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)

'Grief-stricken and on the verge of a breakdown, Luda Managan and her two teenaged children try to make a home for themselves on a collection of harsh and haunted Scottish islands.

'Luda, a photographer, is mesmerised by the extraordinary magic of the islands and soon finds herself condemned by the local community after publishing images documenting the death of a local child. Alienated, Luda turns her attention to the records from the 17th century island witch-hunts and the fragmented life stories of the executed women. Min, restless and strong, tries to fill up the space in their family left by her father. She soon finds comfort in the depths of the icy North Sea and in an unlikely friendship with the elderly and irreverent local ‘witch’. The only thing that beautiful and gifted Darcy cares about is getting marks high enough for entry into university – one very, very far away from his mother.

'Until he meets the wild foundling, Theo.

'When a tragic accident unleashes ghosts and the echoes of long-ago violence and betrayal into their lives, the Managans are forced to confront the ways that history both hinders us and sets us free.

'Drawing on records of the witch trials and folk tales of the northern isles, Salt and Skin is full of tenderness, magic and yearning. It’s a meditation on the absence of women’s voices and stories in history, and the unexpected ways that sites of long-ago trauma continue to haunt the living.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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)

'Elderly and in poor health, Mary fulfils her wish to herself to live out her last days on Bruny Island with only her regrets and memories for company. A long time ago, her late husband was the lighthousekeeper on Bruny, and she'd raised a family on the wild windswept island, until terrible circumstances forced them back to civilisation. The long-buried secret that has haunted her for decades now threatens to break free and she is hoping to banish it once and for all before her time is up.

'But secrets have a life of their own, and as Mary relives the events that led up to the shattering revelation, she realises she needs to trust a later generation to put things right. As she steadily weakens, she imposes herself on the island's ranger, Leon, who is reluctant to become nursemaid to Mary and resentful that he appears to have little choice in the matter. He has problems of his own and the last thing he needs is another drain on his time.

'Mary's adult children are respectively outraged, non-committal and sympathetic, but no amount of coaxing, pleading or threats will shake her resolve. Her youngest son Tom loves Bruny as much as his mother does, and can understand her primal connection to that wild island, a place of solitude, healing and redemption for them both.

'Years before Tom had spent a winter working on a base in Antarctica and had returned from that empty loneliness to find his marriage over and his life destroyed. Not for nothing do Antarctic regulars call that gruelling experience The Division of Broken Marriages and Shattered Lives. Still wounded, Tom lives a simple life in Hobart, unable and unwilling to make real connections with people in case he gets hurt again. But then he meets Emma, newly returned from Antarctica and as open and welcoming as Tom is not. Will Tom be healed by Emma's interest, or come to terms with his first trip there?

'As Mary's time winds down, both she and Tom must face their pasts in ways they cannot even begin to imagine. And Mary finds that the script she's written to the end of her life has taken on a few twists of its own. The Lightkeeper's Wife is a moving and redemptive story of love, loss and family, and what we have to do to live the best kind of life.' (From the publisher's website.)

'From the award-winning author of House of Sticks comes a magnificent story of love, tragedy, and forgiveness lost.

'It is the winter of 1985, and 13-year-old Silver Landes is about to be pushed towards a decision that could split her world apart. Her mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic but unnerving Miller, and the three of them have moved from Brisbane to Hope Farm, a run-down hippie commune in rural Gippsland.

'Among the bedraggled residents of Hope, young Silver finds unexpected friendship and love. Has she found a home at last? Or will Ishtar's secrets force Silver into becoming an adult before she is ready, with devastating consequences?

'Hope Farm is a beautifully wrought, tender tale of what happens when love brings about unforeseen and unimaginable acts of sacrifice, and the enduring damage that can result from holding back the truth.' (Publication summary)

'"On 13th October my father killed my mother". And so begins this extraordinarily, moving and powerful memoir of an Australian family. Spanning three generations of a rural Queensland farming family, The Long Goodbye is an unforgettable story of love and loss by an outstanding new writer of originality and remarkable skill.

'When Pamela's ageing mother succumbs to advanced dementia and the family attempts to care as best they can for her, it is her father who takes matters into his own hands and ends her mother's life before taking his own life several weeks later. The Long Goodbye takes you into the life of this family, revealing the grit and resilience which has always driven them, as well as the love that binds them together through the years. At times hilariously funny, at times tragic and shocking, The Long Goodbye is ultimately a grand story of love and the unbreakable bonds of marriage and family set against the harsh and unforgiving realities of life on the land.

'Disastrous floods, drought, and farming accidents mean that life and death are never far apart. The Australian landscape is evoked in all its beauty, but its danger is inescapable. Pamela writes with incredible honesty and warmth about her own parents, grandparents and extended family, their celebrations, their wit and great humour while never shying from the dark truths and difficult struggles that plague them too. The Long Goodbye illustrates the devastation of dementia and its terrible consequences for an entire family, as well as her father's controversial and unspeakable solution in euthanasia.

'The Long Goodbye is a true story of impossible beauty and sadness, and the story of a remarkable love that could be no other way.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When Marion Summers - red-haired, beautiful and mysterious - collapses and dies in the rarefied surrounds of the London Library, DI Kathy Kolla and DCI David Brock are sent to head the investigation. Kathy finds a reluctant kinship with the feisty Marion, who had, like Kathy, left a difficult home life when young and struck out to London for independence.

Marion's research on the intriguing, adulterous circle of artists, wives, lovers and muses around Victorian artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti seems irrelevant until the use of arsenic arises. As Brock and Kolla get closer to the truth, another victim dies an excruciating death by poison in a library, and it looks like a serial poisoner is on the loose.' (From the publisher's website.)