He now spends his days as a recluse, spying upon the land - and the granddaughter – that should by rights have been his.For Tammy McCauley, Montmorency Downs is the last remaining tie to her family. But land can make or break you - and, with her husband's latest treachery, how long can she hold on to it?Wild-dog trapper, Travis Hunter, is struggling as a single dad, unable to give his son, Billy, the thing he craves most. A complete family.Then, out of the blue, a terrible event forces the three neighbours to confront each other - and the mistakes of their past …

    The perfect family. Too good to be true.Kate Webb still grieves for her young son, ten years after his loss. She spends her weekends hungover, attending open houses on Sydney's wealthy north shore and imagining the lives of the people who live there.Then Kate visits the Harding house - the perfect house with, it seems, the perfect family. A photograph captures a kind-looking man, a beautiful woman she once knew from university days, and a boy - a boy that for one heartbreaking moment she believes is her own son.When her curiosity turns to obsession, she uncovers the cracks that lie beneath a glossy facade of perfection, sordid truths she could never have imagined.But is it her imagination? As events start to spiral dangerously out of control, could the real threat come from Kate herself?

    A sweeping, big-hearted Australian family saga for readers of Judy Nunn and Victoria Purman. 7 February, 1967. Walls of flame reduce much of Tasmania to ash.Young schoolteacher Catherine Turner rushes to the Huon Valley to find her family's apple orchard destroyed, her childhood home in ruins and her brother dead. Despite her father's declaration that a woman will never run the orchard, Catherine resolves to rebuild the family business.After five sons, Catherine's friend and neighbour, Annie Pearson, is overjoyed by the birth of a much longed for daughter. As Annie and her husband Dave work to repair the damage to their orchard, Dave's friend Mark pitches in, despite the fact that Annie wants him gone. Mark has moved his family to the valley to escape his life in Melbourne, but his wife has disappeared leaving chaos in her wake and their young son Charlie in Mark's care.Catherine becomes fond of Charlie, whose strange upbringing has left him shy and withdrawn. However, the growing friendship between Mark and Catherine not only scandalises the small community but threatens a secret Annie is desperate to keep hidden. Through natural disasters, personal calamities and the devastating collapse of the apple industry, Catherine, Annie and those they love battle to save their livelihoods, their families and their secrets.PRAISE FOR THE LAST OF THE APPLE BLOSSOM:'What a cracker of a debut! A beautiful story of family and orchards, of secrets and love and forgiveness' - Victoria Purman, author of The Women's Pages'The crisp prose sparkles and the characters stay with you long after the story ends' - Lauren Chater, author of Gulliver's Wife'Timeless yet also telling an achingly familiar story to us here and now, this is an unforgettable tale of love and loss, triumph and tragedy' -Karen Brooks, author of The Good Wife of Bath

    Ernie and Lily Hass, and their daughter, Girlie, have lost almost everything in the Depression; all they have keeping their small family together are their secrets. Abandoning their failing wheat farm and small-town gossip, they make a new start on the west coast of Australia where they begin to build a summer guesthouse. But forming new alliances with the locals isn't easy.Into the Hasses' new life wanders Lily's shell-shocked brother, Tommy, after three harrowing years on the road following his incarceration. Tommy is seeking answers that will cut to the heart of who Ernie, Lily, and Girlie really are.Inspired by the author's own family history, The Secrets at Ocean's Edge is a haunting, memorable and moving tale of one family's search for belonging. Kali Napier breathes a fever-pitch intensity into the story of these emotionally fragile characters as their secrets are revealed with tragic consequences. If you loved The Light Between Oceans and The Woolgrower's Companion you will love this story.

    The only survivor is Isabella Winterbourne, who clutches a priceless gift meant for the Australian Parliament. This gift could be her ticket to a new life, free from the bonds of her husband and his overbearing family. But whom can she trust in Lighthouse Bay?Fast-forward to 2011: after losing her lover, Libby Slater leaves her life in Paris to return to her hometown of Lighthouse Bay, hoping to gain some perspective and grieve her recent loss. Libby also attempts to reconcile with her sister, Juliet, to whom she hasn’t spoken in twenty years. Libby did something so unforgivable, Juliet is unsure if she can ever trust her sister again.In these two adventurous love stories, both Isabella and Libby must learn that letting go of the past is the only way to move into the future. The answers they seek lie in Lighthouse Bay.

    Set in a fading family estate nestled within the Chiltern Hills, this is the story of two summers, sixty years apart, woven together to reveal one dramatic family story.

    But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next?In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.

    this Is Why. Why you are Australian is an examination of our country thirty years ago and today: all the glory of its sun and water - and all the darkness of tall poppies and Cronulla. How does our land look from way over there, and from right up close? A treatise about what it means to be Australian right now. Honest, moving, provocative, uplifting - an exile's story, a mother's story, an Australian's story. Why you are Australian for anyone who needs reminding. 'Achingly I want you to know what it is to be Aussie kids. Where playing barefoot is a signifier of freedom not impoverishment. Where a backyard's a given not a luxury. Where sunshine and fresh food grow children tall. Where you know what a rash shirt is and a nipper, a Paddle Pop and a Boogie Board.'

    Herein lives the village idiot.Professor Frederick Lothian, a retired engineer, world expert on concrete and connoisseur of modernist design, has quarantined himself from life by moving to a retirement village. His wife, Martha, is dead and his two adult children are lost to him in their own ways. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life - objects he has collected over many years and tells himself he is keeping for his daughter - he is determined to be miserable but is tired of his existence and of the life he has chosen.When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his neighbor, Jan, together, he begins to realise the damage done by the accumulation of a lifetime's secrets and lies and to comprehend his own shortcomings. Finally, Frederick Lothian has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves.Humorous, poignant and galvanising by turns, Extinctions is a novel about all kinds of extinction - natural, racial, national and personal - and what we can do to prevent them.

    Five years ago, she fled her successful career as a concert harpist in London to return to her Bondi home. She still plays, but now her audience is on the way out ... literally. It's complicated and complication is something Zoe understands well. Her best friend is chasing a new love, her brother's chasing too much love and her father has been married far too many times. Compared to them she thought she was doing okay. She's met the guy she is sure is the one. He wooed her and has been sleeping with her for almost five years. It would all be perfect ... if he wasn't married.Zoe is learning that hearts, like harps, are capable of beautiful music if treated the right way and can be tricky to manoeuvre. She's over the old tune. But does Zoe have the courage to rewrite the song of her own life?The Song Of Us is a soulful story of family, love and the notes that define our lives by the author of The Secret Recipe For Second Chances.

    Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water. But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution. Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.Five Bells is a novel of singular beauty and power by one of Australia's most gifted novelists.

    A suspect has already been singled out: a 17-year-old girl who has since disappeared from the scene.The press has now revealed that she is the youngest member of one of London's most notorious families. Thirteen years earlier, her grandfather set off a suicide bomb in a grocery store, a bomb her mother confessed to building. Has the girl decided to follow in their footsteps?To find her, Bish must earn the trust of her friends and family, including her infamous mother, now serving a life sentence in prison--but as he delves into the deadly bus attack that claimed five lives, the ghosts of older crimes become impossible to ignore.A gripping fusion of literary suspense and family drama, Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil is a fast-paced puzzle of a novel that will keep readers feverishly turning pages.

    Fourteen-year-old nerd-boy Dan Cereill is not quite coping with a reversal of family fortune, moving house, new school hell, a mother with a failing wedding cake business, a just-out gay dad, and an impossible crush on the girl next door.His life is a mess, but for now he's narrowed it down to just six impossible things..."I loved this book so much I wanted to be in it." Kaz Cooke

    The two girls move in with their grandmother who is particularly encouraging of Nora's musical talent. Nora eventually follows her dream of a brilliant musical career, while Ida takes a job as a nanny and their lives become quite separate.The two sisters are reunited as Nora's life takes an unwelcome direction and she finds herself, embittered and resentful, isolated in the Tasmanian bush with a husband and children. Ida's longs for a family and when she marries Len, a reliable and good man, she hopes to soon become a mother. Over time, it becomes clear that this is never likely to happen. In Ida's eyes, Nora possesses everything in life that could possibly matter yet she values none of it.Set in rural Tasmania over a span of seventy years, the strengths and flaws of motherhood are revealed through the mercurial relationship of these two very different sisters, Ida and Nora. The Sisters' Song speaks of dreams, children and family, all entwined with a musical thread that binds them together.

    Haunted by her sister's death and her fractured family, all she wants is freedom.But Callie hasn't counted on falling for Matt Hawkins, an ex-soldier determined to fulfil his own dream of land and family. Nor could she predict the way the land, animals and people of Glenmore will capture her heart.Callie is faced with impossible choices. But she must find the courage to decide where her future lies, even if it costs her everything she holds dear.