Their future was full of promise and, blessed with children and careers, their happiness complete. But a twist of fate changed their lives forever.Now in her sixties, Elizabeth is desperately lonely. She rarely sees her two adult sons and her closest friend is a talkative budgie. But when her grandson, Zach, gets into trouble with the police, she decides to take him on a road trip to find his grandfather, her lost love Ray, in the hope of mending their broken family.Two less compatible travelling companions would be hard to find, as they set off on an unlikely adventure into the wilds of the northern NSW hinterland. What they discover along the way, about Ray and each other, has the power to transform them all. In trying to save Zach, Elizabeth might just save herself.Warm, witty and wise, Lovebirds is an astute and uplifting novel about the power of love and family.

    There's no evidence of foul play and no sign of a body. So where is Jack?Ellie thought her father trusted her with his business empire but the discovery of a dark past challenges everything she believed. Her estranged husband was Jack's last known contact but denies seeing him that day and seizes the opportunity to take over as acting CEO as if nothing untoward has happened.The detective in charge throws Ellie's feelings of betrayal and loss into further turmoil because a long time ago, they loved each other. Now, she has to work with him to unravel the truth behind her father's disappearance.Jack's trusted advisors are keeping secrets and Ellie's desperate search for answers puts her in the dangerous sights of a killer.With a body found at sea and a storm closing in, Ellie has to trust someone with what she knows.But will trusting the wrong person be her deadliest mistake?A gripping page-turner from the author of The Stationmaster's Cottage and the Charlotte Dean Mysteries.

    Despite their best efforts, firefighters are unable to save the home. When a badly charred body is discovered in the remains, web designer Desley James is devastated. Her best friend, Laura Noble, had been the only one in the house that night - her partner, Ryan Moore, is away in Sydney on business. Then Desley learns the unidentified body is male. But it's not Ryan. He and Laura have disappeared…Not realising until it's almost too late what some people will do to cover their tracks, Desley teams up with private investigator Fergus Coleman to search for the missing couple.

    A warm wind stirred, carrying with it the faint smell of pies and horses, and the man paused for just a moment before he sat down. Benny Miller would have driven right past him in her station wagon on that bright and brimming day.'On the first day of summer in 1993, two strangers arrive in the town of Cedar Valley. One is a calm looking man in a brown suit. He makes his way down the main street and walks directly to Cedar Valley Curios & Oldwares, sitting down on the footpath, where he leans silently against the big glass window for hours.The other is 21-year-old Benny Miller. Fresh out of university, Benny has come to Cedar Valley in search of information about her mother, Vivian, who has recently died. Vivian's mysterious old friend, Odette Fisher, has offered Benny her modest pale green cottage for as long as she wants it.Is there any connection between the man on the pavement and Benny's quest to learn more about her mother? Holly Throsby is the perfect guide as Cedar Valley and its inhabitants slowly reveal their secrets.

    If you loved THE DRY and SCRUBLANDS, you will love STILL.Darwin, Summer, 1963.The humidity sat heavy and thick over the town as Senior Constable Ned Potter looked down at a body that had been dragged from the shallow marshland. He didn't need a coroner to tell him this was a bad death. He didn't know then that this was only the first. Or that he was about to risk everything looking for answers.Late one night, Charlotte Clark drove the long way home, thinking about how stuck she felt, a 23-year-old housewife, married to a cowboy who wasn't who she thought he was. The days ahead felt suffocating, living in a town where she was supposed to keep herself nice and wait for her husband to get home from the pub. Charlotte stopped the car, stepped out to breathe in the night air and looked out over the water to the tangled mangroves. She never heard a sound before the hand was around her mouth.Both Charlotte and Ned are about to learn that the world they live in is full of secrets and that it takes courage to fight for what is right. But there are people who will do anything to protect themselves and sometimes courage is not enough to keep you safe.

    However, a week later, Adam vanishes, leaving their baby daughter on the doorstep. The following year, Grace returns to the tiny village of Roseby. She is desperate for answers, but it seems the slumbering village is unwilling to give up its secrets. As Grace learns more about the locals and the area’s superstitions and folklore, strange dreams begin to trouble her. Are the villagers hiding something, or is she becoming increasingly paranoid? Only as snowfall threatens to cut them off from the rest of the world does Grace begin to understand how close the threat lies, and that she and her daughter may be in terrible danger if she cannot get them away in time. Praise for Beneath the Shadows 'Something for everyone: mystery, romance and mortal danger' Kirkus Reviews 'Sara Foster overtly appropriates the tone, atmosphere and themes of classics from Wuthering Heights to Rebecca, delivering a modern gothic that has the charm and suspense of Susan Hill's ghost stories.'―Saturday Age 'Sara Foster slowly unravels the mystery in this highly engaging thriller… Secrets Grace uncovers in the cellar, not to mention the ghostly antics of the grandfather clock, further enhance this very readable novel's Gothic flavour' ―Canberra Times 'Loss, grief, abandonment, and search for truth are dark themes woven through Beneath the Shadows. Combining elements of mystery, psychological thriller, romance, and ghost story, the novel leaves readers guessing until the very end.―West Australian 'As winter snows start to cut them off from the world, Grace finds the answers lie in unsuspected places. Heart-stopping moments are ahead for her… and us.” ―Women's Day “If you’ve ever fantasised about leaving all the chaos of the city behind and opting for a more peaceful existence in a small town, you might think again after reading Beneath the Shadows… Full of intrigue and wonderfully dark descriptions of ghosts that haunt the moors.―Good Reading Magazine

    Feeling like foreigners in this land of sun and surf, they're still adjusting to work, school, and life in a sprawling purple clapboard house, when one morning, tragedy strikes.In the devastating aftermath, the questions fly. What really happened? And who's to blame? Determined to protect his family, Finn finds himself under the police and media spotlight. Guilty and enraged, Bridget spends nights hunting answers in the last place imaginable. Jarrah — his innocence lost — faces a sudden and frightening adulthood where nothing is certain.In the Blink of an Eye is a haunting, redemptive story about forgiveness and hope.

    One fateful day they take the winding coastal route home, and visit the Ocean View Gallery, perched on the cliff edge. It's not listed in any tourist pamphlet. The artist runs the gallery alone. There are no other visitors. Within the maze of rooms the lone couple begin to feel uneasy – and with good reason. Trudy and Bruce will be ripped from the safe, secure fabric of their life and will have their world turned upside down and shaken. Attacked, trapped and brutalised, they barely escape the gallery with their lives – only to find there's no real getting away.

    Britain stands alone facing an imminent Nazi invasion. Handpicked groups of men form the covert Auxiliary Units; ordinary by day, they will be saboteurs and assassins by night. With a life expectancy of two weeks, their identities are a closely guarded secret from all but the local senior policeman but once activated, that policeman will be the cell's first victim. Clement Wisdom, a humble vicar and leader of the East Sussex Auxiliaries, receives the invasion alert and assembles his team. Burdened with the tension between his faith and his patriotic duty, he sets out to eliminate the Police Inspector, only to find him dead already. While assisting Lewes Police to find the Inspector's killer, events take an ominous turn as one by one, members of Clement’s team are found callously murdered. Priorities shift and every aspect of life is called into question when Clement becomes embroiled in the murky world of espionage, where nothing is what it seems. In Spite of All Terror is the first in a series of crime thrillers that mix historical fact, crime fiction and superb characterisations. They will keep you hungry for the next piece of this wartime puzzle.

    But why does she still feel trapped. A gripping psychological drama by the author of Mothers and Daughters and Into My Arms.Charlie Johnson is 13 and in her first year of high school. She loves her family, netball and Liam, the cute guy who sits next to her in Science - but most of all she loves horses and horse-riding. Charlie's parents have leased her a horse, Tic Tac, from the local pony club, but one day they go out for a ride in the national park and only Tic Tac returns...Four months later, long after the police and the SES have called off the search, Charlie is found wandering injured and filthy, miles from where she was last seen. Her family rejoice in her return, but can anyone truly recover from what Charlie's been through? When a life has been shattered, how do you put the pieces back together?

    After learning she was pregnant with twins and being abandoned by her irresponsible boyfriend, Adam, she's settling into life as a single mother. But one night, after putting the children to bed, she hears what she thinks is an argument outside. Then, suddenly, a body falls past her window. Running outside, she finds Paula Carmichael, a renowned activist, dead on the ground. Although Robin and Paula weren't acquainted, the police find Robin's name mentioned - frequently - in the dead woman's diary. Robin then learns that her ex-boyfriend had been making a documentary about Paula and may know more than he lets on. But before she can ask him, he's killed by a hit-and-run driver - who was driving Robin's car. Now a suspect herself, Robin must figure out who wanted both Robin and Adam dead before she loses her freedom, her children, and her life.

    But what was she to say? Once there had been blame to apportion, rage to hurl. Now she no longer had a sense of that. Who knew what the facts of them being here together like this meant. What was she to make of the situation? Scott lying unconscious here in this bed, unknown to her in almost every way. She now a wife, a mother, but in her mind no longer a sister. Not a sister for a very long time now.Lori Spyker is taking her kids to school one unremarkable day when a policeman delivers the news that her brother, Scott Green, has been injured and hospitalised following a hit and run. Lori hasn't seen Scott in decades. She appears to be his only contact. Should she take responsibility for him? Can she? And, if she does, how will she tell her own family about her hidden history, kept secret for so long? Twenty years before, when she and Scott were teenagers, their lives and futures, and those of their family, had been torn to shreds. Now, as Lori tries to piece together her brother's present, she is forced to confront their shared past-and the terrible and devastating truth buried there that had driven them so far apart.Compassionate, wise and shocking, Life Before tells the gripping story of an ordinary family caught in a terrible situation. What if the worst thing you can imagine isn't the worst thing to happen? How do you go on? And what steps will you take to protect yourself from further pain?

    From convict, bushranger and accused pirate, Cat transforms herself into an entrepreneur and pillar of colonial Tasmanian society. But how is she connected to a missing ship? And could she be involved in the disappearance of a priceless treasure that, one hundred and three years after her death, will be claimed not only by a foreign government but by unscrupulous men determined to use it for their own ends?Joanne, dean of history at the university and Cat’s descendant, is assigned the task of locating the missing artefact. Joanne believes the key may lie in a coded notebook she has inherited along with Cat’s other mysteries. But will she be able to decipher the message and put a century-old secret to rest? And will she survive to join her true love in the Governor’s House – a house that has come to mean as much to her as it did to her long-dead ancestor?

    Not after he hit his wife and ended up in gaol. A lifetime of careful parental love wiped out in a moment.But when retired teacher Vernon hears that Caleb is being regularly visited and savagely bashed by a local criminal as the police stand by, he knows he has to act. What has his life been as a father if he turns his back on his son in his hour of desperate need? He realises with shame that he has failed Caleb. But no longer.The father of the man bashing Caleb is head of a violent crime family. The town lives in fear of him but Vernon is determined to fix things in a civilised way, father to father. If he shows respect, he reasons, it will be reciprocated. But how wrong he is. And what hell has he brought down on his family?Reading like a morality tale Western but in a starkly beautiful Australian setting, Snake Island is a propulsive literary thriller written with great clarity and power. It will take you to the edge and keep you there long after the final page is turned.

    I found one.' These words are blurted over the phone to Constable Snowy Lane, who is preoccupied with no more than a ham sandwich and getting a game with the East Fremantle league side on Saturday. They signal the beginning of a series of events that are to shake Perth to its foundations.It is 1979, and Perth is jumping with pub bands and overnight millionaires. 'Mr Gruesome' has just taken another victim. Snowy's life and career are to be forever changed by the grim deeds of a serial killer, and the dark bloom spreading across the City of Light.