AustLit

'A captivating domestic drama about the lives, loves and life-changing choices of some unforgettable women.

'When Isabelle Barnes leaves home one morning, never to return, the streets of country Carwell are awash with rumour and innuendo. And her bewildered daughter, Abbie, is left to find her way in the world without her mother's guiding hand.

'Four years later, seventeen-year-old Abbie finds herself pregnant to the browbeaten son of the devout and intimidating Henrietta. She's thrown into a life that quickly ceases to be her own, down to the choice of dress for her wedding day. These two women's paths collide in tumultuous and eventually tragic ways beyond the birth of Abbie's daughter, Claire. But will Claire escape the confines of family and her small country town, or is she doomed to repeat her mother's fate?

'The House Across the Road raises questions of duty versus desire, conformity versus freedom, and whether we can ever truly break free from the past.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Friday the thirteenth of February 1948 is Hannah Gordon's thirty-sixth birthday. Her daughter Allie turns sixteen on the very same day. What's more, it's a full moon. Hannah doesn't need Grandma Ade's warning that bad luck is coming to realise the odds are against them.

'Hannah Gordon has always wanted to be someone important, yet she's stuck in an inner-city back street, fighting to keep hold of her children, her home and her sense of self. Then a devastating accident sets off a chain of events that will rock the family foundations to the core and change lives forever

' Full of wonderfully colourful characters and evocative period details, Australia Street is a vivid domestic drama about a turbulent year in the life of an unforgettable family of battlers.' (Publisher's blurb)