Cirrus@Austlit

'He’ll do anything to improve your stay. Except keep your secrets.

'I suppose it would be fitting to explain that I am talking into a dictaphone and the lovely Helen will be typing out my story for you to read. She will have a certain amount of creative control—sorting out moments when I get a bit tongue-tied or slightly muddled—but I have told her to leave in as much as possible, so as not to miss any of the important bits. This is my account of the Cavengreen Hotel murder, best we get that bit in early on.

'The peaceful setting of Cavengreen Hotel has been shattered by a shocking murder. Hector Harrow, the hotel's concierge, has been accused and is determined to clear his name.

'Hector enlists the aid of Helen, a retired publisher, to document the shocking crime that has unfolded, with the intention of publishing a truthful account.

'Amid interruptions from a nosy journalist and the egotistical antics of the hotel's new owner, American Dave, Helen works tirelessly to keep Hector focused on finishing his book.

'As suspicions fall on different guests and one makes a shocking confession, Hector must navigate a web of secrets to uncover the truth.' (Publication summary)

'As her mother, Mira, nears the end of her life, journalist Rachelle Unreich wants to find out more about how Mira survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed - which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. Incredibly, when she gave testimony about the Holocaust decades later, Mira said that it was during this time that she learned about 'the goodness of people'.

'Born in Czechoslovakia, Mira Blumenstock was twelve years old when World War II broke out. She would live a full life in Paris and Australia. Then, at eighty-eight, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Rachelle interviewed Mira to distract her from her illness, and what she discovered about her mother was breathtaking. Not only did Rachelle begin to understand Mira's past, but she was able to fit together the jigsaw puzzle pieces of her own life.

'A story of love, loss, wonder and the deepest kind of faith, A Brilliant Life questions the role of fate and chance, and reveals an unbreakable connection between mother and child. It will capture hearts, spark important conversations and show us that one small act of kindness can, quite literally, save a life.' (Publication summary)

'Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of an Australian-born intelligence officer accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century: Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis.

'The longest serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). At one point in the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, ‘for half the world’.

'But in the 1980s journalist Chapman Pincher and retired MI5 intelligence officer Peter 'Spycatcher' Wright posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a ‘triple agent’ for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a partial confession that he had worked for the Nazis. The scope of Ellis’s purported betrayal was considered even worse than notorious British traitor and double agent Kim Philby.

'However, Pincher’s and Wright’s accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a ‘super mole’?

'Internationally bestselling author Jesse Fink attempts to find out the truth once and for all. The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it’s a gripping real-life international whodunit.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'WHEN YOU’RE AT YOUR WIT’S END ... 

'WHEN NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK ... 

'WHEN YOU’RE LOSING SLEEP ... 

'WHEN YOUR NEIGHBOUR IS GIVING YOU HELL ... 

'WOULD YOU CALL UPON THE DEVIL? 

'Cat Thomas has just moved from Florida to an idyllic flat in historic Edinburgh. Everything seems perfect. Everything seems serene. Except for the noisy, obnoxious, uncooperative musician upstairs.

'When all else fails, Cat is talked into attending a seance at a creepy Scottish castle. She makes an appeal directly to Satan. And finds that the nightmare has just begun ... 

'Seven years after the death of Edward Hyde, a stylish gentleman shows up in foggy London claiming to be Dr. Henry Jekyll. Only Mr. Utterson, Jekyll’s faithful lawyer and confidant, knows that he must be an impostor – because Jekyll was Hyde. 

'But as the man goes about charming Jekyll’s friends and reclaiming the estate, and as the bodies of potential challengers start piling up, Utterson is left fearing for his life ... and questioning his own sanity.

'From the internationally acclaimed Australian author Anthony O’Neill comes Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Seek, an ingenious, original sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.' (Publication Summary)