Cirrus@Austlit

'Lei Ling Wen is lonely. Bored of her demanding after-school schedule of tuition, study and violin lessons, she struggles to see eye to eye with her strict Chinese-Malaysian mother.

'When Lei Ling is befriended by elegant, worldly socialite Gigi Nu, she is enchanted by the realm of luxury and freedom that suddenly opens up to her. Gigi encourages Lei Ling to flout her routines and treats her to designer products and expensive meals, and soon Lei Ling finds herself caught between two lives, and increasingly at odds with her exasperated mother.

'Then tragedy strikes, and Lei Ling discovers long-held secrets that lead her to question everything she thought she knew about the two central women in her life, and the friendship she’d held at the heart of it.

'Jade and Emerald is a fierce and deeply felt novel about the joys and pains of growing up, of accepting who you are and where you come from.' (Publication summary)

'A gothic thriller exploring rural Australia’s simultaneous celebration of harsh country and stoic people – a tension that forces its inhabitants to dangerous breaking points.

'On a remote property in western NSW, nine-year-old Parker fears that something is wrong with his brain. His desperate attempts to control this internal chaos spark a series of events that gallop from his control in deadly and devastating ways.

'Years later, Parker, now a father himself, returns to the bushland he grew up in for a camping trip with old friends. When this reunion descends into chaos amid revelations of unresolved fear, guilt and violence, Parker must finally address the consequences of his childhood actions.'  (Publication summary)

'The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bo’s mother, Rosemary, and Bo’s younger sister, Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen.

'Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delia’s life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student, and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And now she must also care for her mother.

'Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously. Or, they were until sixteen-year-old Charlie Rabbit disappears in the middle of a blinding heatwave. The family reels from the loss, and struggles to cope as the children’s estranged father, Ed, re-enters their lives.

'Only nothing is quite as it seems, and Charlie’s disappearance soon proves to be just that – a disappearance, or, rather, an unexpected bout of invisibility he’s unable to reverse.

'The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.