Bojan's wife abandons him to care for their three-year-old daughter Sonja alone. Sonja returns to Tasmania 35 years later, and to a father haunted by memories of the war and other recent horrors.

    She is the daughter of a notorious traitor who decimated the clan during a post-Jacobite uprising. Having grown up lonely and unloved, she’s astonished when the dying and much revered chieftain of Clan Carmichael chooses her to wed his younger son. She’s perplexed when the older son and heir, Gavin Carmichael, arrives to claim her as his bride. Hasn’t her beautiful cousin, Vanora, the heiress of Gilmour Hall, boasted since girlhood she will marry Gavin to enjoin their bordering lands? Gavin expects nothing more from his arranged marriage to Alana than a compliant wife who will produce the future heir and an escape from her malicious, deceitful cousin. He underestimates Vanora’s schemes, however. Trouble erupts between the Carmichael and Gilmour clans. With rumors swirling of tainted blood and witchcraft, Alana becomes a prisoner in her own home. Attacks on his wife stir Gavin’s protective nature, and his feelings quickly turn to love. But it will take a higher power to save Alana from the evil hidden behind the walls of Gilmour Hall.

    Her eyes could still penetrate the soul, but they were paler in color, maybe because they were covered with the whitish film of cataracts. I remember watching her take her hair from the neat bun she wore and let it down to comb. Her hair was long, but no longer black as coal. It was the color of newly formed storm clouds and fell in a silvery braid to her hips. I watched her comb it out and then she would braid it, wind it back into a bun and pin it low, just above the nape of her neck. Everyone always said that I favored her a lot. Annabelle was my great-grandmother; she was a Full Blood, a Choctaw Indian from Savannah, Georgia. When a child, I thought she was tall, larger than life. My admiration of her as we walked in the yard and I helped her gather eggs and pick flowers, was unsurpassable; but as I grew, I realized that she was a tiny woman. Shrunken from her many years on earth, she stood barely four feet, ten inches tall. In her older years, maybe even her younger ones too, she was never without a jar of Garrett snuff. One summer, when I was about twelve years old, I went to stay with my grandmother Annabelle. And because her house was so small, I slept in her bedroom with her. Each night before we went to sleep, she pulled a leather bound book from underneath her mattress and wrote for a few minutes before she extinguished the bedside lamp. She seemed intent on what she was doing so I did not bother her with questions, but after several nights, curiosity got the better of me and when she finished and placed the book under the mattress, I asked what she was writing in the book. She told me that she was writing her thoughts on the events of the day so that if she wanted she could look back and know exactly what she was thinking and how she felt that particular day. “Is that how you remember all of those stories you tell me, about when you were a child and about your kinfolks back then” I asked. “It is a part of it,” she replied, “but some things you just do not ever forget. They remain with you your entire life.” “Tell me a story, Grandmother,” I begged. “Tell me about when you were a child; a young girl like me.” She began her story that night, by telling me how she met and married my grandfather Jesse. She also told me about leaving her home and family in Savannah to move to Mobile to live near my grandfather’s family. And in that telling, I discovered that my grandmother had led a very interesting life, especially in her earlier years. Her life was filled with heartbreaks, heartaches, great times, and sad times. She attended Mardi Gras Balls and traveled extensively around the South. She was involved with an assortment of ill-fated lovers. Indulged in hoodoo, voodoo, even murder! Hers was a life I found extremely fascinating; a life, I wished I could live. That summer, I decided that when I grew old, I wanted to be just like my grandmother Annabelle. However, today, as I sat staring across the haphazard layer of hills to the west and thought of Annabelle and the olden days of grace and charm. I realized that those days were forever gone. They were days that I myself would never know, except through my grandmother’s eyes and memories. No longer that young inquisitive girl, I am an old woman now. On my own, I have lived a long uneventful life. Only through her stories could I live the life I dreamt of; therefore, I decided to share her story with the world. I am certain she would approve. I hope you all enjoy reading her story, as much as I enjoyed writing it. Her story began April 1865, at the end of the Civil War, as was told to me by my grandmother, Rebecca Annabelle Maples Foster.

    Sybylla rejects the opportunity to marry a wealthy young man in order to maintain her independence. As a consequence she must take a job as a governess to a local family to which her father is indebted. "My Brilliant Career" is an early romantic novel by this popular Australian author.

    Ten years later, Ruth and Hans are married and living in Weimar Berlin when Hitler is elected chancellor of Germany. Together with Dora and her lover, Ernst Toller, the celebrated poet and self-doubting revolutionary, the four become hunted outlaws overnight and are forced to flee to London. Inspired by the fearless Dora to breathtaking acts of courage, the friends risk betrayal and deceit as they dedicate themselves to a dangerous mission: to inform the British government of the very real Nazi threat to which it remains willfully blind. All That I Am is the heartbreaking story of these extraordinary people, who discover that Hitler’s reach extends much further than they had thought.Gripping, compassionate, and inspiring, this remarkable debut novel reveals an uncommon depth of humanity and wisdom. Anna Funder has given us a searing and intimate portrait of courage and its price, of desire and ambition, and of the devastating consequences when they are thwarted.

    But she was young once with her own struggles. In 1963 Deborah Byler is twenty-one and has turned down seven marriage proposals from hopeful suitors in Millersburg, Ohio. At her parent’s request, she goes to live with relatives in the new Amish settlement in Smicksburg, Pennsylvania, praying she’ll find a match.Jeb Weaver lives in a strict Swartzentruber Amish settlement, and he can no longer abide under the rules of the Ordnung. His older brother left the family farm and settled in Smicksburg, and convinces Jeb to do the same. When Jeb meets Deborah, he finds her too liberal and outspoken. Deborah thinks Jeb’s judgmental and a complete stick in the mud. Their constant clashing makes sparks fly. Will an African American man, who hitchhikes around the country to attend Martin Luther King Jr. marches, help Jeb and Deborah see their own prejudices?

    He and his wife are attempting to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work with them at their family home. As Lily’s friendship with Eva grows, she becomes infatuated with this makeshift family and longs to truly be a part of it.Looking back on those years later in life, Lily realises that this utopian circle involved the same themes as Evan Trentham’s art: Faustian bargains and terrible recompense; spectacular fortunes and falls from grace. Yet it was not Evan, nor the other artists he gathered around him, but his own daughters, who paid the debt that was owing.The Strays is an engrossing story of ambition, sacrifice and compromised loyalties from an exciting new talent.

    . . - Dorset, 1917. If it's not enough that a girl from a good background is forced to work as a maid, Livia Carr is then violated by her master and falls pregnant. But help unexpectedly comes from her attacker’s son, Richard, a WWI hero who is not expected to live much longer. He marries her, and his death, though expected, comes as a great blow. Into the breach steps Livia's first love, Denton Elliott - but he does not know the truth about her child's parentage . . .

    On the second floor of the famous F.G. Goode department store, in Ladies' Cocktail Frocks, the women in black are girding themselves for the Christmas rush. Lisa is the new Sales Assistant (Temporary). Across the floor and beyond the arch, she is about to meet the glamorous Continental refugee, Magda, guardian of the rose-pink cave of Model Gowns.With the lightest touch and the most tender of comic instincts, Madeleine St. John conjures a vanished summer of innocence. The Women in Black is a classic.

    Denah is not among them by choice. Her husband is a disgrace, her sisters-in-law are cursed, and the family adheres to the rigid demands of an outdated God. Denah simply wants the life she deserves. She will follow her own forbidden path to fulfillment, encountering blackmail, jealousy, and betrayal along the way. What she deserves turns out to be far different than what she imagines, and she must face the tumultuous consequences of her decisions before the past and future of all mankind collide in the shadow of Noah's ark.

    Brilliant. A Liability?Doctor Anna Cassidy has been trained by the best; the former Chief Surgeon for the Auckland Police Force. She knows how to dissect a body. She knows how to treat any ailment. And she knows how to find a cause of death. But society is not ready for a female surgeon.Fighting for what she believes in has been ingrained in Anna since she was a young child. But the battles she faces now are not all based on equality. A murderer stalks her fellow Suffragettes and the police inspector in charge of the case could be Anna's downfall.Experienced. Dedicated. Something to hide?Inspector Andrew Kelly holds duty and honour in the highest regard. His role as a detective proves just that; he never stops until justice is served. Love is something he has forsaken, for reasons he'd rather you didn't know.But Anna is not a woman a man can ignore.Fighting his instincts with cold determination is something Kelly has become accustomed to. But a murderer is loose in his adopted city, bringing memories to the fore of a killer who walked in the shadows of Whitechapel, and shining light on a dark past the Inspector is trying hard to forget.A gritty, twisted, and authentic Victorian romantic suspense, sure to rip you apart... just like old Jack.

    The woman quotes a phrase from the Karlson fragments that Caddie knows does not exist—and yet to Caddie, who knows Inga Karlson’s work like she knows her name, it feels genuine.Caddie is electrified. Jolted her from her sleepy, no-worries life in torpid 1980s Brisbane, she is driven to investigate: to find the clues that will unlock the greatest literary mystery of the twentieth century

    A frontier land where anything is possible - at least for the tourists.In Holiday in Cambodia Laura Jean McKay explores the electric zone where local and foreign lives meet.Three backpackers board a train, ignoring the danger signs - and find themselves in the hands of the Khmer Rouge.Elderly sisters are visited by their vampire niece from Australia and set out to cure her.A singer creates a sensation in swinging 1969, on the eve of an American bombing campaign.These are bold and haunting stories by a remarkable new talent.'Each of these stories is like catching a snippet of a conversation or looking into a lit window in a dark night, and loitering longer than you should to hear and see what characters inadvertently reveal about themselves. Holiday in Cambodia shows the ugly side of post-colonial tourism, as well as moments of great pathos and dignity, in a compelling and empathetic voice.'-Alice Pung'Polished, Hemingwayesque snapshots, vivid and atmospheric' - Steven CarrollAbout the author: Laura Jean McKay is the author of Holiday in Cambodia shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award 2014, the Queensland Literary Award 2014 and The Asher Award 2015 for women writing on an anti-war theme. Laura’s writing has been published in The Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing and Meanjin and is forthcoming in the U.S. in J Journal and The North American Review. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and the recipient of a Martin Bequest Traveling Scholarship.Her short story collection Holiday in Cambodia is out now with Black Inc. Go to blackincbooks.com

    Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last more than two hundred years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only at the dawn of the new Millennium - as an old journal lays bear a terrible secret - that the family can finally reclaim its honour. Beneath the Southern Cross is as much a story of a city as it is a family chronicle. Bringing history to life, Judy Nunn traces the fortunes of Kendall's descendants through good times and bad, wars and social revolutions to the present day, vividly drawing the events, characters and issues that have made the city of Sydney and the nation of Australia what they are today.

    Her irresponsible Da is dead. She is grief-stricken and alone – but for the first time in her life free to please herself. After her mother deserted the family, Ivy became the sole provider for her Da and three brothers. Pushing a pram around the well-to-do areas of Dublin every day, she begged for the discards of the wealthy which she then turned into items she could sell around Dublin’s markets. As she visits the morgue to pay her respects to her Da, a chance meeting introduces Ivy to a new world of money and privilege, her mother's world. Ivy is suddenly a woman on a mission to improve herself and her lot in life. Jem Ryan is the owner of a livery near Ivy’s tenement. When an accident occurs in one of his carriages, leaving a young girl homeless, it is Ivy he turns to. With Jem and the people she meets in her travels around Dublin, Ivy begins to break out of the property-ridden world that is all she has ever known. Through Streets Broad and Narrow is a story of strength and determination in the unrelenting world that was Dublin tenement life.