AustLit

'As university student Olivia Wells sets out on her quest to find an unpublished manuscript by Gloria Graham – a now obscure mid-twentieth century feminist and writer – she unwittingly uncovers details about a young woman found murdered. Strangled with a nylon stocking in the mangroves on the banks of the river in wartime Brisbane, the case soon became known as the river girl murder.

'Olivia’s detective work exposes the sinister side of that city in 1943, flush with greenbacks and nylons, jealousy and violence brewing between the Australian and US soldiers, which eventually boiled over into the infamous Battle of Brisbane. Olivia soon discovers that the diggers didn’t just reserve their anger for the US forces – they also took it out on the women they perceived as traitors, the ones who dared to consort with US soldiers.

'Can Olivia rewrite history to bring justice to the river girl whose life was so brutally taken? Even if the past can’t be changed, is it possible to undo history’s erasure?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like murder.

'In New South Wales in 1888, Louisa Collins was sentenced to hang after being tried multiple times for the alleged murders of her two husbands. The testimony of her young daughter helped to decide her fate.

'This clever and compelling novel recreates Louisa’s time in her Darlinghurst prison cell as she reflects on her life and on the grief and loss that delivered her to this place. Despite difficult marriages, financial hardship and the deaths of several children, she remains resilient and determined to have her own identity.

'But as she faces her final days, will Louisa confess to her crimes? Or is an innocent woman about to be hanged?'   (Publication summary)