Cirrus@Austlit

'Gina Davies, aka The Doll, is a 26-year-old pole dancer at the Chairman's Lounge in Sydney's Kings Cross. She's a flawed woman, racist, obsessed with money, who finds her life suddenly being destroyed by the things she has up until that moment most firmly believed in. The evening of the Mardi Gras, 2007. Three unexploded bombs have been found that day at Homebush Stadium, so the country is on high-alert. When wandering through the Mardi Gras' crowds the Doll runs into a good-looking, young dark man. They end up at his place. When she wakes, it's Sunday morning and he has gone. She is getting a coffee in a café opposite the apartment block she spent the night in when she sees armed police surround the building she has just left. Later in the day while shopping in the city she sees a story on a big video screen in which the news is of a suspected terrorist entering the same building she had spent the night in. That night, on television news, the story has altered a little. In an exclusive, the network has security camera footage of the terrorist entering the building the night before with an accomplice, a woman she recognises as herself. And so a case is brought against her by the media, and the hunt for her begins. From a 26-year-old pole dancer in the Chairman's Lounge, she quickly becomes the most wanted woman in Australia as every truth of her life is turned into a lie...' (Publisher's blurb)

'An abandoned house…

'After a particularly troubling case, Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police and retreats to her beloved grandfather’s cottage in Cornwall. There she finds herself at a loose end, until one day she stumbles upon an abandoned house surrounded by overgrown gardens and dense woods, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

'A missing child…

'June 1933, and the Edevane family’s country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. For Eleanor, the annual party has always been one of her treasured traditions, but her middle daughter, Alice, sixteen years old and with literary ambitions, is especially excited. Not only has Alice worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she’s also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn’t. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night sky, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great they leave Loeanneth and never return.

'An unsolved mystery…

'Seventy years later, in the attic writing room of her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family’s past and seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.