Cirrus@Austlit

'On the cusp of thirty, Coral learns that a thing is growing inside her body. It is not necessarily a complete disaster, she tells herself. I’m okay, she tells herself.

'Soon the thing inside her is the size of a plum. ‘Little Plum,’ she says, ‘Little Plum, I love you.’

'And she wants to love it, the little plum. It’s just that she can’t yet think of it as what it is becoming: a baby, and not just a fruity morsel.

'Coral is tapping and shrugging more than usual. She is trying to stop the creature in her head from taking hold.

'Coral might not be okay—or she might be seeing more clearly than anyone.

'Bold, dark and sensuous, Little Plum is the stunning follow-up to the award-winning debut Cherry Beach. With skill and sensitivity, Laura McPhee-Browne takes us inside the mind of an expectant mother.' (Publication summary)

'HETTY and Ness have been best friends since childhood. Hetty is captivating, the life of the party. Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her.

'Leaving Melbourne to live abroad, they take a room in a share house of creatives in Toronto’s student quarter. Hetty disappears into barkeeping and nightlife, while Ness drifts aimlessly.

'But when Ness finds Faith in the art gallery, an intense affair develops. With friends and a job, at last her life starts to make sense. And Hetty’s starts to fall apart, a mess of bad drugs and bad men.

'As winter freezes the lakeside city, the dark undercurrents of Hetty’s character—abusive relationships, dangerous obsessions—become stronger. Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world.

'Cherry Beach is a revelatory and beautifully written story of friendship and desire.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Something is rotting in Merry and Phillip's marriage. A smell has invaded the dilapidated bed and breakfast they own together, and when a mysterious guest arrives, appetites are whet and the source of the smell is revealed.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.