Cirrus@Austlit

''So you believed the alleged rapists over the alleged victim?' Jane's voice took on an indignant pitch. 'Girls lie sometimes.' I nodded. 'And rapists lie all the time.'

'When Senior Detective Antigone Pollard moves to the coastal town of Deception Bay, she is still in shock and grief. Back in Melbourne, one of her cases had gone catastrophically wrong, and to escape the guilt and the haunting memories, she'd requested a transfer to the quiet town she'd grown up in.

'But there are some things you can't run from. A month into her new life, she is targeted by a would-be rapist at the pub, and realises why there have been no convictions following a spate of similar sexual attacks in the surrounding district. The male witnesses in the pub back her attacker and even her boss doesn't believe her.

'Hers is the first reported case in Deception Bay, but soon there are more. As Antigone searches for answers, she encounters a wall of silence in the town built of secrets and denial and fear. The women of Deception Bay are scared and the law is not on their side. The nightmare has followed her home.

'Chilling, timely and gripping, The Unbelieved takes us behind the headlines to a small-town world that is all too real - and introduces us to a brilliant new voice in crime fiction.' (Publication summary) 

'A novel of searing emotional truth, told with the relentless pull of a thriller.

'Paula, a much-loved GP, comes home one evening to the house she is sharing with her friend Stacey and Stacey’s two children, who have moved in with Paula after the break-up of Stacey’s marriage and the increasingly disturbing behaviour of her ex. Paula opens her front door to discover a scene from hell: Stacey and her children are lying dead in pools of blood. As Paula tries to breathe, in walks Matt, who then shoots himself.

'When an obviously scared woman brings in her little boy for a consultation some weeks later, Paula’s eyes are drawn to the bruises around her neck. Determined to never see another woman suffer like Stacey did, Paula talks to the woman, who admits she is being beaten by her husband. A few weeks later, the abusive husband comes in to see a doctor. She realises she has the chance to set things to rights and give the abused woman the freedom she has dreamed of. But can she go against everything she believes to make sure one woman is safe, one child?

'A book to inspire ferocious discussion in book clubs and beyond – the classic moral dilemma writ large and made into a deeply human situation we can all relate to.' (Publication summary)