AustLit

'A teacher a student converging and diverging stories. Robot workforce. Love, Loss, Love again. A family's resurrection. Gold. Fire Death.'(Publication summary)

'A fast moving, sometimes brutal journey, into honour and love. Jeffrey Hancock, a country journalist of little repute. His excesses have caught up with him. Local government makes investments in New York. Some say there are commissions, Jeffrey says corruption. He is about to publish. A gunshot. Hospital, surgery. A Narcissistic assassin. Armand. Bikers. The Global Financial Crisis descends. Markets meltdown. Jeffrey’s fill-in, Miranda, arrives. The editor cowardly kills himself, Billy Worthington, Jeffrey’s best mate is murdered just as he becomes aware he is a father. The mother of the child was brutalised by Armand, Cheryl gets her revenge. A relationship occurs. Others die for Jeffrey’s quest. But what if the truth be told?'(Publication summary)

'He was a political refugee of the nineteenth century. A tailor, a unionist, a socialist, a businessman, a family man, a politician, a boat person. An interesting mixture of roles all played by one man.' (Publication summary)

'The West Coast of Tasmania produces about forty percent of Tasmania's income, and is, as far as the State Government is concerned, a region to be forgotten and ignored. There is just not the voting population there to affect either the government, or opposition. It became obvious to Leon Fernley and four of his colleagues that there was a desperate need to right the wrongs of the past hundred years of neglect and being ignored and appeals for fair funding falling on deaf ears in Hobart. The State Government does not take the West Coasters seriously and they decide to call the Government's bluff and govern themselves. A secession is inevitable, but it is tinged with intrigue of national, and international conspiracy.' (Publication summary)

'Leon, sacked from his position in the Department of Foreign Affairs, finds himself in the Tasmanian West Coast mining town Queenstown. Here he seeks to find himself a new life of semi-retirement, and doing some odd jobs. He meets Wendy.

'During one of his odd jobs, the renovation of an old house, he stumbles on a cache of coded Foreign Affairs documents from the 1960s. Because of his past life he realises the documents as being classified and highly sensitive. They indicate the presence of many nasty, ageing weapons secreted somewhere near Queenstown.

'Leon, with the aid of Wendy, Akers the local cop, Gail a journalist, Jack his old mate from Foreign Affairs, and Mark a student geologist, decides to investigate the possibility of the documents being authentic.

'The story follows a somewhat stumbling relationship, and the investigation which leads all the way to the High Court, the Defence Department, Foreign Affairs, the Attorney General, and the Prime Minister. Several people die during the plot by the government to bury the conspiracy of what lies in the bare hills of Queenstown.'(Publication summary)