Cirrus@Austlit

'A gripping, haunting work about the reverberations of a serial killer's crimes in the lives of everyday people.

'In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further - into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

'Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer's home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

'What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without putting the killers at the centre of the story?

'From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The Night Guest comes a captivating account of loss and fear, and its extended echoes in individual lives.' (Publication summary)

'Beth doesn't feel like she belongs in her rambunctious, bohemian family. Apart from the special relationship she shares with her grandma, Elise. When Beth wins the lottery (on a ticket she bought to prove she could be spontaneous), she decides to spend it on treating Elise. 

'But instead of anything material, Elise wants Beth to help her track down her first love, Gerry. It's a fun and uncomplicated little adventure, Beth thinks, until she discovers that her grandma's great love is actually a woman, and their romance was thwarted by the conservatism of the day. Grappling with her grandma's past spurs Beth to reconsider herself in the present.

'Birds of a Feather is a funny, poignant and utterly charming debut novel about questioning who you are and what you might become.' (Publication summary)

'Tess is feeling burnt out from her uninspiring job and her busy city lifestyle. Even her personal relationships make her feel as if she’s simply drifting through life rather than living it to the full. Having tragically lost her mother a few years earlier, she knows she owes it to herself to make so much more of the precious opportunities life offers.

'Her godmother Luna, who leads a very simple existence in a rustic cottage in the North Queensland rainforest, is also at something of a crossroads. Keen to expand her jewellery- making business, she needs the new connections that a bustling city offers. When she suggests to Tess that the two of them might swap homes for an extended period, it seems the perfect solution.

'Tess soon finds herself in a new world, adapting to life off-grid, dodging cassowaries, working in a charity bookstore and falling for the gorgeous but unavailable guy next door. Meanwhile, Luna gets far more than she bargained for, with police on her doorstep, old lovers turning up out of the blue, and the possibility of having her biggest secret exposed. Are they about to discover that taking great risks can bring even greater rewards?

'A moving and heart-warming story by the bestselling Australian author of The Garden of Hopes and Dreams and The Happiest Little Town.(Publication summary)

Behind the seductive glamour of television is a cutthroat world where careers are made or destroyed with a word in the right ear...or a night in the right bed. Only the ruthless make it to the top. And they will stop at nothing to stay there. Not even murder. (Adapted from publisher's blurb)