordon braces for the Japanese invasion of Rabaul, Bernie is in the midst of the battle being fought on home soil - against the worst drought in living memory, the menace of an unseen enemy, and against the unspeakable torment of not knowing if those dear to her are alive or dead.

'From the beaches of Sydney to the dusty heart of the continent, This Red Earth is as much a love letter to the country, with all its beauty and terror, as it is an intimate portrait of love itself.' (Publisher's blurb)