Cirrus@Austlit

'Clyde's idyllic afternoon in the surf with his mates is interrupted by the news that there's been a quadruple suicide in an apartment overlooking the beach.

'Two of the deceased are the parents of Barry Wilkinson, one of Clyde's childhood friends, a man he hasn't seen since Clyde donned the khaki and left for war. Wilkinson engages Clyde to discover the identity of a mysterious woman who has been left a huge sum of money in his father's will.

'On the surface, what appears to be a straightforward case evolves into a complex story of deception, lies, violence and murder. Relationships are tested and new ones formed, and Clyde discovers that those connections that seem unrelated are closely linked behind a veil of secrecy.

'The early summer of 1957 is a time in which Clyde nearly loses everything he holds dear—his own life included—all because of two couples who died while playing bridge at the beach.' (Publication summary)

'"I swear to God it was Willoughby. My brother stood not two feet away from me, called me Lina to my face, and pulled Harley into his arms, saying he was sorry, sobbing, and calling him his boy."

'An apparition in Sydney's fruit and vegetable market leaves the mother of one of Clyde's best friends believing that her brother, hanged for murder twenty-four years beforehand, has somehow risen from the grave and confronted her.

'She is adamant that the visitation was real and visits Clyde asking him to investigate the mass murder her brother was supposed to have committed. She believes he was either set up or was covering for someone else's crime.

'Could this vision have been a folie à deux, a delusional vision shared by both mother or son? As Clyde investigates, clues lead him to one of Australia's most famous silent screen actors, a man who, together with his murdered father, becomes intrinsically linked to the mass murder, known as The Killing at Candal Creek.

'Wheels within wheels, lies, extortion, and coverups lead Clyde to a bloody confrontation on a deserted beach in the tropics. This time, it's not only his own life at risk but also that of one of his most valued and closest friends.'  (Publication summary)

'London, 1855. While Great Britain is at war with the Russians in the Crimea, a cadre of disaffected seditionists and insurrectionists, made up of members of the aristocracy and wealthy industrialists, have set a plan into action that’s been decades in the making—a plan that aims to overthrow the Queen and to install a puppet king on the throne in her place. With the war raging and disquiet in the industrial north and in Ireland, their perfidious plot, unless stopped, threatens to bring about anarchy and revolution.

'Aware of the imminent danger, Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, has tasked The Brothers, a band of four men, friends of over twenty years, to root out the source of the infection, destroy the clique, and track down and eradicate its foreign pretender by any means necessary. From molly houses to state banquets, from hospitals to steam baths, from aristocratic households to the meanest of slums, the friends find themselves in a succession of increasingly perilous situations.

'Like the mighty Thames, undercurrents flow swift and deep as they uncover plot after plot and treachery and treason in abundance.' (Publication summary)

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'Halloran pulled the sheet down to the man's waist. What I saw made me take a deep breath: the man's throat was cut so deeply his head looked like it had almost been severed. "If you tell me this man was found in the public toilet behind the grandstand of Coogee Oval opposite where I live, I might just need a chair," I said.Clyde Smith's quiet, happy life, in love for the first time, working as a private detective and journalist, is suddenly thrown into disarray by the appearance, after a three year hiatus, of a body bearing the distinctive hallmarks of a string of murders he hadn't been able to solve when working in homicide. Forced to cooperate with the new detective sergeant who'd taken his place in the local cop shop, Clyde has to not only deal with the enormous chip on the young man's shoulder, but also with a complex case that involves kidnapping, the re-emergence of the Silent Cop Killer, the historical abuse of young men and boys in orphanages across the State, and a ghost from the past who is out for revenge. Will Clyde and the new DS be able to find the killer before he finds them? Or will they be his final prize, the last victims in his string of grisly murders? Perhaps only the local psychic, owner of a Romany religious statue, the Gilded Madonna, can provide the clue that might ultimately solve the puzzle, but which will also lead Clyde and DS Dioli into mortal danger.'  (Publication summary)

'"I'm sorry I have to tell you this, Harry, but Daley Morrison was murdered. It was no heart attack. He was stabbed through the heart and then staked out, naked, in the middle of the Sydney Cricket Ground as some sort of warning to someone."

'Harry Jones almost fell into his chair, such was his shock.

'Clyde Smith is brought into the investigation by his former colleague, Sam Telford, after a note is found in the evidence bags with Clyde's initials on it. Someone wants ex-Detective Sergeant Smith to investigate the crime from outside the police force. It can only mean one thing—corruption at the highest levels.

'The Cricketer's Arms is an old-fashioned, pulp fiction detective novel, set in beachside Sydney in 1956. It follows the intricacies of a complex murder case, involving a tight-knit group of queer men, sports match-fixing, and a criminal drug cartel.

'Was Daley Morrison killed because of his sexual proclivities, or was his death a signal to others to tread carefully? Has Clyde Smith been fingered as the man for the case, or will the case be the end of the road for the war veteran detective?'  (Publication summary)

'"Six deaths, if we include his, my father's, and Fabrice's, Andy," I whispered. "All because of a simple, insignificant error of judgement--Fabrice Evans just gave the wrong address to a madman."

'A wrongly delivered letter sparks a chain of events that threaten the life of Edward Murray, "Australia's Son", the most renowned operatic baritone of his day.

'It is 1902, and Edward has just returned to the Metropole Hotel after a performance of La Boheme at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, when the manager phones his apartment to tell him the police have arrived with bad news.

'Edward, and his vaudeville performer brother, Theodore, are shocked to hear that Edward's dresser, the brothers' oldest friend from childhood, has been found dead, stabbed in the back, in Edward's recently vacated dressing room.

'Following a sequence of gruesome killings, Edward and the detective assigned to protect him, Chief Constable Andrew Bolton, are lured into a trap by a man whose agenda is not only personal, but driven by a deranged mind.

'The silver lining for Edward during these grisly events is the smell of tar and honey, and the promise of a special friendship with the man tasked with keeping him out of harm's way.

'Set around the theatre world of early Edwardian Sydney, the story is steeped in the world of class divides, of music and the theatre, and what it was to be a performer at the turn of the twentieth century. Its themes of murder, treachery and foul play, are ofttimes confronting, but the story is linked throughout by Edward Murray, the man with the golden voice, whose overarching belief is that even in the darkest of times, a sliver of light can mean that hope is at hand.' (Publication summary)

'The Boys of Bullaroo is a collection of six short stories, each set a decade apart, spanning the period from the Great War to the Vietnam conflict.

'Linked by an outback Australian town, Bullaroo, the narratives follow the loves, the losses, and the sexual awakenings of men over the course of sixty years.

'From the deserts of Egypt and the Light Horse, to prisoner of war camps during the Second World War, and to the flood of American servicemen on R during the age of conscription in the 1960s, these tales explore the nature of what it is to love, and to be loved by other men.

Razor gangs, male prostitution, and the immediate post-war flood of emigrants from southern Europe are some of the themes that contribute to the colour and private lives of husbands, brothers, sons, and lovers over the course of the century, told from a unique, Australian perspective.' (Publication summary)